133-151

• Cetera, Anna

This essay comments on the impact of political censorship on the moodsand attitudes of the Polish audiences of Shakespeare performances underthe Communist regime. In particular, the essay evokes the politicalambience of the theater and the role of Shakespeare performances inboth manifesting and forging dissident attitudes. Additionally, it strivesto elucidate the way in which Kottian criticism reflected the subversivereadings of Shakespeare in the Stalinist period, along with the way thiscriticism, notwithstanding various ideological reservations, partook inshaping the interpretative habits of the audiences of the subsequentdecades. With recourse to selected productions, the essay reconstructsthe directorial strategies, the associative code, and the patterns of patientand attentive listening that made it possible for Poles to credit Shakespearewith their ideological predicaments.

• Arts

• Theater

Shakespeare, theater, audience, Polish theater, censorship

Includes photograph of the audience of the Stary Theater in Krakow, Poland, before the commencement of a dissident play in 1973.