Post-war theatre in Poland flourished particularly in the communist era, when the alternative stream was so powerfully vocal that it became complementary to mainstream theatre. Founded in 1988, and just about 11 years young, the theatre group Biuro Podrozy, honed its dramatic instincts from a tormented history of repression and angst. Truth and reality became a vocabulary intrinsic to their work, relevant even today after the crumbling of the communist bloc. Their theatre resonates with wounds from the past as much as it questions conflicts of the present.

Poland, Summer of ’95: I am in Poznan for the Malta Theatre Festival two days ahead of schedule and find my hosts caught up in a pre-festival fever. So I decide to make myself scarce and pick up a map in search of a possible diversion. That evening over dinner, I announce my plans of visiting Auschwitz and immediately an uneasy silence descends on the dining table. The Pinterian pause is broken by my colleague Juliusz who clarifies: “Auschwitz is in Poland, but it is not us.”