1. Introduction
In an interview in June 1967, the Polish theatre director and theoretician Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) said that ‘The core of the theatre is an encounter’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski2002, 56). It is a creative encounter between the producer (or director) and the actor, between the producer and the author of the text, between the performers and the audience, as well as between the text/performance and the historical context. It is also an encounter between different performance cultures. As one of the greatest theatre directors of the latter half of the twentieth century, Grotowski sought to transcend the geographical and ideological boundaries of the Cold War (1947–1991), revealing his cosmopolitan sensibilities and ideals.
Grotowski’s secondary and post-secondary education took place after World War II. He worked as a theatre director mostly in the Cold War era during a time when Europe was divided into two antagonistic blocs: Capitalist Western Europe and Communist Central and Eastern Europe. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once described post-war Europe as ‘a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate’ (McMahon Reference McMahon2003, 2). During the Cold War, art was used to serve political purposes, but also strove to go beyond ideological differences. Artists played an important role in bridging the gaps and spreading cosmopolitan ideas among people from different political and cultural backgrounds.
Throughout his career as a theatre director, Grotowski encountered many different theatre cultures, which both collided with and were synthesized in his own practices. Confronted with Cold War mindsets and ideological constraints, Grotowski’s theatrical art reflects a kind of cosmopolitan spirit by embracing a common humanity. Analysing Grotowski’s biography alongside his theatrical innovations and theoretical thinking, I aim to investigate the following three aspects of his theatrical cosmopolitanism: his encounters with different performance cultures in his concept of ‘poor theatre’, his advocacy of universal ethics in his representative production Akropolis, and his belief in world citizenship reflected in his concept of ‘art as vehicle’ from the later years of his career. First, however, it is necessary to briefly introduce the idea of cosmopolitanism and how it relates to both theatre and performance in the Cold War context.
2. Negotiating Cosmopolitanism in the Theatrical Cold War
Contemporary cosmopolitanism has many different interpretations, and no single definition is sufficient on its own. Nevertheless, some core concepts are consistent. First, in terms of culture, cosmopolitanism is often used to ‘address certain social processes and/or individual behaviors and dispositions that demonstrate a capacity to embrace cultural difference’ (Gilbert and Lo Reference Gilbert and Lo2009, 5). According to Stuart Hall (Reference Hall, Vertovec and Cohen2002, 25–31), cultural cosmopolitanism
means the ability to stand outside of having one’s life written and scripted by any one community, whether that is a faith or tradition or religion or culture – whatever it might be, and to draw selectively on a variety of discursive meanings.
However, there are many potential risks and pitfalls in cultural exchanges, which are often overridden by power relationships in terms of political, ideological and military forces. In postcolonial studies, Western-centrism has been subjected to strong criticism. For Homi K. Bhabha and Kwame A. Appiah, cultural cosmopolitanism does not support the idea of a single centre radiating in all directions. Instead, it advocates the idea that centres are everywhere, but circumferences are nowhere. Bhabha’s vernacular cosmopolitanism looks at the world from local perspectives, basing itself on native experiences. ‘The term “vernacular” combines respect for the local and the desire for a post-universal dimension’ (Taraborrelli Reference Taraborrelli and McGilvray2015, 112). Appiah’s ‘rooted’ cosmopolitanism is focused on global responsibility for the less developed regions of the world and the independence of individuals. Accepting human differences as legitimate, he nevertheless perceives a respect for individuality as fundamental to all cultures. ‘[A]s he advocates a kind of cosmopolitanism in which the individual and personal autonomy are placed in the centre, he deems cultures important only because and to the extent to which they are such for individuals’ (Taraborrelli Reference Taraborrelli and McGilvray2015, 108). In addition, one is not cosmopolitan simply because one lives in a multicultural or transnational context or environment, but because one consciously identifies with the cosmopolitan vision and is willing to act accordingly.
Second, the various forms of cosmopolitanism share a common ethical orientation. ‘Cosmopolitanism is a belief that all human beings, regardless of their differences, are members of a single community and all worthy of equal moral regard’ (Balme et al. Reference Balme and Szymanski-Düll2017, 60). In Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant (Reference Kant2006: 84) points out the fundamental ethical principle that ‘a violation of right on one place of the earth is felt in all’. In general, ethical cosmopolitanism holds the view that all human beings are members of the world community and that they should be treated equally regardless of their nationality, language, religion, customs and so on. Moreover, according to Kant and Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), ethical cosmopolitanism should be defended by legal and political institutions. ‘Advocates of political-legal cosmopolitanism are quite convinced however that profound institutional transformations are essential if the global system is to satisfactorily achieve the cosmopolitan ideal’ (Taraborrelli Reference Taraborrelli and McGilvray2015, 47). Although this proved to be very difficult during the Cold War, such institutions as the United Nations played an important role in promoting certain principles of cosmopolitan ethics.
