Synopses & Reviews
Janusz Glowacki's highly theatrical and often hilarious works concern the immigrant experience of the Eastern European in America, the struggles of the individual in a repressive state, and the manipulations of political and social power. The girls' reform school of Cinders, the Lower East Side tenement of Hunting Cockroaches, and the Norwegian court littered with bodies in Fortinbras Gets Drunk serve as backdrops for Glowacki's tragicomic explorations of the play within the play of contemporary existence.
Review
"Extremely clever and provocative writing. . . . Mr. Glowacki has a keen ability to mine the dark absurdist humor in the language of terror and makes elegant Kafkaesque comedy of his nation's ongoing nightmare of repression." --Frank Rich,
New York TimesReview
"Glowacki's work has some kind of hope secretly hidden in it. Maybe it's only because it makes laughter--if you don't burst the stitches and bleed to death." --Arthur Miller
Review
"To put it poetically, [Glowacki] is a writer whose subject matter is that rare combination of the socially relevant and the universally human. He can look steadfastly into the bleak depths of the human condition and still have the faith and conviction to find sunlight in the rubble." --Joseph Papp
About the Author
Janusz Glowacki was attending the London opening of Cinders in December 1981 when martial law was declared in Poland. He decided not to return and moved with his family to New York. Playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and essayist, Glowacki is the author of six plays, six screenplays, and ten books, including the novel Give Us This Day (1985). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship.
Table of Contents
Cinders
Hunting Cockroaches
Fortinbras Gets Drunk