The Faculty of Stage Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
The site you visit includes information on the Faculty of Stage Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Both professors and graduates of the faculty are among the top makers of stage and set design in Poland, and students regularly win prizes and awards for their design work.
The Faculty of Stage Design was established in 2013 as the ninth one in the Academy in Warsaw, but the first one in the history of this art discipline in Poland. The new Faculty aims in the first place at training artists prepared to practice stage and set design in a broad sense, as due to development of performing arts their opportunities grow steadily, but also, through collaboration with theatre and film schools, at putting stage and set design in its rightful place in contemporary Polish theatre and film, as it has recently been a bit degraded, for a variety of reasons. The current curriculum has continued a long, even pre-war tradition of the National Institute of Theatre Arts of training stage designers; it has also been based on teaching and artistic output of Professors Władysław Daszewski, Zenobiusz Strzelecki, Józef Szajna, Andrzej Sadowski, and in recent years also Andrzej Kreutz Majewski. The educational profile and shaping of artistic attitudes among future designers has been redefined, to prepare them not only for work for theatre, opera, but also film, television, media, various activities in public space, auteur theatre and performing arts. Recently the curriculum of the faculty has been enriched with new artistic specialisations derived from stage design, like lighting direction, but also ones related to new technologies in theatre and film, such as virtual set design. Currently the primary curricular premise carried out at the Faculty is not only equipping the graduates with foundations of the future profession, but, above all, forming well-aware artists, with developed open-mindedness towards the world, people, art as a whole, a variety of aesthetic programmes, mind-sets and artistic concepts, which they are bound to come across and operate within. So, in addition to professional training, studies at the Faculty of Stage Design also provide the students with necessary knowledge about the history and aesthetics of theatre and film, costume history and grand theatrical narratives, make them acquainted with the basics of anthropology, history and sociology of culture. The teachers are prominent artists and scholars, among which there are: in the field of film Ewa Braun (Academy Award winner), Janusz Sosnowski, Katarzyna Sobańska, Marcel Sławiński; in the field of theatre: Magdalena Raszewska, Leszek Mądzik, Paweł Dobrzycki (Dean of the Faculty), Marek Chowaniec, Katarzyna Proniewska-Mazurek, Ewa Kochańska; in the field of costume design: Dorota Kołodyńska and Anna Straszyńska; in the field of visual arts in a broad sense: Elżbieta Banecka, Piotr Jaworowski and Tomasz Myjak, as well as young artists: Julia Skrzynecka, Zofia Lubińska, Martyna Kander, who gradually earn recognition. The Faculty of Stage Design offers the following programmes: intramural three-year first-cycle programme (Bachelor’s degree) and intramural two-year second-cycle studies (Master’s degree) for holders of a Bachelor’s degree earned in related fields.