Raźniak directs opera, music theatre and drama, and writes the libretti and adaptations for much of his own work. A trained actor, he combines close character work with musical dramaturgy, contemporary composition and multimedia.
Recent work
His recent productions include Handel's Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno for the Polish Royal Opera (2025, taken to the Bydgoszcz Opera Festival in 2026); Solaris, a new opera by Karol Nepelski to Raźniak's own libretto after Stanisław Lem, staged inside the SOLARIS synchrotron in Kraków (Opera Rara and the National Stary Theatre, 2024); the world premiere of Zygmunt Krauze's The Night of Ravens to a libretto by Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk (Polish Royal Opera, 2022); and The Bunker. Fake Opera by Wojciech Błażejczyk, written and directed for the Warsaw Autumn festival (2021).
Technology has been part of the work from the beginning: his first Solaris, an electronic opera made for the Malta Festival in 2008, already set actors' speech against algorithmically triggered electronic singing, and the 2024 opera of the same name integrated AI-assisted computer-generated singing with a live instrumental ensemble.
In drama he staged The Minor Apocalypse after Tadeusz Konwicki with the company of the National Stary Theatre (2024) and The Damned after Visconti in the pump hall of the Waterworks Museum in Bydgoszcz (2026). He has directed radio drama and audio adaptations since 2017 for Audioteka and Polish Radio Kraków, receiving the Irena and Tadeusz Byrski Award in 2023.
Companies and festivals
He works with the Polish Royal Opera in Warsaw, the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre in Kraków, and the Opera Rara and Warsaw Autumn festivals. Earlier productions were made for Och-Teatr and the Roma Musical Theatre in Warsaw, the Witold Gombrowicz Theatre in Gdynia, the Powszechny Theatre and Teatr CHOREA in Łódź, the Białystok Puppet Theatre and, most recently, the Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz.
International work
His opera Birdy was presented at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival at RADA in London in 2019. In 2016 and 2019 he directed scenes from Hamlet for the Sam Wanamaker Festival at Shakespeare's Globe, and in 2019 the Warsaw part of The World Reads Kochanowski, performed simultaneously in Warsaw, London, New York, Los Angeles, Madrid and Athens. He trained on a directing internship at GITIS in Moscow and has given workshops and masterclasses at the University of Cincinnati, Emerson College, UCLA, the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, Drama Studio London, Ruhrtriennale, ARIA Corse and UNAM in Mexico City.
Directorship, teaching and training
From 2020 to 2024 he was Director of the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre in Kraków — one of Poland's oldest public stages, founded in 1781 — where his programme centred on stabilising the ensemble and on international co-productions, and where he staged Solaris and The Minor Apocalypse.
He teaches at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, where he was Vice-Dean and then Dean of the Acting Faculty and, in the 2016–2020 term, Vice-Rector for Student and International Affairs. In his own practice he combines methods rooted in the Grotowski tradition with viewpoints and devised technique — an approach he has described as a bridge between Central European and Western theatre thinking.
Born in Moscow in 1982, he took an MA in musical theatre acting at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków and an MA in culture management at the Jagiellonian University, both in 2006, and an MA in directing at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw in 2010. He made his debut in 2010 with Gorky's Vassa Zheleznova at Och-Teatr in Warsaw, in his own translation, with Krystyna Janda and Jerzy Trela in the leading roles. He took his doctorate in 2013, his habilitation in 2015 and the title of Professor of Theatre Arts in 2025.
- 2025—
- Professor, Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art, Warsaw
- 2020—2024
- Director, Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre, Kraków
- 2019
- Waldman Professor in Theatre Arts, Emerson College, Boston
- 2016—2020
- Vice-Rector for Student and International Affairs, National Academy of Dramatic Art
- 2014—2016
- Vice-Dean, then Dean of the Acting Faculty, National Academy of Dramatic Art
- 2011—2014
- Faculty / artist-in-residence, Dance Theatre Department in Bytom, Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków
- Languages
- Polish and Russian (native) · English (fluent) · French (intermediate)
Short biography — for programmes and press
Waldemar Raźniak is a Polish stage director, librettist and professor working across contemporary opera, baroque and classical repertoire and interdisciplinary performance. He directed the world premieres of Wojciech Błażejczyk's The Bunker. Fake Opera (Warsaw Autumn, 2021), Zygmunt Krauze's The Night of Ravens (Polish Royal Opera, 2022) and Karol Nepelski's Solaris after Stanisław Lem, staged inside a synchrotron and integrating AI-assisted singing with a live ensemble (Opera Rara and the National Stary Theatre, 2024), as well as a staged realisation of Handel's Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Polish Royal Opera, 2025). He writes the libretti and adaptations for much of his own work. His productions have been seen at Tête à Tête in London and at Shakespeare's Globe, and he has taught at UCLA, Emerson College, the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing and UNAM in Mexico City. From 2020 to 2024 he was Director of the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre in Kraków. He is Professor of Theatre Arts.
