AUDIO DRAMA
AUDIO FILM
SŁUCHOWISKO
Joseph
Mayen
Joseph Mayen, a native of Lviv, was born on January 25, 1896 in a Jewish family in a house at 2a Zhulynskyi Street (today Akademika Filatov Street) facing Lychakivska. An outstanding director, actor, as well as one of the first theorists of audio drama, radio and literature in Poland.
The creation in Lviv in 2022 of the Josef Mayen Creative Audio Drama Studio opens up new opportunities for the realization of the latest audio dramas and audio films in modern Ukraine.
We pay particular attention to the contribution to world culture of famous Lviv residents, so we open up their creative output to the Ukrainian cultural space as well.
LIFE AND CREATIVITY
1896 - 1978
Lemberg
1915 - 1919
1921 - 1926
1932 - 1941
1944 - 1950
1953 - 1978
01/25/1896 Lviv — 01/23/1978 Warsaw
He obtained his secondary school certificate in 1915 in Vienna, where he also studied at the University of Humanities and was also a student of V. Kurtz at the Vienna Conservatory. He studied stage acting with Y. Khmelinsky in Lviv. In the early twenties, he studied directing as an assistant to L. Jessner in Berlin and G. Hartung in Darmstadt. In 1917-19 he performed in the city theater in Lviv; he may have made his debut as the Poet in The Wedding, but this news could not be confirmed; played, among others, Professor Miller ("The Tsareviches"), the role of Mickiewicz ("Legions"), in the 1918/19 season as a guest at the Lviv Vaudeville Theater "Pan" ("The Extinguished Candle"). From the summer of 1919, he performed at the Polish Theater in Łódź under the auspices of F. Rykhlovsky, in the role of Arista ("Fircyk w zalotach"), the role of Lucesini ("Frederic the Great"), the role of Pułaski ("Father Marek"), the role of Yukli ("Judges"); in the 1920/21 season he played at the Górnośląski Teatrze Plebiscytowy in Bytom under the direction of H. Czepnik, where he also became a director ("Skalmirzhanky", "The Golden Calf").
In 1921, together with S. Mikhulovich, he managed the summer Health Theater in Krynytsia. By the end of the 1924/25 season (with a break to study directing in Germany), he performed and directed again (including Macbeth, 1923) at the City Theater in Łódź; in October 1923 he performed with the ensemble of S. Mikhulovich in Tarnov. In the 1924/25 season, he also became the director of the Bolshoi Theater in Lublin (including "And Pipa Dances", February 1925). In the autumn of 1925, together with S. Maikovsky, he founded the Lviv theater-cabaret "Semafor" in Lviv, was its artistic director, director and actor. The repertoire included staged poems, songs and one-act plays; the theater was highly professional and was "a real contribution to the history of conscious cultivation of Polish parody poetry, jokes and moral satire" (M. Orlych); performed in the "Bagatel" hall in Lviv and, among other places, in Stanislavov and Kraków (February 1926). After the collapse of Semaphore, Mayen quit working in the theater and devoted himself to journalism in the editorial office of the Lviv Jewish newspaper "Hvila".
In 1927-34 he was a correspondent in Berlin (where he also worked with the film genre) and Paris, and from about 1932 he started working with Polish Radio as an author and then as a producer of radio plays. Since 1933, he has also been involved in the theory of Radio Theater (audio dramas) and has become an outstanding specialist in this audio genre. Since 1937, he worked at the radio station "Lviv"; he also sometimes worked as a director at the Lviv City Theater (for example, "When we were younger" based on his own script, T. Rozmaitości 1938). At the beginning of the Second World War, he was in Lviv, where he headed the Theater of Poetry and Satire and was a director at the House of Folk Art; In 1941, he moved to Vilnius, collaborated with the Polish Drama Theater.; Attempts to stage "Pygmalion" started under his leadership were interrupted by the start of the German-Soviet war. During the German occupation, he hid with his second wife in Miorakh, Belarus, as Yulian Shadzevych. During his official work at the Department of Forestry, he edited a bulletin for the local headquarters of the Home Army.
In December 1944, he came to Białystok with a group of actors from Vilnius, where until August 1945 he managed the Theater together with M. Melina and M. Dovmunt in the premises of the cinema hall on Kostyushka Market. After the end of the war, he officially took the surname Mayen. In the 1945/46 season, he was a director at the Old Theater in Krakow, then he finally gave up working in the theater. He entered the diplomatic service, until 1950 he was cultural attache and secretary of the Polish embassy in Prague, then he returned to journalism as an editor at Kurier Codzienny.
From September 1953, he was an employee of Polish Radio; in 1955, he was delegated to the University of Warsaw, where he lectured at the Faculty of Journalism. He retired in January 1965. He has published many works in the field of radio science, theory of audio drama and Radio Theater. The author of numerous radio dramas and also the play "Return" ("Those who return"), staged in 1946-47.
Source: Biographical Dictionary of the Polish Theater 1900-1980 Vol. II, PWN Warsaw 1994
Lwów
