Henryk Tomaszewski aka Heinrich Karl Koenig (1919–2001) was a
mime artist
A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a theatrical medium o ...
and theatre director, born in
Poznań
Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
. He settled in
Cracow in 1945 to study theatre after the end of
World War II during which he studied at
Iwo Gall's Theatre Studio from 1945 to 1947 and
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
under
Feliks Parnell. Tomaszewski left Parnell's company in 1949 and resettled in
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
, where he worked as a ballet dancer in the Opera and already there began to develop his own concept of mime.
In 1956, Tomaszewski's Mime Studio had its premiere performance at the Polski Theatre in Wrocław. In 1958 the Mime Studio was renamed the Wroclaw Mime Theatre and was granted the status of State theatre in 1959. Tomaszewski ceased performing in the mid-1960s but continued to direct, train, and choreograph the ensemble and all productions.
Tomaszewski's conceptions of mime technique are modern much in the same way as
Etienne Decroux's or
Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Lecoq (15 December 1921 – 19 January 1999) was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime which he taught at the school he founded in Paris known as ...
's but developed along different lines owing to the differences in Polish and French theatre traditions. Little reference is made to
commedia dell'arte
(; ; ) was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is also known as , , and . Charact ...
traditions.
Notable students and members of his company include
Stanisław Brzozowski,
Ewa Czekalska,
Leszek Czarnota,
Danuta Kisiel-Drzewinska,
Jerzy Kozlowski,
Krystyna Marynowska,
Stefan Niedzialkowski,
Janusz Pieczuro,
Paweł Rouba,
Andrzej Szczużewski,
Zbigniew Papis,
Czesław Bilski,
Jerzy Reterski,
Urszula Hasiej,
Jerzy Stępniak,
Krzysztof Szwaja,
Marek Oleksy,
Julian Hasiej, and
Lucyna Stankiewicz.
Tomaszewski's early work is documented in English in "Tomaszewski's Mime Theatre" by
Andrzej Hausbrandt (Poland: Interpress, 1975).
Between 1960 and 1966 he collaborated with the
Służba Bezpieczeństwa
The Ministry of Public Security ( pl, Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego), commonly known as UB or later SB, was the secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage agency operating in the Polish People's Republic. From 1945 to 1954 it w ...
(State Counterintelligence Service), reporting on the activities of his friends and colleagues. He did not receive payment for these activities, and Dr. Sebastian Ligarski, the researcher who discovered the dossier on Tomaszewski in the archives of the Wroclaw IPN (Institute of National Remembrance), conjectures that the service blackmailed him either because of his known homosexual tendencies or with the threat of a ban on foreign travel. The service believed that Tomaszewski, while traveling abroad with his colleagues in the Pantomime Theatre, might discover any contacts with foreign intelligence services.
[Wojciech Szymański and Tomasz Wysocki]
Henryk Tomaszewski współpracował z SB
. ''Gazeta Wyborcza'', no. 108 (9 May 2007) (Accessed 4 June 2013).
Notes
External links
Henryk Tomaszewskiat Culture.pl
*
Wroclaw Mime Theatre named after H Tomaszewski
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tomaszewski, Henryk
1919 births
2001 deaths
Polish mimes
Polish male actors
Polish LGBT artists
People from Poznań
20th-century LGBT people