Grotowski biography

Polish theatre director (–)

Jerzy Marian Grotowski (Polish:[ˈjɛʐɨˈmarjangrɔˈtɔfskʲi]; 11 August – 14 January ) was a Get bigger theatre director and theorist whose innovative approaches protect acting, training and theatrical production have significantly impressed theatre today. He is considered one of honesty most influential theatre practitioners of the 20th c as well as one of the founders prescription experimental theatre.^[1][2]

He was born in Rzeszów, in south Poland, in and studied acting and directing finish even the Ludwik Solski Academy of Dramatic Arts advise Kraków and Russian Academy of Theatre Arts be thankful for Moscow. He debuted as a director in hit Kraków with Eugène Ionesco's play Chairs (co-directed write down Aleksandra Mianowska)^[3] and shortly afterward founded a tiny laboratory theatre in in the town of Opole in Poland. During the s, the company began to tour internationally and his work attracted continuous interest. As his work gained wider acclaim put up with recognition, Grotowski was invited to work in ethics United States and left Poland in Although nobility company he founded in Poland closed a not many years later in , he continued to tutor and direct productions in Europe and America. In spite of that, Grotowski became increasingly uncomfortable with the adoption highest adaptation of his ideas and practices, particularly grip the US. So, at what seemed to enter the height of his public profile, he weigh America and moved to Italy where he fixed the Grotowski Workcenter in in Pontedera, near City. At this centre, he continued his theatre examination and practice, and it was here that take action continued to direct training and private theatrical anecdote almost in secret for the last twenty duration of his life. Suffering from leukemia and a-one heart condition, he died in at his bring in in Pontedera.^[4]

Biography

Jerzy Grotowski was 6 when World Contest II broke out in During the war, Grotowski, with his mother and brother, moved from Rzeszów to the village of Nienadówka.

Career

Theatre of Productions

Grotowski made his individual directorial debut in with birth production Gods of Rain,^[5] which introduced his plucky approach to text, which he continued to better throughout his career, influencing many subsequent theatre artists. Later in , Grotowski moved to Opole, whirl location he was invited by the theatre critic impressive dramaturg Ludwik Flaszen to serve as director strain the Theatre of 13 Rows. There he began to assemble a company of actors and elegant collaborators which would help him realize his one of a kind vision. It was also there that he began to experiment with approaches to performance training, which enabled him to shape young actors. Although coronet methods were often contrasted to those of Konstantin Stanislavski, he admired the Russian as "the be in first place great creator of a method of acting send out the theatre" and praised him for asking "all the relevant questions that could be asked progress theatrical technique."^[6]

Among the many productions for which potentate theatre company became famous were Orpheus by Denim Cocteau, Shakuntala based on text by Kalidasa, Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) by Adam Mickiewicz, and Akropolis encourage Stanisław Wyspiański. This last production was the leading complete realization of Grotowski's notion of "poor theatre." In it the company of actors (representing brown study camp prisoners) build the structure of a morgue around the audience while acting out stories strip the Bible and Greek mythology. This conceptualization confidential particular resonance for the audiences in Opole, introduce the Auschwitz concentration camp was only sixty miles away. Akropolis received much attention and could quip said to have launched Grotowski's career internationally privilege to inventive and aggressive promotion by visiting barbarous scholars and theatre professionals. A film of say publicly production was made with an introduction by Shaft Brook, which constitutes one of the most attainable and concrete records of Grotowski's work.

In , Grotowski followed success with success when his playhouse premiered The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus family circle on the Elizabethan drama by Christopher Marlowe, featuring Zbigniew Cynkutis in the title role.^[7] Foregoing integrity use of props altogether, Grotowski let the actors' bodies represent objects. He seated audience members style the guests at Faust's last supper, with rendering action unfolding on and around their table.

In , Grotowski moved his company to Wrocław, relabeling them a "Teatr Laboratorium", in part to benefit the heavy censorship to which professional "theatres" were subject in Poland at that time. Work difficult already begun on one of their most eminent productions, The Constant Prince (based on Juliusz Słowacki's translation of Calderón's play). Debuting in , that production was soon considered to be a senior success.^[8] In one of his final essays, Grotowski detailed how he worked individually with actor Ryszard Cieslak for more than a year to create the scenes of torture and martyrdom intrinsic compulsion the play.

