The #MeToo movement in Polish theatre brought not only a wave of media and artistic call-outs, but also became a catalyst for profound changes in approaches to arts education, institutional structures, and performative practices. #MeToo for the Future: Artistic Projects on (Sexual) Violence in the Theatre is the first attempt at a horizontal, multifaceted analysis of this complex and evolving process.
The point of departure for the book are self-referential performances, stagings, readings, and theatre texts that address the issue of violence and abuse of power within theatrical institutions — including art schools. The author situates these works within a broad network of artistic, institutional, and theoretical contexts.
In the first part, Monika Kwaśniewska focuses on the institutional dimensions of the analyzed projects — discussing the complaints they contain and their representational strategies. In the second, treating artistic processes as a form of autoethnographic research, she reconstructs — through interviews with artists, surveys, and diploma works — a web of relationships, emotions, and themes crucial both for the projects themselves and for the broader debate on violence in theatre.
Subsequent chapters explore grassroots archives of (sexual) violence and the search for alternative working models rooted in devised theatre practices. The book concludes with an overview of restorative and transformative tools — developed collaboratively with the artists involved — aimed at improving safety in performative work environments.
Kwaśniewska’s analyses are grounded in a rich methodological framework, spanning Sara Ahmed’s theory of complaint, institutional and representational critique, autoethnography, artistic research, social archive theory, documentary theatre, and devised theatre practices — all framed within the philosophy of new materialism. The theoretical rigor is balanced by the author’s personal engagement and situated perspective, lending the text both intellectual depth and activist urgency.