Henryk Baranowski

Henryk Baranowski (9 February 1943 – 27 July 2013) was a Polish theatre, opera and film director, actor, stage designer, playwright, screenwriter and poet. He is best known for his starring role in the film Dekalog: One directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski, and also appeared as Rosa's brother Josef in Rosa Luxemburg directed by Margarethe von Trotta and as Napoleon in Pan Tadeusz directed by Andrzej Wajda. He directed over 60 theater and opera productions in Europe, Russia and the US and was the Artistic Director of the Teatr Śląski (Silesian Theatre) in Katowice in the mid 2000s. He also directed four "television theatre" productions: ...yes I will Yes (1992, adapted from Ulysses by James Joyce), For Phaedra (1998), Saint Witch (2003), and Night is the Mother of Day (2004).

Baranowski’s father Stanisław Baranowski was a well-known conductor and violinist in the Lviv Philharmonic, and his mother Irena (née Filbert) was the daughter of a Tsarist army officer in Kharkiv. They met during the Second World War after the father had been transferred to the Kharkov opera following the Battle of Lwów in 1939. In 1942, the couple attempted to move away from the war torn region to Kraków, but only got as far as Tarnopol. That fall, the father was killed while searching for food by members of the Banderites. Henryk was born in Tarnopol on 9 February 1943, four months after his father's death.[10]

In 1944, the Baranowski family was deported to Germany to work in a labor camp near Bremen, where they remained for the last year of the war. They stayed in the American Zone of Occupation for three years, then moved first to Kliczków in Lower Silesia then to Bolesławiec.

Baranowski studied mathematics at the University of Wrocław and was a graduate of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw (1968) and the Director's Department at the State Theater School in Warsaw (1973).[11]

Baranowski made his directorial debut in 1973 at the Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw with The Maids by Jean Genet, and went on to direct several productions in theatres in Poland, including Man and Wife by Aleksander Fredro at the Teatr im. W. Bogusławski in Kalisz; Four of Them by Gabriela Zapolska at the Baltic Drama Theatre in Koszalin; Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen and Offending the Audience by Peter Handke at Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz; Hello and Goodbye by Athol Fugard, The Castle by Franz Kafka, Princess Ivona by Witold Gombrowicz and Forefather's Eve by Adam Mickiewicz at the Theatre Jaracza in Olsztyn; School for Wives by Molière at the Teatr Polski in Poznań; and Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill and Totenhorn by Kazimierz Truchanowski at the Teatr Śląski (Silesian Theatre) in Katowice.

On the opening night of Totenhorn, Communist Party officials in attendance walked out, and the government shut down the production the next day. A literary conference was taking place nearby, and the writers organized a petition that reversed the decision. Baranowski staged one final production in Poland – Kafka's The Trial at the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw – before leaving the country.[12]

Baranowski emigrated to West Berlin in 1980 and rose to prominence in the city's Freie Theater scene, co-founding the company and theatre school TransformTheater Berlin and the International Directing Seminar[13] at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien[14] with Swiss filmmaker Bettina Wilhelm.[15]

Baranowski's stage adaptations of works by Joyce, Kafka and Dostoyevsky formed the core of TransformTheater Berlin's repertoire. In the early years, he mounted his productions in Berlin, but once the greater openness that followed the founding of Solidarity had been institutionalized, he renewed his work in Poland. Concurrently, he began working in regional theaters in Germany and internationally. His productions were presented at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the Mittelfest in Italy, the European Theatre Festival in Kraków, and numerous other festivals and venues in Poland, Germany, Russia, Italy, Norway and the USA. In the mid-1990s, he moved to a house in Brwinów, a suburb of Warsaw.

Baranowski made his English language debut with George Tabori's Peepshow in Chicago in 1991, which won a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Ensemble. He went on to direct a number of other productions in the US in New York, Las Vegas, and Knoxville, Tennessee. In May 2001, he made his UK directing debut with an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, produced by The Playground at the Riverside Studios in London.

Baranowski's 2009 production of Loneliness on the Net, adapted from the novel by Janusz Leon Wiśniewski, has remained in the repertoire of the 837-seat Main Stage of the Baltic House in Saint Petersburg, Russia through the 2017/18 season, almost a decade after its premiere.[16]

Later in his career, Baranowski’s attention turned increasing to opera. His production of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten for the Teatr Wielki in Łodzi won a Silver Boat for Best Production and a Golden Mask for Best Director.[17] His staging of Alfred Schnittke's Life with an Idiot in a co-production by the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and Hahn Produktion in Berlin won three Russian Golden Mask Awards, including Best Production.[18]

Theatre productions:[19][20]

Opera productions:[20]

Television productions:[41]

Films:[17]

Radio productions for Teatr Polskiego Radia:[42]