IN THE MIDST OF A FOREST NEAR the centre of the Polish capital stands Warsaw's splendid Theatre Institute. It used to be a military premises and a hospital, but now the building has been given a superb modern conversion, housing a library and a national archive which cherish Poland's theatre tradition.

The centre stands as a symbol of the country's dramatic change. Twenty-seven years ago, under General Jaruzelski's martial law, many theatre practitioners were seen as dangerous enemies of the state. Nearly three decades on, the resurgence in Polish theatre is being felt thousands of miles away. This year's Edinburgh International Festival includes two productions by Poland's TR Warszawa, Krzysztof Warlikowski's Dybbuk and Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis. Polish theatre also has a strong presence at the Fringe, with a Poles@Fringe showcase, involving six productions presented by the Universal Arts company, headed by Polish producer Tomek Borkowy.

This resurgence is due, in no small measure, to the considerable efforts of the Polish Cultural Institute in London and its sister organisation, the Warsaw-based Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Few would doubt, however, that the most important element contributing to the rude health of theatre in Poland is the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Just eight years after Jaruzelski's clampdown, the end of the Stalinist regime created new opportunities for Poland's thespians, which they are now seizing with both hands.

At the Theatre Institute I meet Janusz Opryski, artistic director of the acclaimed Teatr Provisorium and co-director (with Witold Mazurkiewicz) of Bite the Dust, one of the Poles@Fringe shows. With his impressive grey beard, Opryski looks like the archetypal Polish theatre director. He founded his company in 1976, and soon showed up on the radar of Jaruzelski's junta; many of his actors found themselves in camps and prisons.

But the company survived Stalinist repression to make a big mark in the post-communist era. Provisorium's stage adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz's satirical novel Ferdydurke has received international acclaim ever since winning a Scotsman Fringe First at the 2001 festival. Now, in league with Kompania Teatr, they are returning with one of the most controversial plays ever to be staged in Poland.

Bite the Dust is a satire of Poland's underground National Army during the Second World War (playwright Tadeusz Rózewicz was a member). The play sparked national outrage when it was first staged in the late 1970s and, again, when it was adapted for television in 1989.

"The first production was considered an attack on the mythological Polish National Army," explains Opryski. "For the Polish people, the National Army was a heroic, mythical symbol of pure struggle and perseverance. All of a sudden, they saw these mythical troops represented as murderers. Rózewicz was attacked from two sides. He was attacked by the Communists, but he was also attacked by his friends from the partisan guerrillas from the war. He was even sentenced to death by the partisans, who maintained the structures of an underground state."

The 1989 experience was little better. Rózewicz, one of Poland's most revered modern poets and playwrights, found his windows smashed, and he even had stones thrown at him in the street.

The offence was caused by the depiction of a group of National Army soldiers hiding in a forest. Their talk is scatological, their much-vaunted high moral purpose nowhere to be found. "There is (in the play] a very thin line between a partisan soldier and a simple savage," says Opryski.

Opryski and Mazurkiewicz's adaptation of Bite the Dust is the first to be produced in Poland since the 1989 film, following a ban by the author himself. In it, the troops have tree trunks tied symbolically to their backs. They drag a huge piece of meat around on a cart normally used for the dead and injured. The aim, says Opryski, is to convey how "war is about dirt, fear and odour, there's nothing beautiful in it".

The controversy over the Polish National Army may have died down enough for Rózewicz to lift his ban, but Opryski believes his bleakly comic commentary on war is still profoundly relevant. "We are producing it after so many years because, although we think the theme of the National Army is not all that interesting any more, it is a huge piece about war."

Indeed, the decision to stage the play was shaped by Provisorium's experience of the Balkans in 2001-2. "It was a very traumatic experience for us was when we performed Ferdydurke in Sarajevo. That was when I first saw how war looks in the modern world. There were blocks of flats and contemporary architecture full of black holes. If we hadn't gone, perhaps we wouldn't have had the courage to do this production."

"Rózewicz has an image of the world in which God is gone," the director continues. "The first image that you see is a lone tree, which serves as the axis, the focal point of the soldiers' world, and they lose it. They keep asking, 'where is that thing?'… The forest is very much a Beckett-type setting."

Apart from Bite the Dust (in English), the Poles@Fringe showcase features three puppet productions, all aimed at adult audiences, including Kompania Doomsday's gothic Baldanders, inspired, in part, by the writings of Poe.

For lighter entertainment, there's top mime artist Ireneusz Krosny's hilarious, physically accomplished show, Mime for Laughs. However, the joker in the pack is Teatr Wiczy's Emigrants, a show about a couple of Polish men who travel to find work in western Europe. Physically and verbally anarchic, it is played, for a limited audience, inside an old camper van.

• For Poles@Fringe, visit www.polishculture.org.uk/theatre.php.