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RESEARCH PRODUCT

„Reduta“ suka sau lizdelį, arba Osterwa Pohuliankoje

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Based on previously unknown archival materials discovered by the authors in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius, the author of the article is reconstructing the beginnings of the Polish theatre company “Reduta” in Vilnius and the discovery of new documents sheds new light on this story. The author attempts to reconstruct the economic and social conditions in which “Reduta” started its operation in Vilnius. The text concerns the period of 1925–1929. The author puts forward a thesis that the reasons for “Reduta’s” failure in Vilnius were the enormous costs of renovating the Grand Theatre on Pohulanka Street that resulted in unpayable debt in the first months of the theatre’s operation. Just before “Reduta’s” arrival in Vilnius in 1925, Polish theatre critic, poet and publicist Czesław Jankowski (1857–1929) warned its director, a renowned Polish actor and theatre theoretician Juliusz Osterwa (1885–1947), that the main reason for the theatre’s failure in Vilnius is the lack of a regular theatre audience and that the higher prices in Vilnius also had to be taken into account. “Reduta” was theatre of a high standard that was out of the reach of the average inhabitant of Vilnius. The reasons for “Reduta’s” failure were, as it was pointed out by the local press, the concept of the theatre, which was too subtle for average tastes, and the lack of new productions. The “Reduta” collective hardly managed to survive in Vilnius up to 1929. Vilnius undoubtedly shaped Osterwa as an actor and human being in his youth and provided essential components for his concept of theatre. On the other hand, the experiences related to “Reduta’s” stay in the city turned out to be bitter for Osterwa. The Vilnius period documents found by the author of this article confirm the need, as postulated by Polish theatre historian Zbigniew Osiński (1939–2018), to question and rewrite “Reduta’s” history in Vilnius, to strip it from the sentimental and idealising envelope that is demonstrated mainly in the recollections of the people associated with “Reduta”. It is a story to be told anew and again.