Teatr Zagłębia, Sosnowiec

Zagłębie Theatre in Sosnowiec on Teatralna Street. It was established - in the sense of a professional theater - in 1897, with its seat in a building erected from the private funds of an entrepreneur, Count Mortimer Renard, as the 6th theater in the Kingdom of Poland, or, as it is sometimes stated, "on Polish soil". The basis for its appearance - surprising, it would seem, in a very working-class environment - was the lively activity of amateur theaters in the city already in the 1870s. They were especially active among workers, particularly prominent in the textile industry, among whose employees the theater was active probably from 1872. Another significant community in this regard was the railroad workers, among whom even two such amateur railroad theaters began operating in the early 1880s. They operated in what is now Śródmieście and in the district known today as Maczki, which was then called "Granica", the Guest Rooms - Saski Hotel, and the Wooden Summer Theatre.

The "first element" - the Winter Theatre - was inaugurated on 6 February 1897 with a performance of Aleksander Fredro's Zemsta / The Revenge by a local amateur group, including the recitation of the occasional piece Prologue by Andrzej Niemojewski. The entire complex was completed in July of the same year, the main moment being the commissioning of the nearby wooden Summer Theatre. The stage was inaugurated on July 15 of that year with Bogusławski and Stefani's opera "Cud mniemany, czyli Krakowiacy i Górale". The Summer Theatre served as a second stage until World War I.

Unfortunately, the naming of this theater was not stable. This was connected with local customary names, dating back to the times of amateur theaters, with different owners of individual elements of the original complex, and finally with times of economic crisis and the resulting transfer of ownership and usufruct rights to different entities. Perhaps this fluidity of nomenclature is the reason why some respectable sources, such as the PWN Encyclopaedia, do not recognise this one of Poland's older theaters, and even seem to link the creation of the Zagłębie Theatre with its emergence in 1955 from an earlier phase, which was the incorporation after World War II of the Sosnowiec theater as a branch of the clearly younger Katowice theater. However, this was connected with constant protests from the Sosnowiec community and finally, as part of the thaw of the 1950s, the two theaters managed to restore their independence. Thus, from the beginning until 1924 the 'Permanent' Theatre was owned by the 'Towarzystwo Hrabia Renard' and was officially associated with this name, although the name 'Zimowy Theatre' was mentioned in popular circulation. In 1924 it was bought by the city and began to function as the Municipal Theatre, which may have been more connected with the emphasis on this theater as opposed to the amateur theater, which in 1928 was also given the use of the 'Winter Theatre' building by the city. From the moment the theater was bought out by the City in 1924, it was also known unofficially as the Zagłębie Theatre. After all, it should be remembered that throughout the history of the whole Sosnowiec theater complex the following names still existed - in some cases meaning the Winter Theatre for a few years and the Summer Theatre for a few years: Ogródkowy Theatre, Popular Theatre and Cheap Theatre. After 1955, when the theater had established itself organisationally and in terms of its name as the heir to all of Sosnowiec's theatrical traditions, the name Zagłębie Theatre was no longer subject to any temptations or changes.

The building of the Winter Theater - the current theater - has been rebuilt many times. It gained its present form during a modernization carried out in 1976-1978 and after an extension carried out in 1992. No elements of the original interior decoration and furnishing have survived.

Some personalities of Polish theater and literature with the Zagłębie Theatre or as guest artists: Wanda Siemaszkowa, Bronisław Dąbrowski, Józef Kotarbiński, Tadeusz Fijewski, Jan Świderski, Leon Kruczkowski, Gabriela Zapolska "supervising" the staging of her plays, Jan Pierzchała, Lech Piwowar, Lidia Bienias.