Third, cosmopolitanism advocates for world citizens and their consciousness to meet the challenges of nation-states. Kant promoted a notion of world citizenship committed to the universal codes of rights and justice. This kind of cosmopolitanism was dependent on the ancient rights of hospitality that demanded that all persons (regardless of colour, creed or politics) be allowed free access to any part of the world. Instead of setting up a world government, Arendt called on each individual to develop a ‘community sense’ by joining the world community through the simple fact of being a human being. In spite of existing ideological differences, even during the Cold War and then especially since the 1970s, globalization has gathered increasing speed. As consumer goods, capital and information circulate quickly around the world, mobility has been greatly enhanced. At the same time, the unequal development of globalization has provoked regional and national mistrust and conflicts, which have even resulted in wars such as those in the Middle East. Therefore, the sense of world citizenship needs to be communicated and promoted through literature and arts, including the theatre.
Theatre played an important role in the ideological Cold War and was heavily invested across the divide. ‘Culture, and theatrical culture in particular with its high degree of representational power, was recognized as an important medium in the ideological struggles that characterize this epoch [the Cold War – the author]’ (Balme et al. Reference Balme and Szymanski-Düll2017, 3). However, culture, including theatre, does not always become servile to the authorities, but rather possesses its own autonomy. ‘We can observe a curious counter-tendency on the part of culture generally and theatre in particular to counteract the stasis and impenetrability of the various blocs’ (Balme et al. Reference Balme and Szymanski-Düll2017, 6). For dramatists and theatre directors, theatre could become an efficient means of challenging ideological constraints and promoting the relevance of cosmopolitanism. Theatre ‘provides an exemplary site through which to examine the limits as well as the potential of cosmopolitan thinking’ (Gilbert and Lo Reference Gilbert and Lo2009, 12). How then is cosmopolitanism antithetical to the ideologies of the Cold War? And how does theatre negotiate the ideologies of the divided blocs and the ideal of cosmopolitanism that binds human beings together? Grotowski provides an answer.
Like Richard Schechner, Peter Brook and many other contemporary theatre directors, Grotowski is a prominent example of border-crossing. His book Towards a Poor Theatre (1968), edited by Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, which circulated in several translations around the world, became something of a ‘sacred’ text for the alternative theatre movement. The world in which Grotowski started his career in the 1950s was plagued by hatred and mistrust among nations and peoples, but he learned to transcend ideological constraints. Grotowski became part of a cosmopolitan elite: since he was a well-known director, he could choose to travel wherever he wanted to go, and mix with people as he liked. However, he also occupied a marginal position as he sought political asylum in the US in the 1980s. His ideas of cosmopolitanism are complicated: they are both local and global, both elite and founded in grass-roots, both mainstream and peripheral, both cosmopolitan from above and cosmopolitan from below. It is perhaps within the liminal transitions that the most radical changes take place and transform the status quo.
How might one analyse cosmopolitanism in the theatre? ‘Within theatre’s complex materiality, the cosmopolitics of cross-cultural exchange may be located at the levels of representation, training/rehearsal process and reception practices,’ say Gilbert and Lo (Reference Gilbert and Lo2009, 13). In a similar manner, we will examine the following three aspects of Grotowski’s theatre in relation to cosmopolitanism: his new concept of theatre, especially the ‘poor theatre’, revealing his openness to different performance cultures; the universal ethical themes represented in his stage production of Akropolis; and the transmission and reception of his theatre after his emigration to the US and later to Italy, where he became more and more a world citizen. These three intersecting levels of Grotowski’s theatre are grounded in the historical context of the Cold War, but they also contributed to the gradual erosion of the compartmentalization between the socialist and capitalist blocs in Europe and beyond.
