Lekarz teatralny: Przyczynek do opisu obyczajów teatralnych XIX wieku

Abstract

The theater physician was a crucial figure in the transformation of the theater as an institution between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries: he looked after the artists, guaranteed the internal order of the institution, and contributed to the shaping of the social perception and evaluation of the acting profession. He helped organize the theater as a controlled and norm-governed space, in which neither audience reactions nor the artist’s ways of being could disturb the general order. The article is a historical study of the development of the theater physician’s professional position and duties in the nineteenth century, drawing on diaries, press articles, and iconographic material (including caricatures). Starting from the analysis of source texts, such as the writings of theater physicians (Kazimierz Łukaszewicz, Gustave-Joseph Witkowski), the author adopts two parallel strategies: 1) she reconstructs the biographical and factographic background of the presence of an official doctor in Polish theatre, 2) she problematizes the relationships between the theater as an institution and forms of organized medical care, between actors’ illnesses and the images of theater as a hazardous and pathological place, between the pathography of actors’ illnesses and the idea of a public order and system of values, and between the internal and external perception of the acting profession.

Keywords

• theater physician
• illness
• actor's social image
• pathography
• health and safety regulations
• kazimierz łukaszewicz
• gustave-joseph witkowski