Individual and Community Crises in a Pandemic: The Social Theater of Ambulatory Care
Pandemic, community, crisis, individual, Social Theater, sociaty, low theory, theater of ambulatory care
This article offers a preliminary diagnosis of Polish social theaters with regard to the crises of the individual and the community during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interpretive framework is Lidia Zamkow’s concept of the theater of ambulatory care, which allows us to locate the activity of social theaters in the context of Michel de Certeau’s tactics and Jack Halberstam’s low theories. The theater of ambulatory care recognizes the needs of individuals and communities in a pandemic crisis and reacts to them in different ways. We distinguish and describe three ideal types of diagnoses and the resulting treatments that theaters of ambulatory care use in a pandemic: therapy, conjuring, and revolution. The article is based on materials collected during two studies: a funded research project on the anthropological and social activity of the Węgajty Theater, carried out at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a survey among theater staff during the pandemic, initiated by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw.
Katarzyna Kułakowska, Katarzyna Kalinowska, Olga Drygas, Michał Bargielski
Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Dramatic representation. The theater, The performing arts. Show business