Wysocka, Stanislawa

Born May 7, 1878, in Warsaw; died there Jan. 17, 1940. Polish actress, director, theatrical figure, and teacher.

Wysocka began her stage career in St. Petersburg in 1895, and later she performed in Lublin, Warsaw, Poznań, and Krakow. During the years 1911-20 she lived in Kiev, and it was here in 1916 that she organized the experimental theater Studio, where the principles of K. S. Stanislavsky’s theory were developed. Upon her return to Warsaw in 1920, Wysocka established a studio there, and from 1921 she directed the drama department of the Warsaw Conservatory. At the beginning of her acting career Wysocka played lyric roles in comedies; subsequently she played dramatic and tragic parts. Wysocka’s characterizations were distinguished by a certain grandeur and nobility of presence which contrasted with the pseudoromantic theatrical showiness and mannered quality of modernism. Wysocka performed in the works of Polish romantic writers; her roles included Pani Rollison (Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve), Lucretia Cenci and Balladyna (Sfowacki’s Beatryks Cenci and Balladyna), and the muse and the mother (in Wyspiański’s Liberation and The Curse}. Among Wysocka’s best portrayals were a number of roles in plays by ancient authors, such as Clytemnestra (Aeschylus’ Oresteia) and Phaedra (Euripides’ flip-poly tus). Wysocka also acted in works by playwrights who were her contemporaries, including H. Ibsen, M. Gorky, and A. P. Chekhov. As a director Wysocka strove for a harmony of all the elements of stagecraft and for a profound disclosure of the ideological essence of a dramatic work.