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The Work of Jerzy Grotowski

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The Work of Jerzy Grotowski TRANSCENDING THE INDIVIDUAL SPHERE: THE WORK OF JERZY GROTOWSKI FU-PING LEE Submitted in fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Drama Department Goldsmiths College, University of London September 2007 ABSTRACT Jerzy Grotowski's lifelong work can be divided into three stages. The first (1957-63) can be summarized as the theatre of collective introspection, which was to bring together people in Polish society by means of adapting ritual spectacle, Durkheim's view of the renewal of social solidarity and Jung's notion of collective unconscious. The second stage (1964-77) starts with the shift of Grotowski's focus from shaping collectivity in performance to achieving individual initiation - the liberation from social conditioning - during the theatre process, especially during actor training. In 1970 Grotowski stopped producing performances and innovated a series of events subsequently known as paratheatrical activities through which he hoped to achieve the liberation of participants more effectively without the burden of making productions. During the third stage of his work (1978-99), Grotowski separated the essential elements of certain traditional practices such as ritual songs and dances so as to establish gatherings in which a sense of collectivity could be experienced among the participants from different social and cultural backgrounds. He ultimately concentrated on work around selected traditional songs preserving the corporeal impulses of the singer m their vibratory quality. The work around these songs, which made the precise 2 transformation of states of being possible was converted, by linking a sequence of songs, into a piece with a complete structure that could be taken as the potential central component of the proposed gathering Grotowski had been after. Grotowski's work throughout can be summarized as the restless effort to revive ritual in modern society. He pursued the performance shaping Polish social solidarity, the process towards individual initiation as defined above, and the gathering of people together regardless of their social and cultural differences. Yet, what was achieved in his work is the transcendence of the self beyond its ontological, physical, psychological, social and cultural limitations. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my SIncere gratitude to Professor Maria Shevtsova who has profoundly guided, inspired and supported me throughout my research. Without her, the completion of this thesis would have been impossible. I am grateful to the three-year scholarship offered by Overseas Research Student Awards Scheme, which financially supported this study. I wish to thank people who helped me with my research, especially Mario Biagini for his generous offer of unpublished articles, the members of Theatre OX from Singapore for their help during my field trip to Pontedera, Tadeusz Pogonowski for his invaluable assistance with my translation of Polish materials, and Jean York and Aine Sheil for their proof-reading of my writings. I am in debt to Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera and The Centre for Study of Jerzy Grotowski's Work and for Cultural and Theatrical Research ill Wroclaw. Both institutes allowed me access to precious materials that were essential to this research. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my family members in Taiwan who have always supported me. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 PART I. SHAPING COLLECTIVITY 35 1. THE AUTONOMOUS INTELLECTUAL MISE-EN-SCENE INCORPORATING RITUAL SPECTACLE 36 1.1 PERFORMING IN THE POLITICAL ARENA 36 1.2 SALVATION THROUGH THE INTELLECTUAL MISE-EN-SCENE 45 1.3 DIRECT CONTACT BETWEEN THE STAGE AND THE AUDIENCE 57 1.4 THEATRE INCORPORATING RITUAL SPECTACLE 67 2. THEATRE OF COLLECTIVE INTROSPECTION 86 2.1 ARCHETYPE AND SACRILEGE 88 2.2 THE UNIFORM FORMULA 98 2.3 POETIC ALLUSION 110 2.4 THEATRE AS SECULAR RITUAL 122 PART II. INITIATION THROUGH INTERPERSONAL COMMUNION.. 133 3. ALLOWING ORGANICITY THROUGH THE METHOD OF ELIMINATION ................................................................................................................. 134 5 3.1 ACTING BASED ON VOCAL AND PHYSICAL SIGNS 138 3.2 ALLOWING ORGANICITY THROUGH THE METHOD OF ELIMINATION 161 4. PERSONALIZATION FOR ORGANICITY AND FOR INITIATION ... 179 4.1 PERSONAL ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED IN PERFORMANCE 179 4.2 TRAINING PERSONALIZATION 196 4.3 INITIATION INTO A COMPLETE STATE OF BEING 224 5. TOWARDS COMMUNION FOR INITIATION 233 5.1 SHAPING PERSONAL PROCESS AS PERFORMANCE 233 5.2 COMMUNION AND INITIATION 250 PART III. BEYOND THE INDIVIDUAL. 