Krzysztof Plesniarowicz draws differences between Western and Eastern European absurdism, points out similarities and adjacencies, and emphasises the function fulfilled by the theatre of the absurd in Eastern Europe: the representation of the drama of a man deprived of freedom. The author of this important book shows absurdity in the dramas of the 1980s at the end of the Soviet bloc as the only possibility of dramatic-theatrical embodiment of realism, as a metaphor for reality.

Krzysztof Plesniarowicz - Jagiellonian University professor, Head of Department of Contemporary Culture JU, Director of the Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor in Cracow (1994-2000). His publications include: The Theatre of Un-Human Forms (in Polish, 1994, 2023), The Space of Anti-Illusion: Models of Contemporary Theatre (in Polish, 1996, 2020), The Dead Memory Machine. Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre of Death (in Polish, 1990; in English, 1994, 2004; in Hungarian 2007), critical editions of Tadeusz Kantor's writings (in Polish, 2000, 2005; in Romanian 2014).