Magda Romanska is an award-winning writer, theatre scholar and dramaturg. Educated at Stanford, Yale and Cornell, she is currently Associate Professor of Theatre and Dramaturgy at Emerson College in Boston, and a research associate at Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

The task, which the author sets out and performs, starting from such a clearly defined research perspective, is both remarkable and impressive in its momentum and size.—Performer

• Foreword by Kathleen Cioffi; Preface; Acknowledgments; List of Illustrations; Introduction; PART I: OUR AUSCHWITZ: GROTOWSKI’S “AKROPOLIS”; Chapter 1: Jerzy Grotowski: A Very Short Introduction; Chapter 2: Native Son: Grotowski in Poland; Chapter 3: Grotowski: The Polish Context; Chapter 4: Grotowski, the Messiah: Coming to America; Chapter 5: The Making of an Aura; Chapter 6: On Not Knowing Polish; Chapter 7: “In Poland: That is to Say, Nowhere”; Chapter 8: “Akropolis”/Necropolis; Chapter 9: The Vision and the Symbol; Chapter 10: “This Drama as Drama Cannot Be Staged”; Chapter 11: Two National Sacrums; Chapter 12: “Hollow Sneering Laughter”: Mourning the Columbuses; Chapter 13: Against Heroics; Chapter 14: Representing the Unrepresentable; Chapter 15: Trip to the Museum; Chapter 16: Bearing the Unbearable; Chapter 17: The Living and the Dead; Chapter 18: Jacob’s Burden; Chapter 19: The Final Descent; Chapter 20: Textual Transpositions; Chapter 21: “Akropolis” After Grotowski; ILLUSTRATIONS; PART II: OUR MEMORY: KANTOR’S “DEAD CLASS”; Chapter 22: Tadeusz Kantor: A Very Short Introduction; Chapter 23: “Dead Class”: The Making of the Legend; Chapter 24: “Dead Class” in Poland; Chapter 25: The Polish History Lesson; Chapter 26: “Dead Class” Abroad; Chapter 27: On Not Knowing Polish, Again; Chapter 28: The Visual and the Puerile; Chapter 29: The National and the Transnational; Chapter 30: Witkiewicz’s Tumor; Chapter 31: An Age of Genius: Bruno Schulz and the Return to Childhood; Chapter 32: Conversing with Gombrowicz: The Dead, the Funny, the Sacred and the Profane; Chapter 33: Panirony: “A pain with a smile and a shrug”; Chapter 34: Raising the Dead; Chapter 35: “Dead Class” as Kaddish…; Chapter 36: “Dead Class” as “Dybbuk,” or the Absence; Chapter 37: The Dead and the Marionettes; Chapter 38: Men and Objects; Chapter 39: “Dead Class” as “Forefathers’ Eve”; Chapter 40: “Dead Class”: The Afterlife; Postscript; Appendix: Table 1. Chronology of Events; Table 2. Comparison between Wyspiański’s “Akropolis” and “Genesis”; Table 3. Comparison between Grotowski and Kantor; Notes; Bibliography; Index