Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen

Five Encounters with the Sages

Juliusz Tyszka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000432206
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

The book contains three accounts of five public speeches and conversations with the public of two outstanding figures of theatre and performance, Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen, from 1993 to 1997.

Their speeches concern their output and their current research. The content of Ludwik Flaszen's speech is very closely related to the output of Jerzy Grotowski. The accounts are written on the base of the author's detailed notes. The main subject of these narratives is their author, who quotes the speaking characters in the third person. In this way, all texts acquire a subjective character, akin to an essay, while remaining faithful to the overall message and content of the speeches and conversations cited in them. Juliusz Tyszka also uses this form of narration to describe the interpersonal context of Flaszen's and Grotowski's talks, including the content and tone of the questions asked, the reactions of listeners, etc. There is also room for short, concise characteristics of these two outstanding people and their interlocutors (who are themselves sometimes also notorious).

This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of theatre and performance studies and professionals in experimental theatre and performance.

1February 1993, Grotowski in New York City

Expectations, hopes, and stereotypes

DOI: 10.4324/9781003124535-1

On a November Monday in 1992, Professor Richard Schechner began his theatre, ritual, and play class at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University with sensational news: Jerzy Grotowski was coming to New York City to hold a week's seminar on his creative outcome in the NYU Program in Educational Theatre. The seminar was to take place in February 1993 and five people from Performance Studies would be able to take part.

Students began to ask if it was worth. Our distinguished lecturer tilted his somewhat squat figure to one side, pondered, and after a while said that Grotowski was a theatre maker who should be placed among the greatest of the twentieth century, with Stanislavski, Brecht, Artaud, and Meyerhold – and definitely before Brook, who did not, he said, evolve his own body of theory.

Schechner announced that if more than five people applied, he would draw lots. To encourage students, he added that the six-day seminar occupying early afternoon to evening would be treated as a normal university course – its participants would receive four credits for it. But there was an absolute requirement for regular attendance. The reputation of Performance Studies and Schechner himself would be at risk, as he had vouched to the organizers for ‘his people’.

Two weeks later came the drawing of lots. There were ten candidates. I drew the number six, so theoretically was eliminated, but soon two people decided against attending because of the weight of other obligations. My wife, Joanna Ostrowska, and I contrived what to do so that she could also take part in the seminar. In the end, we decided to go together on the first day and trust to luck.

In January 1993, Schechner shared with us the most disturbing news from Pontedera, Italy – then Grotowski's residence and work centre – that after two heart attacks in 1992, his arrival could not be guaranteed. And if he did come, he would not lead the entire seminar. For now, we only know that the seminar would most likely be run by his assistants from the time he spent in Irvine, California, and Pontedera. He would meet the participants only once, on Friday, 26 February, in the evening.

Figure 1.1Richard Schechner in Copenhagen, during 10th session of International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), May 1996.

Source: Photograph by: Torben Huss. © Odin Teatret Archives

Monday 22 February 1993

Joanna Ostrowska and I both crossed the threshold of the NYU Educational Building on Washington Place. We entered a black-box theatre space of small size, with the audience seated along two walls perpendicular to each other. The windows were closed and covered, the darkness was illuminated by artificial light. I was reminded of Stanislavski's complaints about the working conditions of the theatre people who came to rehearsal shortly after dawn in the winter and left when it was already dark outside. So we had almost a week before us to spend in conditions a bit milder than those mentioned by the Russian master: the days beginning at one o'clock and ending at six, the exception being the Friday, when we would be free till a planned evening meeting with Grotowski, starting at nine o'clock, and which would end when our guest felt tired.

The seminar programme covered only the ‘theatre period’ of the activities of Grotowski and the Polish Laboratory Theatre, i.e. 1959–1969, from the taking over of the Theatre of Thirteen Rows¹ in Opole by Grotowski and his company to the premiere of Apocalypsis cum Figuris.² We were to focus primarily on performances – on the process of work on them and on their productions. Lectures and seminars were to be supplemented with film records of performances and actors’ training. The recording of The Constant Prince ³ was to be preceded by a short introduction from Grotowski himself, and the meeting with the creator of the Polish Laboratory Theatre was to be concerned primarily with this particular performance.

