Raźniak, Waldemar International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn

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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.