Pure Form
Heavily influenced by movements in painting, Witkacy wished to invent a ‘pure form’ for the theatre where style was to be completely independent of content: content must not dictate the form in which the piece is presented. Stark realism might be considered a type of pure form, but this was not considered appropriate for the theatre: cinema already did this so well. Like a portrait by Picasso, Witkacy’s plays are set in familiar, identifiable scenes but all is distorted in the playing: the audience was to be baffled and surprised.

The destruction of individuality
Witkacy portrays the artist struggling in a continuing greying world, a crusader in a world where individualism is being destroyed in the face of political change and the onslaught of mechanisation. Although recognising the need for the old regimes to pass, he feared the loss of the individual that Socialism implied. Perhaps this drove his preoccupation with disguises and self-portraiture.

The search for metaphysical feeling
With the decline of religion, and even philosophy, only art remained as a means to explore metaphysical questions. But under the weight of this role, artists would, he felt, be driven to madness. His plays are an attempt to delve into the inexplicable mystery of being.