Jerzy Grotowski
Jerzy Grotowski | |
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The Apocalypse (1970) |
Jerzy Marian Grotowski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjɛʐɨ ˈmarjan grɔˈtɔfskʲi]; 11 August 1933 – 14 January 1999) was a Polish theatre director and theorist whose innovative approaches to acting, training and theatrical production have significantly influenced theatre today. He is considered one of the most influential theatre practitioners of the 20th century as well as one of the founders of experimental theatre.[1][2]
He was born in
Biography
Jerzy Grotowski was 6 when World War II broke out in 1939. During the war, Grotowski, with his mother and brother, moved from Rzeszów to the village of Nienadówka.
Career
Theatre of Productions
Grotowski made his directorial debut in 1958 with the production Gods of Rain, which introduced his bold approach to text, which he continued to develop throughout his career, influencing many subsequent theatre artists. Later in 1958, Grotowski moved to Opole, where he was invited by the theatre critic and dramaturg Ludwik Flaszen to serve as director of the Theatre of 13 Rows. There he began to assemble a company of actors and artistic collaborators which would help him realize his unique vision. It was also there that he began to experiment with approaches to performance training, which enabled him to shape the young actors - initially allocated to his provincial theatre - into the transformational artists they eventually became. Although his methods were often contrasted to those of Konstantin Stanislavski, he admired Stanislavski as "the first great creator of a method of acting in the theatre" and praised him for asking "all the relevant questions that could be asked about theatrical technique."[4]
Among the many productions for which his theatre company became famous were Orpheus by
In 1964, Grotowski followed success with success when his theatre premiered The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus based on the Elizabethan drama by Christopher Marlowe, featuring Zbigniew Cynkutis in the title role. Foregoing the use of props altogether, Grotowski let the actors' bodies represent different objects, establishing an intimate dynamic of relation between actors and spectators by seating audience members as the guests at Faust's last supper, with the action unfolding on and around the table where they were seated.
In 1965, Grotowski moved his company to Wrocław, relabeling them a "Teatr Laboratorium", in part to avoid the heavy censorship to which professional "theatres" were subject in Poland at that time. Work had already begun on one of their most famous productions, The Constant Prince (based on Juliusz Słowacki's translation of Calderón's play). Debuting in 1967, this production is thought by many to be one of the greatest theatrical works of the 20th century. Ryszard Cieslak's performance in the title role is considered the apogee of Grotowski's approach to acting. In one of his final essays, Grotowski detailed how he worked individually with Cieslak for more than a year to develop the details of the actor's physical score before combining this central element of the performance with the work of other actors and the context of torture and martyrdom intrinsic to the play. His international influence spawned exciting companies still working in Wrocław with devotees like performance poet Hedwig Gorski in the audience, there as a Fulbright scholar.[5]
The last professional production from Grotowski as a director was in 1969. Entitled "Apocalypsis Cum Figuris" it is widely admired. Again using text from the Bible, this time combined with contemporary writings from authors such as T. S. Eliot and Simone Weil, this production was cited by members of the company as an example of a group 'total act'. The development of Apocalypsis took more than three years, beginning as a staging of Słowacki's Samuel Zborowski and passing through a separate stage of development as a staging of the Gospels, Ewangelie (elaborated as a completed performance though never presented to audiences) before arriving to its final form. Throughout this process, Grotowski can already be seen abandoning the conventions of traditional theatre, straining at the boundaries of what he later termed "art as presentation".
Grotowski revolutionized theatre and along with his first apprentice, Eugenio Barba, leader and founder of Odin Teatret, is considered a father of contemporary experimental theatre. Barba was instrumental in revealing Grotowski to the world outside the iron curtain. He was the editor of the seminal book Towards a Poor Theatre (1968), which Grotowski wrote together with Ludwik Flaszen, in which it is declared that theatre should not, because it could not, compete against the overwhelming spectacle of film and should instead focus on the very root of the act of theatre: actors cocreating the event of theatre with its spectators.