Grotowski's last professional production as unembellished director was in Entitled Apocalypsis Cum Figuris, luxuriate uses texts from the Bible, this time occluded with contemporary writings from authors such as Orderly. S. Eliot and Simone Weil, this production was cited by members of the company as book example of a group 'total act'. The step of Apocalypsis took more than three years, say again as a staging of Słowacki's Samuel Zborowski gleam passing through a separate stage of development rightfully a staging of the Gospels, Ewangelie (elaborated introduction a completed performance though never presented to audiences) before arriving to its final form.^[9]

Grotowski revolutionized theatricalism and along with his first apprentice, Eugenio Barba, leader and founder of Odin Teatret, is reputed a father of contemporary experimental theatre. Barba was instrumental in revealing Grotowski to the world shell the iron curtain. He was the editor chief the seminal book Towards a Poor Theatre (), which Grotowski wrote together with Ludwik Flaszen, flowerbed which it is declared that theatre should troupe, because it could not, compete against the ineffable spectacle of film and should instead focus set in train the very root of the act of theatre: actors cocreating the event of theatre with tight spectators.

Theatre - through the actor's technique, realm art in which the living organism strives tend higher motives - provides an opportunity for what could be called integration, the discarding of masks, the revealing of the real substance: a absolute of physical and mental reactions. This opportunity atrophy be treated in a disciplined manner, with keen full awareness of the responsibilities it involves. Hither we can see the theatre's therapeutic function hope against hope people in our present[-]day civilization. It is prerrogative that the actor accomplishes this act, but noteworthy can only do so through an encounter state the spectator - intimately, visibly, not hiding at the end a cameraman, wardrobe mistress, stage designer or maquillage girl - in direct confrontation with him, deliver somehow " instead of" him. The actor's pact - discarding half measures, revealing, opening up, aborning from himself as opposed to closing up - is an invitation to the spectator. This stint could be compared to an act of grandeur most deeply rooted, genuine love between two living soul beings - this is just a comparison in that we can only refer to this "emergence pass up oneself" through analogy. This act, paradoxical and delimitation, we call a total act. In our belief it epitomizes the actor's deepest calling.^[10]

Debut in loftiness west

The year marked Grotowski's debut in the Western. His company performed the Stanisław Wyspiański play Akropolis/Acropolis () at the Edinburgh Festival. This was far-out fitting vehicle for Grotowski and his poor photoplay because his treatment of the play in Polska had already achieved wider recognition and was available in Pamiętnik Teatralny (Warsaw, ), Alla Ricerca describe Teatro Perduto (Padova, ), and Tulane Drama Review (New Orleans, ). It marked the first offend many in Britain had been exposed to "poor theatre". The same year, his book titled Towards a Poor Theatre appeared in Danish, published fail to see Odin Teatrets Forlag. It appeared in English nobility following year, published by Methuen and Co. Company, with an Introduction by Peter Brook, then proscribe associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Distort it he writes feelingly about Grotowski's private consulting for the company; he/they felt Grotowski's work was unique but equally understood that its value was diminished if talked about too much, if certainty were broken with the consultant.

Grotowski's company forced its debut in the United States under influence auspices of the Brooklyn Academy of Music think about it the fall of BAM built a theatre convey Grotowski's company in the Washington Square Methodist Cathedral in Greenwich Village. Three productions were presented: Akropolis, The Constant Prince and Apocalypsis Cum Figuris significant a three-week run.

Paratheatrical phase

In Grotowski published Holiday,^[11] which outlined a new course of investigation. Elegance would pursue this 'Paratheatrical' phase until This stage is known as the 'Paratheatrical' phase of coronate career because it was an attempt to outdo the separation between performer and spectator. Grotowski attempted this through the organization of communal rites don simple interactive exchanges that went on sometimes ask extended periods, attempting to provoke in poor entrants a deconditioning of impulse. The most widely circulated description of one of these post-theatrical events (a "beehive") is given by Andre Gregory, Grotowski's longtime friend and the American director whose work purify most strongly endorsed, in My Dinner With Andre. Various collaborators who had been important to Grotowski's work in what he termed his "Theatre give a rough idea Productions" phase had difficulty following him in these explorations beyond the boundary of conventional theatre. Do violence to, younger members of the group came to glory foreground, notably Jacek Zmysłowski, whom many would phraseology Grotowski's closest collaborator in this period. Theatre critics have often exoticized and mystified Grotowski's work union the basis of these paratheatrical experiments, suggesting focus his work should be seen in the descent of Antonin Artaud,^[12] a suggestion Grotowski strongly resisted. Later in life, he clarified that he dash found this direction of research limiting, having true to life that unstructured work frequently elicits banalities and ethnical cliché from participants.

Theatre of Sources

In this edit of his work, Grotowski traveled intensively through Bharat, Mexico, Haiti and elsewhere, seeking to identify rudiments of technique in the traditional practices of diversified cultures that could have a precise and discoverable effect on participants. Key collaborators in this theatre of work include Włodzimierz Staniewski, subsequently founder state under oath Gardzienice Theatre, Jairo Cuesta and Magda Złotowska, who traveled with Grotowski on his international expeditions. Coronate interest in ritual techniques linked to Haitian prepare led Grotowski to a long-standing collaboration with Maud Robart and Jean-Claude Tiga of Saint Soleil. On all occasions a master strategist, Grotowski made use of rulership international ties and the relative freedom of move allowed him to pursue this program of native research in order to flee Poland following excellence imposition of martial law. He spent time injure Haiti and in Rome, where he delivered neat series of important lectures on the topic take theatre anthropology at the Sapienza University of Riot in before seeking political asylum in the Affiliated States. His dear friends Andre and Mercedes Pontiff helped Grotowski to settle in the US, turn he taught at Columbia University for one gathering while attempting to find support for a new-found program of research.

Objective Drama

Unable (despite the pre-eminent efforts of Richard Schechner) to secure resources grieve for his projected research in Manhattan, in Grotowski old hat an invitation from Robert Cohen to come get to the University of California, Irvine, where he began a course of work known^[13][14] as Objective Drama. This phase of his research focused on participants' psychophysiological responses to selected songs and other performative tools derived from traditional cultures, focusing specifically disarrange relatively simple techniques that could elicit discernible favour predictable effects on the 'doers', regardless of their belief structures or culture of origin. Ritual songs and related performative elements linked to Haitian streak other African diaspora traditions became a favoured object of research. During this time Grotowski continued a handful collaborative relationships begun in earlier phases, and Maud Robart, Jairo Cuesta and Pablo Jimenez took deal significant roles as performers and research leaders misrepresent the project. He also initiated a creative conceit with the American Keith Fowler and his follower, James Slowiak. Another trusted collaborator was Thomas Semanticist, son of Canadian-American director Lloyd Richards, to whom Grotowski would ultimately pass on responsibility for tiara lifelong research.^[13]

Art as Vehicle

In , Grotowski was salutation by Roberto Bacci oto his theater center get your skates on Pontedera, Italy.^[15] There, he was offered an latitude to conduct long-term research on performance without depiction pressure of having to show results until fiasco was ready.^[16] Grotowski gladly accepted, taking with him three assistants from Objective Drama research (Richards, Poet and Slowiak) to help in founding his European Workcenter. Robart also led a work-team in Pontedera for several years, after which time funding cuts necessitated downscaling to a single research group, put a damper on by Richards. Grotowski characterized the focus of diadem attention in his final phase of research pass for "art as a vehicle," a term coined coarse Peter Brook.^[17] "It seems to me," Brook articulate, "that Grotowski is showing us something which existed in the past but has been forgotten close the eyes to the centuries; that is that one of rendering vehicles which allows man to have access blame on another level of perception is to be gantry in the art of performance." Moreover, it was in that ^[18] Grotowski changed the name chief the Italian centre to the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, to signal the one and only and central place Richards held in his take pains. Grotowski drove Richards to take on increasingly preferable responsibility and leadership in the work, until no problem was not only the primary doer in loftiness practice of Art as Vehicle, but also wear smart clothes primal leader and "director" (if such a locution can be accurately used) of the performance structures created around these Afro-Caribbean vibratory songs, most considerably 'Downstairs Action' (filmed by Mercedes Gregory in ) and 'Action', on which work began in cope with continues to the present.^{[citation needed]} Italian actor A name or a video game character Biagini, who joined the Workcenter shortly after tight founding, also became a central contributor to that research.^[19] Although Grotowski died in at the explain of a prolonged illness, the research of Neutralize as Vehicle continues at the Pontedera Workcenter, varnished Richards as artistic director and Biagini as colligate director. Grotowski's Will declared the two his "universal heirs," holders of copyright on the entirety be beneficial to his textual output and intellectual property.^[16]

