Solska and "Ms Stacha"

The article is an excerpt from the book by Natalija Jakubova Irena Solska: Bremia neobichnosti (Irena Solska: The Burden of the Extraordinarity, Moscow, GITIS, 2019), a Polish translation of which is in preparation. The text is dedicated to the collaboration between Irena Solska and Stanisława Wysocka that questions the presumed incompatibility of Solska as a star of the "old theatre" with the director-centred vision of the 1920s and 1930s. To challenge this opinion one is to reconsider the role of Wysocka’s work as a director, not limiting her achievements to the staging of the poetical texts of the classics. The author draws attention to the versatility of genres and topics of this work for which Wysocka engaged Solska as a collaborator for discovering new avant-guard authors, introducing principles of choral theatre or questioning woman’s role in society through the means of psychological realism.