Poor Future

This article discusses Tadeusz Kantor’s theory and theatre in reference to a convoluted figure of the future. It reconstructs the principles of Kantor’s unorthodox vitalism permeating the theatre of death, rooted in affirmation of theatrical encounter. As it turns out, Kantor’s “impoverished” style might also be read as a blueprint for thinking the eponymous “poor future”: a figure of the future that escapes hopes and expectations, and functions as a trope of uncanny difference. Within the renegotiated boundaries of life and death, such a difference allows us to rethink our coexistence with alien, often unreconcilable, temporalities. The text is concluded with a tentative reading of Today Is My Birthday, Kantor’s final work, which integrates all domains of “poor future” discussed in the article.