The Pope as Playwright: Karol Wojtyla

Abstract

Karol Wojtyla (b. 1920 in Poland; d. 2005 in the Vatican) was a poet, dramatist, actor, priest, archbishop, cardinal, philosopher, university professor; in 1978 he was elected Pope John Paul II in the Vatican—the first non-Italian pope in 500 years and the first ever Polish pope. Wojtyla worked briefly as an actor (1941-42) at Rhapsodic Theatre (Theatre of the Word) in Kraków. In a sense, his acting career continued, when the Vatican published a 1999 CD and video, Abba Pater, in which John Paul II recites and sings his poems. Wojtyla’s youthful dramas Job and Jeremiah were based on biblical motifs, whereas Brother of Our God (1950) dealt with dilemmas of moving from the service of art to the service of God. His later works are In Front of the Shop of the Jeweler(1960) and The Radiation of Fatherhood (1964). The characteristic features of Wojtyla’s philosophical dramaturgy are dominance of the word as the carrier of meanings; gradual divergence from realism and psychologism to “internal spaces” in the form of “theatrical essays”; the hieratic character and the reduction of space given to externals in accordance with Wojtyla‘s ideas: “drama of the word and the gesture; the rhapsodic “theatre of the living word; philosophical (ethical) issues regarding the relation between the subjectivity of Man and the Absolute. International interest in Wojtyla’s dramas increased considerably after his nomination. In Front of the Shop of Jeweler premiered in London in 1979, and feature films were made by Michael Anderson and Kryzysztof Zanussi.