About Jan Kott
Jan Kott (1914–2001) was a Polish writer, activist, theater critic, professor, and expert on Shakespeare whose work greatly influenced many contemporary directors.
About Bolesław Taborski
Boles?aw Taborski (1927–2010) was a Polish émigré broadcaster, translator, critic, author, and poet. He was born in Torun, Poland, and took part in the Warsaw uprising as a member of the Home Army resistance against Nazi Germany. Liberated from a German prisoner of war camp, he settled in Britain, where he took a degree in English literature and theater studies at Bristol University. Between 1959 and 1989 he worked as an editor and presenter at the BBC World Service. Taborski lectured and wrote in English and Polish. He translated Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and the poems of Robert Graves and Robert Lowell into Polish. He also translated Polish studies of Shakespeare and Vladimir Mayakovsky into English. One of his notable achievements was translating and editing the collected plays of Karol Wojty?a, the future Pope John Paul II. During his lifetime Taborski published eighteen volumes of poetry and six collections of his work, winning prizes in England, the United States, and Poland.
About Edward J. Czerwinski
Edward J. Czerwinski (1929–2005) was a specialist in Slavic
literature and culture and held two doctorates, one in English and American
literature from Emory University and one in Russian and Polish literature from
the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He began his teaching career in 1957 at
the Georgia Institute of Technology and ended it as a full professor of Slavic
languages and literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
where he taught from 1979 to 1993. As founder and director of the Slavic
Cultural Center in Port Jefferson, New York, Czerwinski introduced many
important Eastern European artists to American audiences, presenting theater,
dance, concerts, readings, and exhibitions by such artists as Witold Gombrowicz,
Ivan Klíma, Jószef Szajna, and Jerzy Grotowski. He wrote and published many
articles and books. Fluent in Polish, Russian, Croatian, and Czech, he also
translated many Eastern European and Russian works into English.
About Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll’s House, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen’s birthday honors for services to drama.
About Stefan Rudnicki
Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards, as well as more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices.
