Slawomir Mrozek, Poland’s internationally-renowned playwright, is having an open meeting with his readers at the Współczesny Theatre in Warsaw tonight.
It is the writer’s first visit to Poland since he left for Nice a year ago. It is expected that Mrożek will be talking about his diaries, due for publication next year.
He has kept a diary since the end of the 1940s. After ten years he decided to destroy a dozen or so volumes, and so the opening entries of the diaries in the their present shape come from 1962, the year the writer emigrated from communist Poland. Before returning to his homeland in 1996, and settling in Kraków with his Mexican wife, he lived in France for twenty two years and then in Italy, the United States, Germany and Mexico.
The venue for tonight’s event is not accidental, as it was the Współczesny Theatre which premiered most of Mrożek’s plays.
Mrożek’s correspondence with the critic and translator Adam Tarn, covering the years 1963-75, has just been published. It gives interesting insights into the writer’s work on The Tango, his best known play.
Now 79, Mrożek says he intends to spend the rest of his life in Nice. His other major dramas are The Emigres, The Ambassador and Love in the Crimea. (mk)