[NEohioPAL]Did you know Pope John Paul II was an actor, poet and playwright?

[Christopher Fortunato]

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I enclose a poem John Paul wrote as Karol Wojtyla early in his life entitled "Actor."
 
John Paul wrote two plays including "The Jewelry Shop" which was made into a movie with Burt Lancaster.
 
Also enclosed here is an excerpt of his bio from his acting days.  The Pope seemed as if he were a devotee of Stanislavsky.
 

Actor 
So many grew round me, through me,
from my self, as it were.
I became a channel, unleashing a force
called man.
Did not the others crowding in, distort 
the man that I am?
Being each of them, always imperfect,
myself to myself too near,
he who survives in me, can he ever
look at himself without fear?
This portion of a biography is from a PBS Frontline series:

Karol first turned to theatre as the outlet for his gifts. He lacked the self-aggrandizing qualities often associated with actors. He was a sober, studious boy. His classmates point out how often he stands to the side in photos of school excursions or class pictures. It was very characteristic that "Karol stood aside...Almost every picture we have with Karol, in almost every picture, he's somewhere aside, somewhere remote, a bit aside from all of us." He always preferred to be an observer. 

Nonetheless his patriotic passions were perfectly suited to a particular kind of Polish theatre. In the early 1930's, he met Mieczyslaw Kotlarcyzk who would teach him about "the Living Word," a style of performing which emphasized language, monologues and simplicity of sets. The Living Word had its roots in life under partition--when people sang Polish songs and recited Polish poetry after dinner in country manor houses. It was a way of preserving their culture. Kotlarcyzk had turned this subversive, informal entertainment into a theory of drama. 
 
Kotlarcyzk ran the Amateur University Theatre in Wadowice. Wojtyla began acting in plays at school and branched out into Kotlarcyzk's productions. The pope's public persona goes back to the declamatory style of these plays which also emphasized, as John Paul II so often does still, symbolic gestures and metaphor. His relationship to Kotlarcyzk launched Wojtyla as an actor and a playwright. Their intense discussions about Polish language and culture became the basis of an important, revealing correspondence once Karol graduated from high school and moved to Krakow with his father in 1938. 

Karol painted pictures of wartime Krakow for Kotlarcyzk who hoped to move there. "Now life is waiting in line for bread, scavenging for sugar, and dreaming of coal and books." Karol also expressed despair over the collapse of Poland and mourned the loss of "ideas that should have surrounded in dignity the nation of Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Norwid and Wyspianski." 

Only Germans could attend plays and concerts or go to museums. A Pole could be shot for going to the theatre and even for speaking Polish in the wrong place. When Kotlarczyk finally came to Krakow in the summer of 1941, Wojtyla and his friends helped him start the underground Rhapsodic Theatre. By focusing on Polish words and texts, they were risking their lives for their country. They were also providing manna for people starved for the sound of their own language. In a letter to Kotlarcyzk, Wojtyla showed the missionary passion behind his cultural resistance. He wrote his teacher that he wanted to build "a theatre that will be a church where the national spirit will burn." 

Ultimately, the two institutions would be reversed for Karol Wojtyla. The Church would be the theatre for his Polish preoccupations. But first his personal suffering would deepen unbearably and his country would have to be crucified by another occupying power. Karol's father died February 18, 1941. Though he would soon regain his outward calm, intimates in Krakow saw how deeply this loss cut. They were worried about Wojtyla's state of mind. He was distraught. After he found his father, Wojtyla stayed up all night praying by the bedside with Juliusz Kydrynski, his closest friend from the theatre. He started going to the grave every day and was so upset Father Malinski, a fellow seminarian, "feared that something terrible might happen." As pope, John Paul II told the writer Andre Frossard, "At twenty I had already lost all the people I loved, and even those I might have loved, like my older sister who, they said, died, six years before I was born." 