3. The Making of ‘Poor Theatre’ and Grotowski’s Encounter with Different Performance Cultures
After the Second World War, the Polish theatre was dominated by socialist propaganda art, and national romantic and bourgeois theatres were largely banned. When Stalinism was criticized in 1955, Poland’s theatre culture began to recover its sense of diversification. However, government censorship remained tight and the conflicts between artists and the authorities fluctuated along with changes in the political atmosphere. According to Kyrill Kunakhovich,
the ideological struggles of the cultural Cold War were conducted not only between two opposing fronts but also within the system itself: the most intense struggles took place on the home front, as local institutions manoeuvred within the structures of those policies which both fostered and critiqued the ‘bourgeois’ art form of theatre. (Quoted in Balme et al. Reference Balme and Szymanski-Düll2017, 10)
As a member of the Communist Party himself,Footnote 1 Grotowski gradually learned how to deal with the government and to get some degree of support for his theatre. He became a pioneering figure in directing experimental theatre in Poland in the 1950s and 1960s, even formulating his own theatre theory named ‘poor theatre’.
In Towards A Poor Theatre, Grotowski (Reference Grotowski2002, 19) asks some basic questions: ‘What is the theatre? What is unique about it? What can it do that film and television cannot?’ To answer these queries, he proposes the concept of poor theatre. In terms of theatricality, poor theatre transcends the traditional notion of theatre as comprehensive art. ‘It challenges the notion of theatre as a synthesis of disparate creative disciplines – literature, sculpture, painting, architecture, lighting, acting’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski2002, 19). He calls this synthetic theatre ‘rich theatre’, which he thinks is full of flaws. Instead, Grotowski emphasizes the actors and their bodies. ‘By his controlled use of gesture the actor transforms the floor into a sea, a table into a confessional, a piece of iron into an animate partner, etc.’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski2002, 21). This, I think, is reminiscent of the acting patterns of conventionalization in the Oriental theatre, for example, Peking Opera.
Grotowski’s theatre career is divided into five stages. The first two stages are characterized by a new approach to the actor–spectator relationship as interactive and reciprocal. In Grotowski’s Objective Drama Research, Lisa Wolford refers to his idea of the ‘holy actor’ in the first period (1959–1969) as provoking spectators to ‘undertake a similar process of self-penetration’ (Wolford Reference Wolford1996, 5). Concerning his idea of ‘paratheatre’ (or theatre of participation) during the second period (1969–1978), Wolford explains that the division between actors and spectators is erased and the concept of meeting becomes crucial. Grotowski says,
To cross the frontiers between you and me: to come forward to meet you … For a start, if we work with each other … to look at you, to get rid of fear and shame into which your eyes drive me when I am accessible to them, whole. Not to hide, to be as I am. (Quoted in Wolford Reference Wolford1996, 5)
During the Cold War, the direct connection between actors and spectators, according to Grotowski, would ‘allow us once again to experience a universal human truth’ (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 45). Instead of struggling within the boundaries of conventional theatre, he headed toward experimental theatre to search for an alternative form of art that would match his ideas of universality despite cultural differences.
In his theatre laboratory, Grotowski took in many actors from outside of Poland. For example, during his third stage, the Theatre of Sources (1976–1982), his actors came from many different performance cultures, and could then learn and benefit from each other.
This is true even though several members of the Theatre of Sources team were masters of a particular technique and everyone maintained strong links to their cultural heritage. The initial doings or propositions were then tested by other members of the group who approached them with different mind structures, different conditionings. (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 32)
The purpose of the Theatre of Sources was to test certain doctrines of performance by relating them to different cultures and traditions. In addition, Grotowski led his theatre to many different places, mainly in Poland, and exchanged performance practices with actors of other theatres, including ritualistic performers in the remote countryside.
On each expedition, Grotowski’s Theatre of Sources diligently avoided exploiting these traditional cultures or appropriating elements of their rituals. Instead, the group simply made contact, kept a natural distance, and worked ‘next to’ or in some relation with the traditional practitioners or their natural environment. (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 32)
It is said that some performers from those local troupes then chose to join Grotowski’s team, which again added new varieties of performance to its repertoire.
