Przyrost Naturalny (Natural Increase)

The author of the play “Natural Increase” (“Przyrost Naturalny” in Polish), Tadeusz Różewicz (1921–2014) was a Polish poet, playwright, writer, and translator. Różewicz was in the first generation of Polish writers born after Poland regained its independence in 1918. He wrote over a dozen plays and several screenplays, and published fifteen volumes of poetry between 1944 and 1960. Różewicz has been regarded as “one of the most versatile and creative continuators of the Polish and international avant-garde”. Regarding the poster art displayed here, artist Andrzej Klimowski was born in the UK of Polish emigre parents. He later made his way to Poland where he rapidly built a career for himself as one of the leading young Polish poster artists of the 1970s. He met and was influenced by the great Polish poster artists Roman Cieslewicz and Henryk Tomaszewski. It was the theater poster that was to provide Klimowski with his ideal canvas. Klimowski said, “Films have their own visual look and iconography, which is part of the director’s vision. You could find a metaphor for something, a symbol which has nothing to do with any image from the film, but on the whole you had to adhere to that vision, or so I thought. With the theater, all you were given was the manuscript or the published play, and it didn’t matter what the director was going to do with it because the poster would be printed way ahead of rehearsals. So you could give your own interpretation.”