Seminal teachings: the Grotowski influence, a reassessment

• Published in: Canadian theatre review 1996-10 (88), p.38
• Main Author: Wolford, Lisa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acting; Actors; Grotowski, Jerzy; Study & teaching; Theater
• ISSN: 0315-0836; 1920-941X

[...]the word "Grotowskian", applied as a descriptive term for experimental performance work, tends to conjure up a wide array of ritualistic and pseudo - primitive associations: physical virtuosity carried almost to the point of torture; shouting, or incantation rather than discursive speech; themes that focus on martyrdom and self - immolation; and wild improvisations which privilege "spontaneity" and "freedom of the body" over an established and repeatable performance score ... and so on. Even more significantly, however, I suspect that such an influence is reflected in Fowler's conception of a theatre ensemble as a living entity: "The members of Primus Theatre are precisely that, members, the articulating limbs of a living organism; the theatre of which they are members is not a building...but the social unit which is the manifestation of their collective relationship" (Fowler 29).(f.3) Ricciardelli, a founding member and lead actress of the theatre company Koreja, based in Salento, Italy, performed with Odin Teatret for ten years, during which time she claims to have absorbed a great deal of "unuseful training". The commonalities that exist among these different artists and groups have far less to do with their productions per se than with certain elements of their respective performance cultures: a commitment to daily training; a lifelong effort to refine one's craft; a demand for impeccability and accountability in one's work; a sense that performance can serve the practitioner as a tool for work on self (whether one chooses to define such a goal in an esoteric or a purely artistic sense); and above all, a clear conviction as to the value of maintaining a core ensemble, a group of artists willing to commit to systematic work over an extended period of time. Footnotes: (f.1) See Zbigniew Osinski, "Grotowski Blazes the Trails", for a concise overview of the various phases of Grotowski's activity. (f.2) It would also be possible to classify another participating theatre company at "Survivors of the Ice Age", Double Edge Theatre (Boston, MA, USA), as part of a Grotowskian tradition, since Stacy Klein, artistic director of the company, participated in the paratheatrical period of Grotowski's research and has worked extensively with Laboratory Theatre actors Zygmunt Molik and Rena Mirecka, as well as having studied with Barba, whose Oxyrinchus Evangeleit is the subject of her doctoral dissertation.