Grotowski’s concept of ‘poor theatre’ is to some extent indebted to forms of Asian theatre such as the traditional Chinese opera. ‘When I speak of the actor’s expression of signs, I am asked about oriental theatre, particularly classic Chinese theatre, especially when it is known that I studied there’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski2002, 24). In August 1962, Grotowski travelled to China, visited Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing, and met with various important people from theatrical circles. For example, he recalled that he met a voice expert, Dr Ling, who taught him how to check if an actor’s larynx is open or closed during voice production. He watched Peking Opera and discovered that the actors of the Peking Opera begin each action with a distinct movement in the opposite direction from where they want to go. He then practiced this movement together with his actors in Poland, something that later was called ‘the Chinese principle’ (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 14). He also made some trips to India between 1968 and 1970, where he visited great masters of acting (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 23). In 1973, Grotowski travelled to Japan and met Tadashi Suzuki, with whom he attended a Nô Theatre rehearsal. These frequent encounters with other performance cultures proved to be illuminating and productive for both himself and his actors.
Although Grotowski was inclined to acknowledge the differences between individuals and between cultures, he firmly believed that we can find even more commonalities, and then use negotiation to try to understand and bridge the differences. Sometimes, others can help us understand things within us that are incomprehensible to ourselves. Grotowski says,
We are all (to greater or lesser degree) products of our respective cultures, and difference among us can reassert itself in the most unexpected moments. Yet the travelers of speed recognize an affinity or perhaps a common thirst that gives them the impetus and patience to negotiate difference. I need this Other, I say of my (Armenian, Australian, Iranian) colleague, because there is something within me which s/he understands, something incomprehensible to most of ‘my own’. (Wolford Reference Wolford1996, 28)
Such an open attitude to other performance cultures in Grotowski and his actors is certainly beneficial to the kind of theatre they have endeavoured to bring into being. Their knowledge of the other theatre traditions can disrupt their old habits of performance and yield new perceptions of theatre. Through his encounters with different performance cultures, an actor learns new performing skills so that his or her potentials to work with the body may be activated.
Grotowski’s encounters with different performance traditions from the West and the East greatly enriched his perceptions of the nature of theatre and performance. As a European, his art is deeply rooted in the great European tradition, particularly the Stanislavsky system of acting. ‘In the construction of the Action, the majority of the source-elements come from (in one way or another) the Occidental tradition’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski and Richards1995, 130). In the meantime, he also acknowledged his indebtedness to Oriental artistic tradition. ‘Because precisely the sources of the Oriental cradle had a direct impact on me when I was a child and adolescent, long before I did theatre’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski and Richards1995, 130). Thus, his concept of ‘poor theatre’ is a consequence of his encounters with Occidental and Oriental theatres, which produced unexpected results. Nevertheless, he also warned others not to develop a simplistic view of interculturalism as blending or intermingling different cultures together. ‘It seems to me that the Oriental and Occidental approaches are complementary. But we must not try to create a synthesis of a “performative” syncretism; rather we must try to transcend the limitations of the two approaches’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski and Schaefffer1989, 1–11). Grotowski’s theatrical concepts are anti-traditional, open and transformational; in the meantime, his early theatre productions are also critical reflections on the history of Poland, the Holocaust in particular, revealing his cosmopolitan ethics. Akropolis is one such example.
4. The Ethics of Performance and Grotowski’s Encounter with the Holocaust
In 1959, Grotowski took over the artistic directorship of Teatr 13 Rzędów (Theatre of 13 Rows), situated in a small Polish city called Opole, and started his cooperation with the then literary director of the theatre, Ludwik Flaszen. Their cooperation soon bore fruit in the creation of an avant-garde theatre. Together, they staged productions that began to challenge theatrical conventions. In 1962, Grotowski renamed the theatre, Teatr Laboratorium 13 Rzędów (Laboratory Theatre of 13 Rows), and produced the first and second variations of Akropolis, which made his reputation. Grotowski was not a productive theatre director, even refraining from premiering complete works of art later in his career. Instead, he focused on actor training and methods of exploring the expressivity of the body. Apart from Akropolis (1962), some of his early well-known professional productions include: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1964), The Constant Prince (1967), and Apocalypsis cum figures (1969).
Poland adopted socialist realism as its official cultural policy in 1949.
