About Tango
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In Tango, as in Mrozek's earlier plays, perfect logic is energetically applied to illogical ends. Arthur lives with his Bohemian family in appalling disorder: His mother sleeps with a vulgar hoodlum; his father looks the other way, meanwhile writing avant-garde plays; and his grandmother plays cards incessantly. Arthur's elaborate coup d'etat, by which he seeks to establish his kind of order in the house at the point of a gun, leads to his total defeat and ends in one of the most chilling moments in the literature of the modern theatre.
Early in 1970 the Ballaarat National Theatre successfully made application to the Australian Council for the Arts (Special Projects Fund) for the services of a director for one of this year's productions. Mr. Paul Karo was selected for this position and for the past six weeks has been directing our theatre players in this unusual play "TANGO."
Ballarat: Jul 31 - Aug 8, 1970
Maryborough: 22 Aug, 1970
Partners
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Produced with the assistance of the Special Projects Fund of the Australian Council for the Arts.
About the Director
June 1935 - April 2025
From the program
Mr. Karo is well-known as an outstanding actor, having wide experience in theatre, television and radio. He won the ERIK Award for the Best Actor in 1967. He began his career as producer with the Hut Players, and early in 1969 was appointed a resident actor-producer to St. Martin's Theatre Company, Melbourne for whom he directed three, successful presentations - "INVITATION TO A MARCH," "THE ROPE DANCERS," and "HAVE YOU ANY DIRTY WASHING, MOTHER DEAR?" Before commencing with St. Martin's he directed the successful Channel 7 Network Christmas Eve Special, "A CHRISTMAS CAROL."
About the Playwright
Sławomir Mrożek (born June 29, 1930, died August 15, 2013) was a Polish dramatist and writer.
Mrożek joined the Polish United Workers' Party during the reign of Stalinism in the People's Republic of Poland, and made a living as a political journalist.
In the late 1950s Mrożek begun writing plays. His first play, "Policja" (The Police), was published in 1958. Mrożek emigrated to France in 1963 and then further to Mexico. He traveled in France, England, Italy, Yugoslavia and other European countries. In 1996 he returned to Poland and settled in Kraków.
His first full-length play "Tango" (1964) – a family saga – is still along with "The Emigrants" (a bitter and ironic portrait of two Polish emigrants in Paris) his best-known work, and continue to be performed throughout the world. Director Andrzej Wajda made a theatre production of "The Emigrants" in 1975 at the Teatr Stary in Kraków. In 2006 Mrożek released his autobiography called "Baltazar".
Mrożek's works belong to the genre of Theatre of the Absurd, intended to shock the audience with non-realistic elements, political and historic references, distortion and parody.
