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The Polish Cultural Institute is deeply saddened to learn of the sudden passing of world-renowned Polish theater scholar, perhaps the most ardent and industrious advocate of Polish theater in the US, our frequent collaborator and dear friend, Prof. Daniel Gerould.

Daniel Gerould was Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He was perhaps best known as one of the world's leading scholars and translators of the works of the Polish dramatist, novelist, artist, and philosopher, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz ("Witkacy"), as author of Witkacy: A Study of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz as an Imaginative Writer (U of Washington Pr., 1980), The Witkiewicz Reader, and translator of most of the plays of "Witkacy" including Country House, Mr. Price, and Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf, among the most well known in English. He was working right until the end on a complete translation of all of Witkacy's plays.

Daniel Gerould was the author of Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore, editor and translator of Doubles, Demons, and Dreamers: An International Collection of Symbolist Drama (Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983). Editor of American Melodrama and of the 12-volume Routledge Harwood Polish and East European Theatre Archive. Editor and translator of Yuri Olesha's Conspiracy of Feelings and Konstanty Idelfons Galczynski's The Little Theatre of the Green Goose. Editor of Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel. Editor and translator with Marvin Carlson of Pixérécourt: Four Melodramas. Editor with Marcy Arlin and Gwynn Macdonald, of Czech Plays: Seven New Works. Editor of Playwrights Before the Fall. Author of Quick Change: 28 Theatre Essays & 4 Plays in Translation. Editor and translator with David Willinger of A Maeterlinck Reader. With Alma Law he was Editor and co-founder of the journal Slavic and East European Performance.

In the photograph above, taken October 24, 2011, Prof. Gerould was in the audience with his wife and frequent co-translator, Jadwiga, at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, for a performance and discussion with two of Poland's most promising young theater artists, playwright Marcin Cecko and director Krzysztof Garbaczewski. We will miss his inspiring productivity well beyond an age when many of his academic colleagues would have retired, his wide-ranging knowledge of world theater and particularly of the works, life, and milieu of Witkacy, his sharp wit and intellect, and above all his friendship.