The main thrust of cultural policy as directed by the cultural commissar Włodzimierz Sokorski was socialist realism, defined many years later by Andrzej Wajda, one of Poland’s most distinguished film directors, as the ‘representation of reality not as it is, but as it ought to be’. (Lukowski and Zawadzki Reference Lukowski and Zawadzki2006, 279)
However, in the aftermath of the fall of Stalinism, there was a temporary liberalization of the cultural policy within the Polish government. In this respect, theatre played a role in the government propaganda about artistic freedom. Taking advantage of the government’s new cultural policy, Grotowski took active measures to experiment with theatre. In the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, he gradually transformed the existing forms of performance adopted from the theatre he found there, establishing new relationships between literature and performance, stage and audience, actors and spectators.Footnote 2
Akropolis was his breakthrough as a theatre director. Based on the namesake play by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907), a Polish national neo-romantic playwright, Grotowski appropriated the dramatic text to fit his own needs. It should be mentioned that the performance was highly influenced by another theatre director and painter of that time, Józef Szajna, a prisoner of Auschwitz himself, who designed the stage and costumes. The play offers a critical re-evaluation of human civilization by focusing on the ethnic cleansing that took place at the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. Revealing the horror of mass murder, it evoked a kind of collective experience of the destructiveness of human nature, especially when the audience directly participated by singing and acting. The performance was later brought to many places outside of Poland, such as Brussels, Edinburgh, Paris and New York.
The success of Akropolis should first be attributed to its unusual scenic language: acting becomes the focus of performance. The actors in Akropolis do not wear normal costumes but sacks. The objects they use are pipes from plumbing. The sounds of the words they utter are not conversational but nonsensical babbling. The performance does not attempt in the slightest to construct psychologically realistic characters, making it an ideal representation of ‘poor theatre’. The formal innovation is, however, used to convey Grotwoski’s cosmopolitan concern about humanity as a whole. ‘Theatre needs to be universal to be national’ (Romanska Reference Romanska2012, 10), says Tadeusz Kantor, another well-known Polish theatre director and Grotowski’s contemporary. Grotowski challenges cultural bigotry and reveals the hypocrisy of the human condition. The constant repetition of the phrases, ‘our Acropolis’ and ‘cemetery of the tribes’, is a comment on the evil and intolerance inherent in each individual as well as in biased ideologies. The ethics of performance in Akropolis will be further discussed as follows.
First, it deals with the taboo subject of Polish–Jewish relations. For many years following the Second World War, the role of anti-Semitism in the near-extermination of the Jewish community that once made up a significant part of Poland’s population was not given adequate discussion or reflection in Poland. Instead, the Holocaust was used by the Polish government to rebuild national identity. Akropolis won wide applause for its representation of Jewish suffering and the fate of Poles in Auschwitz. It ‘engage[s] the issue of the Holocaust in a way that addresses the Polish past and present; they respond to history, while both speaking and not speaking of the taboo subject’ (Romanska Reference Romanska2012, 39).
Second, under pressure from the Soviet Union, there was a government-organized Jewish exodus from Poland to Israel from the mid-1950s on, though there had been strong protests against this across different social and political groups. Even when Akropolis was staged in the 1960s, the organized Jewish exodus continued. It is, therefore, extremely ironic that ‘[a]s Ida Kaminska, the distinguished artistic director of Warsaw’s Jewish Theater, was packing her bags to emigrate to the U.S., the Polish Laboratory was riding the wave of the international success of Akropolis and The Constant Prince’ (Romanska Reference Romanska2012, 226). According to records, 40,000 Jews still lived in Poland in the beginning of 1968, but by the end of that year only 5000 remained. It was against this political background that the significance of Akropolis should be discussed.
Third, Akropolis is political, in spite of the claims that the author made against such an interpretation. In his article ‘You are Someone’s Son’, Grotowski (1985, quoted in Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007) speaks clearly of his politics:
I work, not to make some discourse, but to enlarge the island of freedom which I bear; my obligation is not to make political declarations, but to make holes in the wall. The things which were forbidden before me should be permitted after me; the doors which were closed and double locked should be opened. (Quoted in Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 7)
In Poland, critical reflection on the Second World War, Stalinism, and Auschwitz brought about a general disillusionment with the existing ideological blockage, which to a certain extent paved the way for the 1989 transformations.
Fundamental to Grotowski’s theatrical ethics is the respect for humanity and freedom. When he studied in Moscow between 1955 and 1956, his Russian supervisor Yuri Zavadsky (1894–1977) confided to him that he regretted cooperating with the authorities in return for material comforts, warning Grotowski against such a mistake. ‘Forty years later in Holstebro Grotowski refers to that incident as a turning point in his life’ (Michalak Reference Michalak, Balme and Szymanski-Düll2017, 189–205). He also shared this desire for artistic freedom with Tadeusz Kantor, who defended an artist’s individuality in the 1950s by saying that ‘a real artist observes with dislike and disgust how freedom and independence of art is being stifled by the yoke of “state prestige”’ (Michalak Reference Michalak, Balme and Szymanski-Düll2017, 190). Grotowski carried out this spiritual search to the end of his life and across vast geographical distances.