>From Christopher Fortunato

 

 

		
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<DIV>I enclose a poem John Paul wrote as Karol Wojtyla early in his life entitled "Actor."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>John Paul wrote two plays including "The Jewelry Shop" which was made into a movie with Burt Lancaster.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Also enclosed here is an excerpt of his bio from his acting days.  The Pope seemed as if he were a devotee of Stanislavsky.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><B><FONT size=2>
<P>Actor</B> </P></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>So many grew round me, through me,<BR>from my self, as it were.<BR>I became a channel, unleashing a force<BR>called man.<BR>Did not the others crowding in, distort <BR>the man that I am?<BR>Being each of them, always imperfect,<BR>myself to myself too near,<BR>he who survives in me, can he ever<BR>look at himself without fear?</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2></FONT>
<P>This portion of a biography is from a PBS Frontline series:</P>
<P>Karol first turned to theatre as the outlet for his gifts. He lacked the self-aggrandizing qualities often associated with actors. He was a sober, studious boy. His classmates point out how often he stands to the side in photos of school excursions or class pictures. It was very characteristic that "Karol stood aside...Almost every picture we have with Karol, in almost every picture, he's somewhere aside, somewhere remote, a bit aside from all of us." He always preferred to be an observer. </P>
<P>Nonetheless his patriotic passions were perfectly suited to a particular kind of Polish theatre. In the early 1930's, he met Mieczyslaw Kotlarcyzk who would teach him about "the Living Word," a style of performing which emphasized language, monologues and simplicity of sets. The Living Word had its roots in life under partition--when people sang Polish songs and recited Polish poetry after dinner in country manor houses. It was a way of preserving their culture. Kotlarcyzk had turned this subversive, informal entertainment into a theory of drama. </P><IMG hspace=2 src="http://us.f519.mail.yahoo.com/art/bioimg2.jpg" align=left vspace=1> 
<P>Kotlarcyzk ran the Amateur University Theatre in Wadowice. Wojtyla began acting in plays at school and branched out into Kotlarcyzk's productions. The pope's public persona goes back to the declamatory style of these plays which also emphasized, as John Paul II so often does still, symbolic gestures and metaphor. His relationship to Kotlarcyzk launched Wojtyla as an actor and a playwright. Their intense discussions about Polish language and culture became the basis of an important, revealing correspondence once Karol graduated from high school and moved to Krakow with his father in 1938. </P>
<P>Karol painted pictures of wartime Krakow for Kotlarcyzk who hoped to move there. "Now life is waiting in line for bread, scavenging for sugar, and dreaming of coal and books." Karol also expressed despair over the collapse of Poland and mourned the loss of "ideas that should have surrounded in dignity the nation of Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Norwid and Wyspianski." </P>
<P>Only Germans could attend plays and concerts or go to museums. A Pole could be shot for going to the theatre and even for speaking Polish in the wrong place. When Kotlarczyk finally came to Krakow in the summer of 1941, Wojtyla and his friends helped him start the underground Rhapsodic Theatre. By focusing on Polish words and texts, they were risking their lives for their country. They were also providing manna for people starved for the sound of their own language. In a letter to Kotlarcyzk, Wojtyla showed the missionary passion behind his cultural resistance. He wrote his teacher that he wanted to build "a theatre that will be a church where the national spirit will burn." </P>
<P>Ultimately, the two institutions would be reversed for Karol Wojtyla. The Church would be the theatre for his Polish preoccupations. But first his personal suffering would deepen unbearably and his country would have to be crucified by another occupying power. Karol's father died February 18, 1941. Though he would soon regain his outward calm, intimates in Krakow saw how deeply this loss cut. They were worried about Wojtyla's state of mind. He was distraught. After he found his father, Wojtyla stayed up all night praying by the bedside with Juliusz Kydrynski, his closest friend from the theatre. He started going to the grave every day and was so upset Father Malinski, a fellow seminarian, "feared that something terrible might happen." As pope, John Paul II told the writer Andre Frossard, "At twenty I had already lost all the people I loved, and even those I might have loved, like my older sister who, they said, died, six years before I was born." </P>
<P>From Christopher Fortunato</P>
<P> </P></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><p>
		<hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!?<br> 
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