The Zbigniew Raszewski Institute deals with documentation, promotion and animation of Polish theatrical life. The Institute moderates public debate on the Polish theatre, broadens the perspective of reflections on the theatre, implements and supports research, educational and publishing projects. The Institute manages the largest in Poland collection of various documents related to the theatre (the Barbara Krasnodębska Theatre Documentation Office), the portal e-teatr.pl entirely devoted to the Polish theatre, the Internet encyclopedia “Encyclopedia of the Polish theatre” (www.encyklopediateatru.pl), the library, the media library and the specialist bookshop. The Institute coordinates and co-organizes theatrical programs and competitions of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage: the National Competition for Staging of a Contemporary Polish Drama, the Living Classics Competition for Staging Old Works of Polish Literature, the program Polska Theatre, the program Summer in the theatre, the Theatre Photography Competition and the Public Theatre Day. In 2015 the Institute has launched the project “Placówka” – the competition for the theatre project, which is intended to enable artists and creative groups with limited possibilities for the long-term projects to conduct research on new forms and new language of the theatre.

The patron of the Theatre Institute is Professor Zbigniew Raszewski, an outstanding intellectual, writer, historian and teacher. Since January 1st 2014 the director of the Institute is Dorota Buchwald.

The Theatre Institute archive is the largest collection in Poland of the thematic documentation on the contemporary theatre. The archive offers an access to a huge collection of news articles, reviews, photos, theatre programs, playbills, posters, documents referring to the activities of individual scenes, private archives of artists and archives of various institutions. The whole collection - including portfolios of newspaper clippings relating to the works of individual artists, various editions of theatre and film festivals, theatre schools and theatre magazines is available in the reading room.

Digitized documents are successively made available at www.encyklopediateatru.pl. Every day, about 2 thousand people are browsing a rich collection of data included in the Encyclopedia. Statistics shows that there is a constant growth in the range of information provided and page views. The resources of the Encyclopedia are growing bigger: a collection of subject headings, database of artists and performances, the number of photos, programs, posters, articles, multimedia and books.