Polish stage director, stage designer and managing director of puppet theatres. Zofia Jaremowa, graduate of Cracow’s Academy of Fine Arts (Akademia Sztuki Pięknych) in 1952, initially studied Art History at the University of Warsaw (Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1938-1939) while working at the theatre Cricot in Warsaw. From 1939 to 1941, she was set and puppet designer at the Polski Teatr Lalek Białorusi Zachodniej (Polish Puppet Theatre of Western Belorussia) founded with her husband, Władysław Jarema.

After World War II, Zofia Jaremowa designed puppets for the production Cyrk Tarabumba (The Tarabumba Circus) by Władysław Lech at the Groteska in Cracow, which she co-founded and where she served as set designer. From 1949 to 1975, she served as the company’s stage director, artistic director, as well as the managing director of Groteska, contributing to the unique character of the company, incorporating mask theatre, poetic and political metaphor and painting into the theatre’s new productions. Her puppet and mask productions to the poetry of Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński – Gdyby Adam był Polakiem (Had Adam Been a Pole, 1955) and Orfeusz w piekle (Orpheus in Hell, 1956) – were the leading events of the first postwar decade in the Polish theatre.

At the turn of the 1950s into the 1960s, Zofia Jaremowa succeeded in injecting her productions with masks into contemporary theatre’s questionings regarding the human condition and man’s existence: Opera za trzy grosze (The Three Penny Opera, 1958) by Bertolt Brecht; Męczeństwo Piotra Oheya (The Suffering of Piotr Ohey, 1959) by Sławomir Mrożek; Kartoteka (Personal File, 1961) by Tadeusz Różewicz; Czarowna noc (Magic Night, 1964) by Mrożek. Although her productions for children should not be forgotten, it is due to Zofia Jaremowa’s repertoire for adults that the Groteska established its artistic reputation, as well as with her later productions: Zwierzęta hrabiego Cagliostro (Count Cagliostro’s Animals, 1972) by Andrzej Bursa.

Her permanent partner in the theatre was Kazimierz Mikulski, a noted painter and long-term collaborator at the Groteska. After retiring in 1975, Zofia Jaremowa directed sporadically in the Polish puppet theatres, notably with Wicehrabia przepołowiony (The Cloven Viscount, 1978) by Italo Calvino, produced for the Banialuka, in Bielsko-Biała.

(See Poland.)