The Comedienne draws on Nobel Prize winner, Wladyslav Reymont's, own experiences as an actor in a struggling provincial theatre at the fin de siecle, at time of massive social upheaval in Europe. Reymont depicts, in a slow burning tragedy, a young provincial Janina, the comedienne of the title, who joins a Warsaw theatre company and struggles toward what was then a very modern notion of personal freedom. A 'Comedienne' also played drama and tragedy and the word in Polish had some connotation of a deceiver. As such, the title in Reymont's day would have implied a somewhat darker novel that we...