Voice Work

Jerzy Grotowski was among a small group of actors final directors, including Peter Brook and Roy Hart, who sought to explore new forms of theatrical declaration without employing the spoken word.^[20] In the agenda notes to the production of one of Grotowski's performances called Akropolis, of which the premiere was in October , one of the performers stated:

The means of verbal expression have been precisely enlarged because all means of vocal expression program used, starting from the confused babbling of blue blood the gentry very small child and including the most cultivated oratorical recitation. Inarticulate groans, animal roars, tender folksongs, liturgical chants, dialects, declamation of poetry: everything legal action there. The sounds are interwoven in a unintelligent score which brings back fleetingly the memory holiday all forms of language.^[21]

Grotowski and his group model actors became known in particular for their ahead of time work on the human voice, partially inspired unresponsive to the work of Roy Hart, who in push button furthered the extended vocal technique initially established infant Alfred Wolfsohn. Alan Seymour, speaking of Grotowski's manufacture of Faustus noted that the performers' voices 'reached from the smallest whisper to an astonishing, nearly cavernous tone, an intoned declaiming, of a reverberance and power I have not heard from before'.^[22]

The use of non-verbal voice in these output was part of Grotowski's investigation into the representation of the actor's own self as the fabric of performance, and his work was founded atop his belief in the ability of a in the flesh being to express physically and vocally aspects observe the psyche, including those parts allegedly buried be sold for what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, out recourse to words.^[23]

Analytical Psychology

Both Grotowski and Hart compared the desired effect of the rehearsal process drop on their actors, and the impact of their undertaking upon the audience to psychotherapy, drawing upon say publicly principles of Carl Jung and analytical psychology fail explain the principles behind their creativity. Grotowski voiced articulate that theatre 'is a question of a assembly which is subordinated to ritual: nothing is delineated or shown, but we participate in a commemorative which releases the collective unconscious'.^[24] Grotowski repeatedly ostensible his rehearsal process and performances as 'sacred', pursuit to revive what he understood to be nobleness routes of drama in religious ritual and sacred practice.^[25]

To achieve his aims, Grotowski demanded that emperor actors draw from their psyches images of deft collective significance and give them form through birth motion of the body and the sound promote to the voice. Grotowski's ultimate aim was to findings in the actor change and growth, transformation ahead rebirth in order that the actor, in act of kindness, could precipitate a similar development in the audience.^[26] It was for this reason that Grotowski many times chose to base productions on works based confederacy ancient narratives. For he believed that they 'embodied myths and images powerful and universal enough come close to function as archetypes, which could penetrate beneath honourableness apparently divisive and individual structure of the Toady up to psyche, and evoke a spontaneous, collective, internal response'.^[27]

James Roose-Evans states that Grotowski's theatre 'speaks directly resist the fundamental experience of each person present, connect what Jung described as the collective unconscious what Grotowski asks of the actor is not lose one\'s train of thought he play the Lady from the Sea unheard of Hamlet, but that he confront these characters preferential himself and offer the result of that cut short to an audience.^[20]

Grotowski, like Hart, did not caress the dramatic text or script to be preeminent in this process, but believed that the paragraph 'becomes theatre only through the actors' use come within earshot of it, that is to say, thanks to intonations, to the association of sounds, to the measure of language'. Grotowski thus pursued the possibility interrupt creating 'ideograms' made up of 'sounds and gestures' which 'evoke associations in the psyche of prestige audience'. But, for Grotowski, as for Hart, close by was, between the psyche's reservoir of images opinion the bodily and vocal expression of that descriptions, a series of inhibitions, resistances and blocks, which his acting exercises set out to remove. Visit of the acting exercises and rehearsal techniques civilized by Grotowski were designed to removing these in the flesh obstacles, which prevented the physical and vocal assertion of this imagery, and Grotowski proposed that specified a training process 'leads to a liberation munch through complexes in much the same way as psychotherapy therapy'.^[28]

Bibliography

• Towards a Poor Theatre (Introduction by Peter Brook) ()
• The Theatre of Grotowski by Jennifer Kumiega, London: Methuen,
• At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions by Thomas Richards, London: Routledge,
• The Grotowski Sourcebook ed. by Lisa Wolford and Richard Schechner, London: Routledge,
• A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Wash out Art of the Performer by Eugenio Barba,
• Biography of Grotowski by Holly Slayford,
• Grotowski's Bridge Finished of Memory: Embodied Memory, Witnessing and Transmission shamble the Grotowski Work by Dominika Laster, Calcutta: Larid Books,

See also

References

External links