Theatre props/costumes/elements of scenography presented on the website are mostly incomplete objects which, although they are the key to many fascinating narratives, can hardly be examined in isolation from their staging. It is different when it comes to the objects from Tadeusz Kantor’s performances because they are not typical “props.” The author of The Dead Class wrote about the objects that he created in the following way:

„THEY ARE NOT THEATRE PROPS.
I HAVE EXCLUDED THIS CONCEPT FROM THE IDEA OF THE CRICOT 2 THEATRE
AS UNSUITABLE.

THESE WORKS ARE NOT THE RESULT OF THE AD HOC AND FLEETING NEEDS
 OF A GIVEN PERFORMANCE.
INSTEAD, THEY ARE CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH THE IDEAS THAT DEFINE MY
 ARTISTIC CREATION
THEY BELONG TO A SERIES OF WORKS ON A SPECIFIC SUBJECT,
LOCATED IN MUSEUMS SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL.
THEY HAVE A SUFFICIENT QUANTITY OF INTERNAL TENSION
AND INDEPENDENT MEANING
TO
 BE AUTONOMOUS WORKS OF ART. (...)”[1]

Elaborated by Editorial team of Małopolska’s Virtual Museums,

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Poland License.

Mannequins in museum exhibitions often signify attempts to reconstruct history, they are a tool for delving into the past, which, however, does not fully achieve the intended goals (although, of course, these are subjective judgements and experiences). At the moment when theatre objects enter the space of the museum – in which two worlds meet: museum and theatre, it is worth considering the role that mannequins played in the theatre, including, and perhaps above all, in Kantor’s theatre.
The mannequins that appeared in Kantor’s performances for the first time in the production of Gosh/Kurka wodna (1967), at first „were like an intangible extension, some additional organ of the actor”. In the staging of Balladyna they duplicated actors, but as a props, dead actors, they bore the imprint of death. Mannequins were regarded as “poor” objects, they were an example of “the lowest rank of reality”. A figure that made it possible to execute transgression. An object that expressed Kantor’s conviction that life can only be expressed through contrast with its absence can only be understood through the context of death. Kantor proposed a new type of “Treatise on Mannequins”. He wrote:

„MANNEQUIN as a VIOLATION procedure
Mannequin as an EMPTY object. DUMMY.
Message of DEATH. Actor’s Model”.

Mannequins, just like wax figures, existed alongside the margins of art. Although Kantor did not agree with the idea of ​​Craig and Kleist, according to which the actor can be replaced by a mannequin, he was fascinated by the potential of these artificial, created beings in his conviction that could best reflect the ideas of the Theatre of Death. Thus, mannequins were a tool that, through association with death, was to be a model for a living actor.
As Kantor said in an interview with Krzysztof Miklaszewski: “The mannequin in my theatre is to become a model through which a strong sense of death and the condition of the dead is to be transmitted”.

Elaborated by: Editorial team of Małopolska’s Virtual Museums,

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Poland License.

See:
Manekin Pedla (the image of Kazimierz Mikulski),  Dead Class, 1975)
Goplana and Elfs (Balladyna , 1943)
Fairy circle / Child’s dummy on a bicycle (Dead class, 1975)

Literature:
Tadeusz Kantor, Pisma, vol. 2: Teatr Śmierci. Texts from 1975-1984, selected and developed by Krzysztof Pleśniarowicz, Wrocław-Kraków, 2004.

What is cricotage?
Kantor wrote: “Cricotage is not a happening; it means that it does not have an ‘open form’ capable of being receptive to the audience’s participation“.
Cricotage is not identical to performance art while it is understood as an act in space using the performer’s body, yet

“it does not renounce emotional states and strong tension. Cricotage deals with REALITY
liberated from any «plot».
Its fragments, relics and traces,
freed from IMAGINATION,
being an affront to any conventions and common sense,
are linked
to such a degree of endurance,
they may be torn apart and disintegrated
at any moment.
This impression of
danger
and constantly threatening
disaster
is an important feature of Cricotage“.

What did the idea look like in practice? The first cricotage took place at the Society of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1965. In the cafe area, Kantor’s friends performed simple daily activities for an hour. They ate, sat, shaved and carried coal. Despite terminological divisions introduced by the author of Cricot 2, many theatre theorists consider this date as the beginning of happenings in Poland. A developing field of experiments with form, which straddled the border between life and art, resulted in further projects, including the most well known Panoramic Marine Happening. During this performance Kantor became the conductor of a show of nature while standing on a chair facing the sea.
Apart from the action of 1965, Kantor himself defined the following performances as cricotage: Gdzie są niegdysiejsze śniegi [Where Is Last Year’s Snow] the title of which was taken from Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past by Francois Villon, Ślub [The Wedding] of 1986, Maszyna miłości i śmierci [Machine of Love and Death] of 1987, Bardzo krótka lekcja [A Very Short Lesson], and Cicha noc [The Silent Night] – performed in Avignon in 1990.

Elaborated by Anna Berestecka (Editorial team of Małopolska’s Virtual Museums),

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Poland License.

See “The Trumpet of the Last Judgement” (“Where Are Last Year’s Snows”, 1979)

The reconstruction of Kantor’s work on his performances is possible thanks to, among others, the video recordings of rehearsals which were made on the artist’s request, starting with the play Niech sczezną artyści [Let the Artists Die] from 1985. Forty eight hours of rehearsals were recorded during the preparation for the play Dziś są moje urodziny [Today Is My Birthday].
At a certain stage of his work, Kantor began to attach great weight to the documentation and arrangement of his realisations and collections.
All recorded rehearsals from Cricot 2 Theatre can be watched in Cricoteka Archives in Kraków at 2-4 Nadwiślańska Street.

Elaborated by Małgorzata Paluch-Cybulska (Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor) and the Editorial team of Małopolska’s Virtual Museum, © all rights reserved

See the exhibits created for play Dziś są moje urodziny [Today is My Birthday] at our collection:
Infanta’s Portrait
Painting of Self-portrait
Tank
The artist’s table