Bruno Schulz (1892 – 1942) was a small-town teacher who produced with a pencil both beautiful drawings and beautiful prose  - a major figure in Polish literature whose output, cut short by the Holocaust, might be described as a kind of melding of Kafka and Chagall.

Born in 1892 in the small Polish town of Drohobycz, in which he would spend most of his life, Schulz earned his keep teaching art to young students. His short stories were first sent out only to his close friends. His talent, however, was soon recognized and his writings began circulating in Polish literary circles and were eventually published to international acclaim. In his story collections, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, Schulz employs a baroque poetic style with a stunning, surrealistic edge, portraying a world torn between the traditions of the shtetl and the harsh realities imposed by modern society. As his fame grew, Schulz struggled to write The Messiah, the novel that was to be his masterwork. Schulz did not live to complete that work. The Nazis occupied Poland in the fall of 1939. Schulz, driven into the ghetto, was first placed under the protection of a Nazi officer who obliged him to paint fairy tale figures on the walls of his son’s bedroom. Caught in an escalating feud between his protector and another Nazi official, Schulz was shot on November 19^th, 1942.

The tragic disappearance of The Messiah, his final work (which Jerzy Ficowski discusses in Regions of the Great Heresy in considerable detail), has seized the literary imagination of a generation of writers and is still the subject of intense speculation. Though for a long time he was more widely known and admired in Europe, writers like Cynthia Ozick and Philip Roth stirred further interest in Bruno Schulz through their portrayals of this inscrutable author. When Israeli officials removed his artwork from Ukraine in 2001 and transported it to Israel, Schulz became the subject of front-page controversy in newspapers around the world.

“The Last Escape” is a theatrical adaptation that aims to encapsulate the essence of Schulz's work. Men, in Schultz's many-themed, multi-layered prose works, seem to embody mental faculty. The play's main character is based on Józef - a pensioner and protagonist of the novel "The Last Escape." He tries to break through his own loneliness and boredom to escape his room. He finds that there is a place where time belongs to no one, and he recalls pictures and events from the past. By stimulating his imagination, he finds his parents and his childhood  - that is, a new space in which to exist. Emphasis is placed on the "one and only human tragedy - the tragedy of time." Józef never dies a definite death; rather, he retreats into another space, into other regions of existence. Polish author Krzysztof Stala wrote, "This imaginary being is stratified on various levels, it is crushed into numerous realities. Between those divisions happens permanent communication, changes of meanings, accumulation of pressures."

The Wroclaw Puppet Theater began in 1946 in Wroclaw, in Lower Silesia. Its repertoire was aimed toward children and youth and it gave frequent performances in the towns and villages of the region. The organization developed three areas of performance, which continue to be presented today: a "preparatory" stage for children up to 6 years old; a Main Stage geared toward school children; and a Small Stage, which started in 1968 as a place for artistic research and experimentation. Its works are new interpretations of classic and contemporary literature, based on texts by Goethe, Shakespeare, Beckett, Rozewicz, Witkiewicz, Schulz, Kafka, Brecht and many others.

Today, the Wroclaw Puppet Theater is well known for its wide range of activities, and has toured throughout the world, performing across Europe, Japan, and the Americas. The famous performances of its Small Stage constitute an important chapter in the history of Polish theater. It currently has in its repertoire over a dozen original plays for children. It also organizes and cooperates on other artistic initiatives, such as Dziecieca Akademia Artystyczna (Children’s Artistic Academy) and other special programs for children to broaden their artistic talents. The group also organizes a number of international festivals such as: International Puppet Theater Meetings "Lalka, Loutka, Babka, Bab"; One's Actor's Theater Meetings, and International Festival of Puppet Artists’ Debuts.

With the La MaMa Puppet Series Festival (September 16 - October 4, 2004), the formative East Village theater once again takes its place as a leading US entry point for artists from around the world, a place where the international influence on New York artists is most on display. This festival features US premieres of multicultural works from India, Poland, Bali, Japan and the Czech Republic in addition to two that, while crafted in New York, are brimming with international art forms. The festival is supported by The Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater and utilizes all three of La MaMa's performance theaters.