Dozens of people were walking here and there unhurriedly in the dark room. But it turned out that on the first day only four people from our Department came, including myself. So we agreed with Robert Taylor, the event co-ordinator, that my wife would be able to stay that day and every other day, unless there were a full set of five participants from Performance Studies. There never was. So my wife took part not only in all lectures and discussions, but also in the meeting with Grotowski.

At 1:10 p.m., Robert Findlay, professor at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, the author of many articles about Grotowski and the Laboratory Theatre and chief coordinator of the seminar, tells us that he has been travelling regularly to Poland since 1974, that during the martial law period at the beginning of the 1980s he managed to bring to Lawrence Zbigniew Cynkutis, actor of the Polish Laboratory Theatre, that he has co-operated with the members of the Theatre many times in many places around the world, and has been conducting regularly for more than ten years a Grotowski seminar as one of his university courses.

The idea of our seminar was born in the summer of 1992, in Irvine, where Grotowski returned at least once a year after ending his permanent stay on the campus to oversee the continuation of the programme he started. When the seminars were discussed Grotowski said that they should be limited only to the theatrical period, and also promised that he would come to the United States personally, even though his health was already very poor. The seminar was to take place in Lawrence, but the University of Kansas authorities refused to transfer the appropriate funds. In view of this, Findlay began to look for other universities to cope financially with organizing the seminar and bringing Grotowski from Europe. That's how he got to New York University.

The main organizational problem of our event is of course the personal meeting. New York is full of people who would like to see Grotowski, but since the hero of our seminar is very ill he can only meet with a small circle of friends and would like to organize his public speech to lose as little strength as possible. From Pontedera, instructions have recently been issued to limit the number of participants of the meeting with Grotowski to twenty-five people, but in that case the costs of organizing the seminar would significantly exceed the income from our event (many participants from outside NYU paid for their participation in it, and guests from outside New York would not receive travel expenses). Professor Findlay informed us that Grotowski was already in New York, but – according to his wishes – the organizers of the seminar would not reveal his address.

While discussing the content of the film material to be shown at the seminar, Findlay revealed, inter alia, that there existed a film strip (made in 1979 in Milan) on which fragments of Apocalypsis cum Figuris are seen, but Grotowski will not agree to its public presentation, believing that it does not adequately reflect what the actors of the Polish Laboratory Theatre wanted to achieve in contact with the audience.

While introducing the participants of the seminar to the subsequent stages of Grotowski's and the Polish Laboratory Theatre's work, Findlay said that during his practical work at Lawrence, he was using some paratheatrical techniques learned in Wrocław. He believed that with their help he could loosen up the performers, enabling them to free themselves from stress before the rehearsal. After this ‘paratheatrical warming-up’ they are more focused, better prepared for hard work, and, most important, their imagination works more freely. Discussing the post-theatrical phase of Grotowski's work, Findlay announced that the artist's recent search in the area of ‘ritual arts’ was characterized by a formal discipline reminiscent of the discipline of the ‘theatre period’.

Findlay went on to say that Grotowski's American perception in the theatrical period of his work was very different from the reaction of the audience and critics in Poland. Because in his homeland Grotowski remains a person perceived in a more political than artistic context, as many of his artistic activities resulted directly from his complicated relations with the communist authorities. He himself stated in Irvine in 1992 that his theatre was apolitical in order to be political, and that the performance most involved in politics was The Constant Prince.

Findlay added, however, that there were many perspectives from which one could observe the theatrical creativity of Grotowski in a cognitively prolific way. In addition to the aesthetic and religious perspective, the political perspective may also be interesting, but is not the most important.

Findlay concluded with a metaphor of the river to illustrate the Polish Laboratory Theatre team's creative attitude: the river's bed follows a strictly defined line, but new water flows through differently every day. Thanks to the discipline of work and professional awareness, so the company work in co-operation with the audience and in harmony with themselves. Apocalypsis cum Figuris was variously aggressive or tired or calm or excited, depending on what was happening to the performers, between each other, and between them and the audience.

Figure 1.2Apocalypsis cum Figuris by Polish Laboratory Theatre in Wrocław (1969), scenario, stage direction: Jerzy Grotowski; co-direction: Ryszard Cieślak. On the photograph from left to right: Zygmunt Molik (Judas), Elisabeth Albahaca (Mary Magdalene), Zbigniew Cynkutis (Lazarus).