5. ‘Art as Vehicle’ and Grotowski’s Encounter with the World
After the introduction of martial law in December 1981 in Poland, theatre practitioners were confronted with risks and dangers as the government strengthened its censorship policy. Some actors were arrested, and experimental theatre experienced great difficulties. When it became impossible to maintain his artistic integrity under the conditions of martial law, Grotowski decided to leave Poland. By the end of 1982, he officially requested political asylum in the United States.
By the time of his emigration to the US, Grotowski had already been acknowledged as a leading director in international theatre and performance circles and was warmly supported by such distinguished theatre directors as Richard Schechner and Peter Brook. As far as his theatre career is concerned, Grotowski entered a new phase: the objective drama (1983–1992), which was ‘a short interim period’ of his career. Later, when he gradually moved the centre of his theatre practice from the US to Italy, he started yet another important, and final, period of his career, known as the ‘art as vehicle’ (1986–1999). What is art as vehicle? How does it relate to cosmopolitanism?
First, Grotowski’s notion of actors changes from performers to doers. Art as vehicle is explained by Grotowski as the opposite of ‘art as presentation’.
If all of the elements of the performance are elaborated and correctly assembled (the montage), an effect appears in the perception of the spectator, a vision, a certain story; to some degree the performance appears not on the stage but in the perception of the spectator. This is the nature of Art as presentation. At the other extremity of the long chain of the performing arts is Art as vehicle, which looks to create the montage not in the perception of the spectators, but in the artists who do. (Grotowski Reference Grotowski and Richards1995, 120)
For Grotowski, performing is an instrument to work on the body, the heart and the mind of those who do it. In the usual sense, performing has a double meaning, that is playing a role and doing for real. In performance studies, the two are usually explained as inseparable from each other, with more emphasis on the aspect of playing. In Grotowski’s concept of art as vehicle, doing becomes the focus of performance training.
Second, art as vehicle is built on the trust between the director and his actors. Grotowski thinks that he is not teaching his actors but rather transmitting to them what he has acquired about theatre and performance. In the Italian workshop, Richards was his closest apprentice and artistic successor. The following is illustrative of his relationship with his actors and hence his concept of art as vehicle.
There is something incomparably intimate and productive in the work with the actor entrusted to me. He must be attentive and confident and free, for our labor is to explore his possibilities to the utmost. His growth is attended by observation, astonishment, and desire to help; my growth is projected onto him, or, rather, is found in him – and our common growth becomes revelation. This is not instruction of a pupil but utter opening to another person, in which the phenomenon of ‘shared or double birth’ becomes possible. The actor is reborn – not only as an actor but as a man – and with him, I am reborn. It is a clumsy way of expressing it, but what is achieved is a total acceptance of one human being by another. (Grotowski Reference Grotowski2002, 25; emphasis in original)
In his theatre world, Grotowski did not pursue anything material or objective but rather sought a kind of sublimation of the human self. With art as vehicle, Grotowski tried to lead his actors to do the impossible through their performance and eventually lead theatre beyond the traditional boundaries.
Third, Grotowski renewed his emphasis on the body. Compared with his early training of actors’ bodies, he was later contemplating how to overcome new types of obstacles associated with our dependency on technology in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Grotowski even admitted in the late 1990s that it was impossible to use the same exercises with the young actors at his Work center in Italy that he used with his actors in Poland… The individual’s relationship with the body has changed; the predominance of machines, computers, and an image-saturated media in twenty-first-century lives creates its own plethora of psychophysical blocks. (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 94)
In order to liberate the body, he thought it important to unlearn the learned, or to untame the tamed, which is a difficult thing to do. ‘Untaming demands greater effort and self-discipline than training’ (Slowiak and Cuesta Reference Slowiak and Cuesta2007, 99). To enhance the actors’ control of their bodies, he sought to obtain experiences and knowledge from different performing cultures as he had done earlier in his life.
