Cricot 2 was a Polish experimental theatre company based in Kraków, founded in 1955 by the avant-garde theatre director, painter, assemblage artist, set designer, and art theorist Tadeusz Kantor, together with Maria Jarema and Kazimierz Mikulski. The company operated until 1991, disbanding shortly after Kantor's death in 1990.
The name "Cricot" is an anagram of the Polish phrase "to cyrk" ("it's a circus"), and the "2" distinguished the new company from a pre-war avant-garde theatre group also called Cricot, which had been led by Józef Jarema.
History and Productions
Initially, Cricot 2 staged works based on the dramas of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy). Over time, Kantor moved toward creating original, fully authored productions. The company first performed at the Artists' House in Kraków and later, after 1961, in the medieval cellars of the Krzysztofory Gallery.
Cricot 2 gained its greatest international acclaim for the 1975 production "The Dead Class" (Umarła klasa), which introduced Kantor's concept of the "Theatre of Death" — a kind of spiritualist séance that evoked deformed sensory images, words, and sounds shaped by the passage of time. Drawing on Kantor's personal memories and experiences of the Holocaust, the work sought to capture the collective memory of the Polish-Jewish tragedy of the mid-20th century.
Legacy
Kantor's unique visual canon and theatrical ambience were considered impossible to replicate after his death in 1990. His final production, Today is My Birthday (Dziś są moje urodziny), was completed and performed by the actors without his presence. The company then ceased operations, following internal debate over whether to continue performing Kantor's plays without him.
Cricot 2 toured extensively across Europe, the United States, and Asia, and is regarded as one of the most important experimental theatre companies of the 20th century. Its archives are held by Cricoteka (the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor) in Kraków.
