The Organisation of Public Theatres Joanna Zdebska-Schmidt
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he purpose of this paper is to present the organisational structure of Poland’s public theatres on the basis of their regulations and schematics. The documents subjected to analysis were drawn from the institutions’ BIP websites1, as well as being made available at the author’s written and e-mailed request. The study does not encompass all of the country’s public theatres, since many of them do not publish the information in question on their BIP websites; indeed, one of them does not have such a site at all. Furthermore, over half the theatres failed to respond to the request for information. The article makes use of citations from individual regulations. These quotations are given in italics but the author does not indicate the precise source. This arises from the fact that her aim is not to turn the spotlight on the provisions of any one specific theatre, but to extrapolate general conclusions.
INTRODUCTION “(…) artistic institutions which are to yield some kind of defined development must be long-term undertakings. They cannot be improvisations. (…)”2 Jerzy Grotowski
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o assert that theatre is an organisation is to give voice to a truism. Nonetheless, it is essential to emphasise this aspect of their being, since the wealth of meanings pertaining to the concept of ‘theatre’ push the organisational per-
spective well into the background. Meanwhile, the way in which a theatre functions, the rules it adopts, the division of its work and its methods of operating give every appearance of being just as essential to the birth, creation and performance of a production as are the director’s vision, the actors’ skills and the design of the set upon which it is performed. “Organizations are complex and multifaceted. They are paradoxical (...) (they) can be seen and understood in many ways”3 [Morgan, 1997, p. 11]. From the praxeological perspective, an organisation is most frequently defined as “an entirety, of which the constituent parts co-contribute to the success of the whole” [Zieleniewski, 1969, p. 274] and as “an entirety which contributes to the success of its parts” [Koźmiński, Obłój, 1989, p. 18]. These last assertions emphasise two possible views; the fulfilment of a mission laid upon the organisation as an entirety and the fulfilment of the personal needs, plans and ambitions of its members. This duality is delineated with particular vividness in the theatre since, on the one hand, it carries out, in enormously generalised terms, the ‘social mission’ which is the dissemination of culture, whilst, on the other, it affords an opportunity for the fulfilment of any number of other things, including the artistic ambitions and projects of the actors, directors, set designers and musicians in its employ. For an organisation to be able to perform its role, its individual elements and parts must be cohesive and mutually adapted. It is thus also “a separate part of reality, having a certain in-
1 BIP (Biuletyn Information Publicznej / Public Information Bulletin) was established in order to disseminate public information in electronic form. It consists of a unified system of websites on which public entities and institutions publish the information required under Polish law. 2 Translated from the Polish for the purposes of this article. 3 English original found at http://tinyurl.com/6ar2t8p; pp. 337, 341; 3rd September 2011
Culture Management 2012, Vol 5 (5)
Joanna Zdebska-Schmidt Graduate of theatre studies and culture management at the Jagiellonian University, PhD student at the Faculty of Management and Social Communication. Interested in the organization and management of public theatres. In her doctoral dissertation she is concerned with the subject of authorial management in institutional theatres.