289 6. CROSSING THE BOUNDARY 290 6.1 DE-CONDITIONING 290 6.2 SEEKING COMMUNION ACROSS CULTURAL AND ONTOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES ......................................................................................................... 312 7. TRANSFORMATION OF BEING VIA CORPOREALITY 327 7.1 PANORAMIC AWARENESS AND THE AUTONOMOUS BODy 327 7.2 TRADITIONAL SONGS AS TRACES OF BEING 343 7.3 TRANSFORMATION OF BEING THROUGH TRADITIONAL SONGS 356 6 CONCLUSION 393 BIBLIOGRAPHY 408 7 INTRODUCTION This thesis is a dedicated study of the work of Jerzy Grotowski (1933- 99), an innovative theatre director, an adventurous artist who traced the origins of theatre art and a wanderer in search of his own self. Grotowski was born on 11 August 1933 in Rzeszow, Poland. During the Second World War, he lived with his mother and older brother in the small village of Nienadowka. In the summer of 1955 he graduated from the Theatre School in Krakow with an actor's certificate. Between autumn 1955 and summer 1956, he studied directing in Moscow under Yuri Zavadsky's supervision in the State Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS). After his return to Poland from Russia, Grotowski was actively involved in political activities and witnessed the Polish October and the reaction afterwards. In 1959, he became the artistic director of the Theatre of 13 Rows - the precursor of the Laboratory Theatre. In 1968, Grotowski's renowned anthology Towards a Poor Theatre was published, and it has become the major source for the public to understand his theoretical framework of theatre making. Grotowski ceased directing any new productions after 1970. From then onwards, he initiated a series of research projects including paratheatrical activities (1970-77), Theatre of Sources (1978-80), Objective Drama (1983-86) and Art as Vehicle 8 (1985-99). Although different from each other, all these projects were related to the theatre process one way or another, but none of them involved making theatre productions. These projects often caused confusion and raised controversy and aspirations alike. The significance of them is yet to be determined. Grotowski died on 14 January 1999 in Pontedera, Italy. His work - theatre productions as well as various research projects - challenges, renews and revitalizes the nexus between art and life. There have been a number of accounts of Grotowski' s work during various periods, as well as attempts to formulate a consistent theoretical framework for his work. Raymonde Temkine's Grotowski was originally published in French in 1968, and its English translation appeared in 1972. Temkine's book is the first to present Grotowski's work in its early stages. In her book, Temkine introduces Grotowski, his troupe and his productions, and lays out Grotowski's innovations, such as the re-definition of the relationship between theatre and literature, the unconventional treatment of the playtext, the conquest of scenic space, the participation of spectators in performance, the novel actor training methods and the idea of the holy actor. She reviews and assesses Grotowski's work up to 1965. However, her analysis tends to flatten the various uneasy dimensions of Grotowski's work into an 9 accomplished static system. It does not reveal the dynamics of the restless progress intrinsic to Grotowski' s work. In the first part of his book Grotowski i jego Laboratorium (in Polish), Zbigniew Osinski gives a painstaking chronological account of Grotowski's work from the early 1950s to 1976 by moulding together the writings and lectures of Grotowski and his collaborators, journalistic reports and Osinski's own observations. In the second part of his book, Osinski summarizes Grotowski's work in a 70-page analytical essay. The first part of this book, which was translated into English and published as Grotowski and His Laboratory (1986), proves to be a rich source for researchers following Osinski. However, it offers a faithful account more than a perspective with which to grasp the essence of Grotowski's work. Jennifer Kumiega's The Theatre of Grotowski (1985) is an attempt to record and analyze Grotowski's work. She offers a chronological account of Grotowski's productions in the first part of her book, and in the second, analyzes his training, performances and transition from theatre performances to paratheatrical activities. In the third part, Kumiega reports Grotowski' s post-theatre activities up to 1984, and dedicates one chapter to the translation of some of Grotowski's interviews and lectures of particular significance. In 10 the appendix, Kumiega records the details of the actions and the actor's lines in Apcalypsis Cum Figuris, which is of great help to further analysis of this production. In addition, the bibliography in Kumiega's book is quite extensive and well-organized, which is very useful to the researchers who follow her. Kumiega's analysis basically follows Grotowski's own theoretical ground. Through examining Grotowski's successive
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