Theatre - through the actor's technique, his art in which the living organism strives for higher motives - provides an opportunity for what could be called integration, the discarding of masks, the revealing of the real substance: a totality of physical and mental reactions. This opportunity must be treated in a disciplined manner, with a full awareness of the responsibilities it involves. Here we can see the theatre's therapeutic function for people in our present[-]day civilization. It is true that the actor accomplishes this act, but he can only do so through an
encounter with the spectator - intimately, visibly, not hiding behind a cameraman, wardrobe mistress, stage designer or make-up girl - in direct confrontation with him, and somehow " instead of" him. The actor's act - discarding half measures, revealing, opening up, emerging from himself as opposed to closing up - is an invitation to the spectator. This act could be compared to an act of the most deeply rooted, genuine love between two human beings - this is just a comparison since we can only refer to this "emergence from oneself" through analogy. This act, paradoxical and borderline, we call a total act. In our opinion it epitomizes the actor's deepest calling.[6]
Debut in the west
The year 1968 marked Grotowski's debut in the West. His company performed the
Grotowski's company made its debut in the United States under the auspices of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the fall of 1969. BAM built a theatre for Grotowski's company in the Washington Square Methodist Church in Greenwich Village. Three productions were presented: Akropolis, The Constant Prince and Apocalypsis Cum Figuris during a three-week run.
Paratheatrical phase
In 1973 Grotowski published Holiday,
Theatre of Sources
In this period of his work, Grotowski traveled intensively through India, Mexico, Haiti and elsewhere, seeking to identify elements of technique in the traditional practices of various cultures that could have a precise and discernible effect on participants. Key collaborators in this phase of work include
Objective Drama
Unable (despite the best efforts of
Art as Vehicle
In 1986, Grotowski was invited by Roberto Bacci oto his theater center in
Voice Work
Jerzy Grotowski was among a small group of actors and directors, including Peter Brook and Roy Hart, who sought to explore new forms of theatrical expression without employing the spoken word.[16] In the programme notes to the production of one of Grotowski's performances called Akropolis, of which the premiere was in October 1962, one of the performers stated:
The means of verbal expression have been considerably enlarged because all means of vocal expression are used, starting from the confused babbling of the very small child and including the most sophisticated oratorical recitation. Inarticulate groans, animal roars, tender folksongs, liturgical chants, dialects, declamation of poetry: everything is there. The sounds are interwoven in a complex score which brings back fleetingly the memory of all forms of language.[17]
Grotowski and his group of actors became known in particular for their experimental work on the human voice, partially inspired by the work of Roy Hart, who in turn furthered the extended vocal technique initially established by Alfred Wolfsohn. Alan Seymour, speaking of Grotowski's 1963 production of Faustus noted that the performers' voices 'reached from the smallest whisper to an astonishing, almost cavernous tone, an intoned declaiming, of a resonance and power I have not heard from actors before'.[18]
The use of non-verbal voice in these productions was part of Grotowski's investigation into the use of the actor's own self as the substance of performance, and his work was founded upon his belief in the ability of a human being to express physically and vocally aspects of the psyche, including those parts allegedly buried in what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, without recourse to words.[19]
Analytical Psychology
Both Grotowski and Hart compared the desired effect of the rehearsal process upon their actors, and the impact of their performances upon the audience to psychotherapy, drawing upon the principles of Carl Jung and analytical psychology to explain the principles behind their creativity. Grotowski said that theatre 'is a question of a gathering which is subordinated to ritual: nothing is represented or shown, but we participate in a ceremonial which releases the collective unconscious'.[20] Grotowski repeatedly described his rehearsal process and performances as 'sacred', seeking to revive what he understood to be the routes of drama in religious ritual and spiritual practice.[21]
To achieve his aims, Grotowski demanded that his actors draw from their psyches images of a collective significance and give them form through the motion of the body and the sound of the voice. Grotowski's ultimate aim was to effect in the actor change and growth, transformation and rebirth in order that the actor, in turn, could precipitate a similar development in the audience.[22] It was for this reason that Grotowski often chose to base productions on works based on ancient narratives. For he believed that they 'embodied myths and images powerful and universal enough to function as archetypes, which could penetrate beneath the apparently divisive and individual structure of the Western psyche, and evoke a spontaneous, collective, internal response'.[23]
Grotowski, like Hart, did not consider the dramatic text or script to be primary in this process, but believed that the text 'becomes theatre only through the actors' use of it, that is to say, thanks to intonations, to the association of sounds, to the musicality of language'. Grotowski thus pursued the possibility of creating 'ideograms' made up of 'sounds and gestures' which 'evoke associations in the psyche of the audience'. But, for Grotowski, as for Hart, there was, between the psyche's reservoir of images and the bodily and vocal expression of that
Bibliography
- Towards a Poor Theatre (Introduction by Peter Brook) (1968)
- The Theatre of Grotowski by Jennifer Kumiega, London: Methuen, 1987.
