actor and theater director, long-term director of the Teatr Narodowy in Warsaw and the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. In the years 1945-1946 he was associated with Teatr im. Cypriana Kamila Norwida w Jeleniej Górze.
He was born 16 of June 1924 in Lviv. His father, Władysław Hanuszkiewcz, was of Italian descent. During the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1920-21 he served in the army of General Haller, he was, among other things, adjutant of the then captain Charles de Gaulle in the French mission in Warsaw. His mother, Stanisława Szydłowska, has, for Władysław, broken off her engagement with her fiance, Stanisław Kuniczaki, who went on to become a general. They got married in 1923.
Adam has spent his childhood and youth in his hometown. His father’s mother, Jadwiga, was the one who raised him; his parents had run a shop. Before the war he attended Państwowe III Gimnazjum Męskie im. Króla Stefana Batorego (state-run middle school), located opposite the seat of the Polskie Radio Lwów..
Years later he wrote:
I was a loner. (…) I locked myself in my room feeling underappreciated and hurt. (This has remained with me to this day.) Of course, I did not practice any sports. However, I served at the mass at the Jesuits, whose church was directly adjacent to Adam Mickiewicz’s primary school in Lviv [1].
War found him in Lviv; he left it after the arrival of Soviet troops and in July of 1944 he found himself near Rzeszów. He joined the theater group of the Polish Army. In 1944, he got married for the first time, to Marta Stachiewiczówna.
In 1945 he worked in Teatr im. Wandy Siemaszkowej in Rzeszów, where he played as an apprentice in, among others, “Zemsta” by Aleksander Fredro. In the same year he went to Jelenia Góra with a part of the team.
We opened a theater, we sewed ourselves clothes from thin, terribly colorful cottons, which were stored here from the bombings by the Berlin Opera. And we were broke. Later it was even worse, because we moved into recently vacated German apartments, which smelled of fresh linens and warm preserves. (...) And then we opened a Polish theater, three months after the war, with the same “Zemsta” as in Rzeszów. Our first steps in acting were taught to us with great tenderness and pedagogical talent by Stefania Domańska, And then the theater was taken from us by Jerzy Walden - a brave NKVD member, as he boasted about himself [2].
He performed at Teatr Dolnośląski in Jelenia Góra for a year - already as an actor. He made his debut in the role of Wacław in Aleksander Fredro’s “Zemsta” directed by Stefania Domańska. The premiere took place on August 23, 1945. In 1946 he separated from his wife.
Once, I came back earlier than planned from our theatrical tour of Wałbrzych and Świdnica, and suddenly in the middle of the night in my hall I saw a coat and a hat that certainly did not belong to me. Without going into our master bedroom, I slept peacefully on the couch in the other room, but when i woke up in the morning, after a deep sleep: I was alone in the apartment, with no wife and no child, and we were both guiltless. The war was to blame [3].
The separation from his wife accelerated his decision to leave Jelenia Góra for Kraków, for the theater of Juliusz Osterwa - whom Hanuszkiewicz admired and dreamed of working with. He won the cating, despite the fact he did not graduate from any theater school. In 1946, a committee composed of Leon Schiller, Edmund Wierciński, Jacek Woszczerowicz and Aleksander Zelwerowicz awarded him with a diploma with honors and the title of actor. In the years 1946-1949 he performed in Juliusz Osterwa’s group at Teatr Dramatyczny in Krakow. He played there, among other roles, Kajetan in Juliusz Słowacki’s “Fantazy” (1946). Another important role played by him was that of the Amphitrion in the drama by Jean Giraudoux directed by Bohdan Korzeniewski (1948). In the years 1949-1950 he performed at Teatr Rozmaitości in Warsaw, and in 1950-1955 at Teatr Polski in Poznań. In Poznań, he made his directorial debut with Leonid Rachmanow’s “Niespokojna starość” (premiere: 14.11.1951). While there he played Hamlet in the famous staging by Wilam Horzyca (1950). From 1955, he worked mainly in Warsaw: at the Teatr Polski (1955-56), at Teatr Powszechny - initially as a director (1956- 68) and from 1964 also as the head of it. He was a co-founder of Teatr Telewizji, and in the years 1957-1963, its chief director. In 1968 he was appointed to the position of director of Teatr Narodowy. He lost it after the introduction of martial law in 1981 - for joining the boycott of radio and television, announced by the acting community as an objection to the actions of the authorities. At the time, he directed at the Ateneum and Studio theaters in Warsaw, as well as in Łódź and abroad. In the years 1989-2007 he was the director of the Teatr Nowy in Warsaw. He died on December 4, 2011 in a hospital in Warsaw at Stępieńska Street. The funeral took place on December 8, 2011 at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. The urn containing the artist’s ashes was covered with soil from the Łyczakowski Cemetery in Lviv. During the funeral, instead of flowers, money was collected for Dom Artystów Weteranów Scen Polskich in Skolimów. The collection brought PLN 5,070.45, which was allocated to the renovation of one of the sanitary rooms there. The funeral mass was led by a friend of the deceased - Father Bronisław Paweł Rosik.
He had two siblings: brother Janusz, sister Maria. He was married four times: Marta Stachiewiczówna (daughter Teresa), Zofia Rysiówna (daughter Katarzyna, son Piotr), Zofia Kucówna, Magdalena Cwenówna. His last three wives were actresses.
His physical looks predisposed him to the roles of lovers and romantic characters. Tall, handsome, with a shapely body and a seductive voice - such were both his debut role as Wacław in “Zemsta”, as well as Kajetan in “Fantazy” or the titular Amfitrion and Hamlet. In later years, self-irony was added as a way of presenting himself and the world - when Hanuszkiewicz played in his own performances - often as their Narrator.
His directing career developed in parallel on television and in theater. He contributed enormously to the development of Polish television theater which was then still presented live. He transferred much of the television experience to his theatrical productions - the method of framing of scenes, the use of close-ups and blackouts, and the way of emphasizing detail ( the axe in “Zbrodnia i kara”; 1964). The essence of his staging was to create a spectacle, a reality of the performance, which appealed to the emotions of the viewer using all available means, in which one element often conditioned the whole (the role of a ladder in “Kordian”: 1970). He subjugated all the components to his own original vision of the performance: popular actors, set design (living grass in “Miesiąc na wsi”; 1974) , and the self-edited texts (“Norwid”; 1970). His performances were rejected by traditional critics, but adored by - especially younger - audiences.
Teatr Narodowy under Hanuszkiewicz’s management enjoyed unprecedented popularity, especially among young audiences. Hanuszkiewicz spoke to them in a language that used elements of mass culture: bandstand, cabaret, comics, and popular music. The staging of “Balladyna” became a flagship example of Hanuszkiewicz’s theatrical tricks. Goplana on a Honda was supposed to be an equivalent of a comic book character Barbarella. Hanuszkiewicz’s ideas were fiercely discussed [4].
Hanuszkiewicz was faithful to this style until the last days of his creative work. It’s just that the world and theater have changed, and he has not. After having Teatr Narodowy taken away from him in 1982, he staged performances that were excellent in terms of technique, but no longer evoking the same emotions as before. Theater ceased to be important, the viewer more and more just wanted to be entertained, and the romantic (by both period and spirit) existential problems had lost their importance in the years of martial law and the first twenty years of restoring democracy and capitalism.
Towards the end of his life, Hanuszkiewicz told Tomasz Jastrun:
(...) I am sick and I am in a very serious condition. I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to die right now. This blurs the picture for me. But I remember what I felt before the fateful time came. I would be a jerk if I were to say otherwise than that I had a happy life… [5].
Jelenia Góra was an important place for him. Here he made his debut as an actor in 1945, here he got divorced for the first time, finally here lived his sister, whom he often and gladly visited.
Years later, he reminisced:
At the time Jelenia Góra was clean, tidy, gardens with vegetables, and planted flowers. The Germans were walking in the streets, embarrassed, and we were too - young, embarrassed, because we felt a bit uncomfortable. Little uncomfortable. I lived in Okrzei, but when we arrived there were still Germans there. We saw them packing - it was terrible [6].
Hanuszkiewicz admitted that, thanks to difficult beginnings of his career, he was able to cope with all adversities and resistance of matter in his subsequent productions in the later years. In an artistic sense, he returned to Jelenia Góra twice: for the first time in the mid-70s, when in Teatr im. Norwida he staged Juliusz Słowacki’s “Beniowski” (1975) and his original performance “Mickiewicz” (1977), based on his own script. Hanuszkiewicz was at the peak of his career back then and both performances brought him an enthusiastic reception from Jelenia Góra’s audience - the former also brought him the “Meritorious for Jelenia Góra” badge, which he received in 1975. The second return took place in 1997-2001. It was then that the following works were made: “Komedia pasterska” (1997), “Dulska” (1999) and “Kordian” (2001). Experts praised them, but the public reception was less enthusiastic. The young audience raised on soap operas did not consider these performances their own. Hanuszkiewicz was then shown appreciation by the City Council, which awarded him in 1997 with the title of “Honorary Citizen of the City of Jelenia Góra”. In 2001, there was much talk about him possibly taking over the management of Teatr im. C.K. Norwida, but Hanuszkiewicz stayed at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. He used to come to Jelenia Góra both on a social calls and to visit his family until the end of his life, he liked to rest here from the hustle and bustle of the capital city.