The elements of work that make up the performative structures of Art as Vehicle are drawn mostly from traditional songs of African and Caribbean culture, sometimes joined with ancient narrative motifs. Participants in Art as Vehicle represent a wide array of cultural backgrounds, and have included artists from Singapore, India, Turkey, Israel, Europe and the United States. The primary work leader, Thomas Richards, is of Afro-Caribbean heritage. (Wolford Reference Wolford1996, 17)
Grotowski’s insistence on opening himself to different cultures throughout his career led to his acute awareness of the value of all cultures, which empowered his consciousness of world citizenship.
Grotowski’s sense of world citizenship developed with his artistic experimentations in different locations across national boundaries. After the early 1980s, Grotowski mostly lived outside of Poland. He travelled to many places, interacted with different performance cultures and worked closely with people from different ethnic backgrounds. As a director and teacher, he strove to transcend the boundaries of nations and cultures, and to reach the depth of humanity. In ‘Grotowski, art as a vehicle’, Peter Brook (Reference Brook1991, 90–94) says, ‘The vehicle which is the strongest in all the forms of theatre existing in the world always was man or, to avoid feminist reactions, the human being, the individual.’ Grotowski became more and more a world citizen through embracing the notion of humanity. According to Arendt (Reference Arendt1982, 75–76),
We are members of a world community through the simple fact of being human beings and this ‘cosmopolitan existence’ must be translated into a capacity to judge and act politically that is guided by the notion (not by the effective actuality) of being world citizens and consequently also world spectators.
Born in a Polish city, Grotowski wandered around the world and finally settled down in an Italian town. After he died, Grotowski’s ashes were strewn on Mount Arunachala in India. As he wrote (Grotowski Reference Grotowski and Schaefffer1989: 1), the East and the West are never clearly separable from each other. ‘The confusion starts the moment we speak of East and West. Where does the East begin? Don’t certain people considered Oriental by others see themselves as Occidental and vice versa?’ Grotowski truly worked and lived in the faith of cosmopolitanism.
6. Conclusion
Grotowski’s concept of theatre as an encounter has proven to be singular and innovative in the following ways. First, the audience participates in the performance and interacts with the actors; theatre is a means of communication and sharing between these groups. Second, the actor’s body becomes the focus of the performance; in order to enhance the training of the body, it is necessary for the practitioners to open themselves to different performance traditions, including indigenous performance rituals from remote areas. Third, theatre is ethical in that it offers possibilities to critically reflect on certain issues in history or in reality, such as the Holocaust and the Cold War; certain universal values can be interrogated and observed, such as respect and freedom irrespective of ethnic or national identities. Fourth, theatre ultimately serves the purpose of pursuing the meaning of humanity, binding humans together. Transcending the social and political limitations of Poland as well as the ideological divide between the Socialist and the Capitalist blocs of the time, Grotowski was a fearless pioneer in experimental theatre. The adverse social conditions in Poland and beyond did not hinder his creativity, but rather instigated his unmatched artistic talent and his cosmopolitan spirit, the two of which are deeply interconnected and integrated.
Taking the different dimensions of Grotowski’s theatre into consideration, we find that he transgressed the boundaries in theatre, art and culture of his time. His pursuit of artistic innovation and cosmopolitanism in the Cold War era makes us aware of the fact that ideological constraints have had an impact on the theatre in Central and Eastern European countries, and that theatrical and performance events could make significant contributions to the remapping or reshaping of historical imaginaries and processes. During the Cold War, theatre in general was negatively affected and people tended to be narrow-minded under the influence of ideological conflicts. Thus, Grotowski’s insistence on theatrical cosmopolitanism became all the more difficult and meaningful. His various encounters in the theatre and with theatre made him a great director across geographical and ideological boundaries in the latter half of the twentieth century. As Grotowski himself said, ‘It is the trial that counts, not the sentence’ (Grotowski Reference Grotowski and Schaefffer1989, 11).
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte and the International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures at Freie Universität Berlin for inviting me as a resident fellow in 2012 and 2018. Thanks to Professor Małgorzata Sugiera, Head of the Department for Performativity Studies, Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland, who read my manuscript and provided me with very useful comments.
About the Author
Chengzhou He, PhD of the University of Oslo, is Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Nanjing University. He has published more than ten books in Chinese and English with publishing houses both in China and Europe. His articles have appeared in such international journals as European Review, Orbis Litterarum, Modern Fiction Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Gender, Place and Culture, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Studies, Modern language Quarterly, Neohelicon, Comparative Drama, Ibsen Studies, Perspectives: Studies on Translatology, as well as many other international and Chinese academic journals. A Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, he was awarded the Ibsen Medal in 2002.