- At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions by Thomas Richards, London: Routledge, 1995.
- The Grotowski Sourcebook ed. by Lisa Wolford and Richard Schechner, London: Routledge, 1997.
- A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer by Eugenio Barba, 2001.
- Biography of Grotowski by Holly Slayford, 2010.
- Grotowski's Bridge Made of Memory: Embodied Memory, Witnessing and Transmission in the Grotowski Work by Dominika Laster, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2016.
See also
- Theatre in Poland
- List of Poles
- Stanislavski's system
References
- ^ "Guide to the Jerzy Grotowski Technique". backstage.com. 15 March 2022. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
- ^ Paul Allain. "Jerzy Grotowski, 1933-1999". totaltheatre.org.uk. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
- ^ "Jerzy Grotowski: 'Eccentric genius' who reinvented theatre". Retrieved 2019-09-16.
- ^ Gary Botting, The Theatre of Protest in America (Edmonton: Harden House, 1972), p. 5
- ^ "Google Sites".
- ^ Jerzy Grotowski (19 June 2004). "Source Material on Jerzy Grotowski's Statement of Principles". Owen Daly. Retrieved 2008-09-18.
- ^ Jerzy Grotowski, "Holiday: The Day That Is Holy," trans. Bolesław Taborski, TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies 17, no. 2 (June 1973): 113-35.
- ^ Gary Botting, The Theatre of Protest in America (Edmonton: Harden House, 1972) pp.5-6
- ^ ISBN 978-1136448720.
- ISBN 0415131111.
- ^ Sally McGrane (6 June 2009). "In Praise of a Polish Theater Master". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ^ a b "A Foreigner's Guide to Polish Theatre". culture.pl. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ^ "FROM THE THEATRE COMPANY TO ART AS VEHICLE Jerzy Grotowski". issuu.com. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ^ "brief history - Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski". Archived from the original on 2012-01-21. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
- ^ "Mario Biagini". grotowski.net (in Polish). Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ^ a b Roose-Evans, J. (1989) Experimental Theatre: From Stanislavski to Peter Brook, 4th edn. London: Routledge.
- ^ Flaszen, L. (1975) 'Akropolis – treatment of the text.' In J. Grotowski (ed) Towards a Poor Theatre. London: Methuen.
- ^ Seymour, A. (1987) 'Revelations in Poland.' Plays and Players, 33–34.
- ^ Schechner, R. (1985) Between Theatre and Anthroplogy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- ^ Grotowski, J. (1987) 'Dziady jako model teatru nowoczesnego.' Wspolczesnosc, 21, 1961
- ^ Schechner, R. (1995) The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge.
- ^ Kumiega, J. (1987) The Theatre of Grotowski. London: Methuen
- ^ Grotowski, J., 'Theatre is an Encounter', 1975.
- ^ Grotowski, J. The Theatre's New Testament. 1975.
External links
- Jerzy Grotowski at the Internet Broadway Database
- Jerzy Grotowski at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Jerzy Grotowski at IMDb
- Jerzy Grotowski's Dancing Saviour. About 'Action', the last work of Jerzy Grotowski, by Jacek Dobrowolski
- Jerzy Grotowski at culture.pl
- Guide to the Robert Cohen Collection on Jerzy Grotowski. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
- The Grotowski Institute Archived 2019-06-26 at the Wayback Machine in Wrocław, Poland
- Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy