Raźniak, Waldemar
Director, actor and teacher, he graduated from the Directing Department at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theatre Academy in Warsaw (2010), studied acting at the State High School of Theatre in Cracow (2006), cultural management at the Jagiellonian University (2006), and completed a course in Singing in the Theatre at the Conservatoire for Music and Theatre in Guildford. He undertook a directing internship at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow. He was awarded a humanities scholarship by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He was Vice-Dean (2014–15) and Dean (2015–16) of the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theatre Academy’s Acting Department and then Vice-Rector of Academy (2016–19), followed by Director of the Helena Modrzejewska National Old Theatre in Cracow (2020–24). He was also Waldman Professor in Theatre Arts at Emerson College in Boston (2019) and lecturer at the Faculty of Dance Theatre of the State High School of Theatre in Cracow, Bytom Branch (2011–14).
He made his debut with Maxim Gorky’s Vassa Zheleznova at the Och Theatre (2010). He has directed over 25 productions including: The Twilight of the Gods based on Luchino Visconti (Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz, 2026), Hamlet vs Macbeth based on Shakespeare (Mały Theatre in Tychy, 2026), Handel’s Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (Polish Royal Opera, 2025), Mała Apokalipsa 20XX after Tadeusz Konwicki (National Old Theatre in Cracow, 2024), Solaris, and opera after Stanisław Lem with music by Karol Nepelski (Opera Rara Festival, National Old Theatre, 2024), The Night of the Crows, an opera by Zygmunt Krauze and Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk (Polish Royal Opera, 2022), and Bunkier, Fake Opera by Wojciech Błażejczyk (Warsaw Autumn, 2021).
Alongside Shakespeare’s plays, Russian-language literature and psychological drama, he is mainly focused on physical theatre, dance theatre, contemporary opera, and the production of radio plays (his blockbuster productions for Audioteka.pl include Solaris, Fahrenheit 451, The Fall of Giants, Return from the Stars). He has led acting workshops for students in the United States (University of California, Los Angeles; Emerson College; University of Cincinnati), Germany (Ruhrtriennale Festival), China (Central Academy of Drama in Beijing), France (Aria Corse), and the United Kingdom (Drama Studio London).
He has appeared notably in productions at the State Theatre School in Cracow: The Green Goosedirected by Marta Stebnicka, Twelfth Night directed by Jerzy Stuhr, Mozart’s Vision directed by Roman Gancarczyk, as well as in Richard IIIdirected by Jerzy Stuhr at the Ludowy Theatre in Cracow. He has appeared in Maciej Nowak’s Niekabaret series at the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk, and in the films Lesser Evil by Janusz Morgenstern, Small Moscow, 80 Million, and The Photographer by Waldemar Krzystek.