After '89 takes as its subject the dynamic new range of performance
practices that have been developed since the demise of communism in the
flourishing theatrical landscape of Poland. After 1989, the theatre has
retained its historical role as the crucial space for debating and
interrogating cultural and political identities. Providing access to
scholarship and criticism not readily accessible to an English-speaking
readership, this study surveys the rebirth of the theatre as a site of
public intervention and social criticism since the establishment of
democracy and the proliferation of theatre makers that have flaunted
cultural commonplaces and begged new questions of Polish culture. Lease
argues that the most significant change in performance practice after
1989 has been from opposition to the state to a more pluralistic
practice that engages with marginalised identities purposefully left out
of the rhetoric of freedom and independence.