Source: Photograph by: Maurizio Buscarino. © Maurizio Buscarino

The floor was then given to an elderly, carelessly dressed man sitting somewhere in the back rows of the audience. It was Gerald Rabkin, professor at Rutgers University at Newark, New Jersey, one of the lecturers at our seminar, who wanted to tell us that for him our work would be combined with the desire to find out the response of the young generation of today to the challenge of the 1960s generation: ‘I am interested in what you actually want from Grotowski and why you signed up for this course’.

Findlay added that regardless of what one wanted from Grotowski, the hero of our seminar can just be liked as a human being. It is difficult to understand ‘people from the guild’, whose attitude to Grotowski is generally to treat him like a sacred picture, even if he stands a few steps away from them at the time of the party, with a glass of wine in his hand. But he is just a man like us, and what is more he is very human, endearing, and unpretentious.

After all those who wished to make introductory remarks, recommendations, directives, and objections had done so, I could only think that Grotowski was evoking the same panic, the same fever in the United States as in Poland, like the atmosphere in the court of an absolutist monarch, saturated with a ‘spirit of conspiracy’ reminiscent of old Polish times.

It was time to prepare the participants of the seminar to watch the film recording of Akropolis.⁴ Findlay and Taylor agreed that if we did not know that it had had its première in 1962, thirty-one years earlier, we would be inclined to assume that it was made yesterday. Rabkin added: ‘Do not forget a video recording does not reflect the fullness of this performance. But it's all we have’. Grotowski's previous performances cannot be seen even as a film ‘shadow shadows’, so this Akropolis record is already something.

Findlay then announced the first speaker, and a tall man with a slender face and grey, short hair emerged from the darkness. ‘André Gregory!’ Findlay announced, and the welcome guest was greeted with applause.

After the dissolution of his company, the Manhattan Project and completing the work of the Theatre and Human Research Laboratory, Gregory devoted himself to working in film, collaborating with such well-known figures in contemporary cinema as Peter Weir and Martin Scorsese. Then he directed the famous production of Uncle Vanya which had played at most of the renowned New York venues.

Now Gregory was standing before us in the dark room of the Black Box Theatre at Washington Place, rubbing his hands nervously. His presence became very intense, gestures of the hands stimulating our emotions, while the gentle smile was calming. He watched the room as if he did not know how to begin, then finally confessed that he never prepared these types of speeches, that he just thinks about what will happen between him and the listeners.

He does not encourage us to make notes, because when you record, you do not listen carefully. Anyway, who needs notes? After all, if one listens carefully, you remember what is most important, and what is forgotten is clearly worth forgetting. Memory is reliable and eliminates anything that does not really excite our emotions and memories. I was curious what I would remember, put down my pen, and began to listen intently.

Gregory turned out to be a great speaker who could move his listeners deeply, take all of their attention, and lead them through the meanders of his reflections and emotions with the skill and freedom given only to really great personalities. While he was obviously shy by nature, he could tame his shyness. On the other hand, as someone endowed with great sensitivity, he could feel the mood of his listeners and could, for instance, stray to an anecdote (always interesting and informative) when the audience showed signs of tiredness.

He started from the fact that theatre is lifelike. Well, nothing new under the sun, but how he did it! He told us that about a year ago his wife of over thirty years died. This froze us – were we dealing with a spiritual exhibitionist? But keeping an intellectual distance from his experiences, he used them as instructive examples. ‘Look’, he said, ‘the person closest to me went into oblivion, and after two weeks I could not exactly remember her face’. In Gregory's opinion, the same is true of the theatre: we watch the performance and then it loses its features in our memory, leaving only a trace in our emotions.

Even if we see a theatre performance two, three, five times in order to remember as much as possible, what will remain in us will be only the energy, the aura, the message. For Gregory, the performances of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 February 1993, Grotowski in New York City: Expectations, hopes, and stereotypes
• 2 June 1995, Ludwik Flaszen again in Wrocław
• 3 May 1996, Jerzy Grotowski in Copenhagen: Three encounters with the sage
• 4 March 1997, Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Polish Theatre in Wrocław: Seven hours of informing, clarifying, elucidating, specifying, and explaining themselves: The Sage and his successor confront the Polish audience: Richards for the first time, Grotowski for the last time
• 5 Night Vigil
• 6 Action
• Bibliographic information
• Index