Ludwik Flaszen, among Jerzy Grotowski’s closest collaborators and the cofounder of Teatr Laboratorium, comes to Wrocław with a series of seminars. "Acropolis. Faust. Hamlet. In a Theatre of European Myth" takes place as part of the ongoing International Theatre Festival - The World as a Place of Truth
Ludwik Flaszen has witnessed and actively contributed to a very interesting period in 20th-century theatre history. One of the innovative director Jerzy Grotowski’s closest collaborators and a co-founder of Teatr Laboratorium, Flaszen analyses founding myths of Western civilisation and the way theatre constitutes a medium of their transmission. The first of his seminars presents the Faust theme, with sessions on the 23rd and 24th of November conducted by Professors Włodzimierz Szturc and Krzysztof Rutkowski. The meetings examine theatre's role in global reality and in confronting cultural frictions in the crisis of contemporary European identity.
Flaszen worked with Grotowski's legendary, revolutionary theatre group from its beginning in 1959 until its end in 1984, when he moved to Paris. He conducted paratheatrical experiements and acting workshops across the world, and has written several publications. His first book, Głowa i mur (The Head and the Wall), was written in 1958 and confiscated by Poland’s communist censorship. Cyrograf, a collection of essays and short stories about the fate of an individual living in a totalitarian system, was published in 1971 and translated into French. Flaszen has written about working with Grotowski and contributing to the doctrine of Teatr Laboratorium. Teatr skazany na magię (A Theatre Condemned to Magic) came out in 1983, and in 2010 Flaszen published Grotowski&Company in English.
Flaszen's seminars are part of the 2nd edition of the International Theatre Festival - The World as a Place of Truth, and take place on a bimonthly basis. Following the November meetings, Flaszen will take part in a session conducted by Krzysztof Czyżewski and Grzegorz Niziołek, and on the 12th and 13th of January 2013, the session with Prof. Joanna Walaszek and the scientific director of the Grotowski Institute, Prof. Dariusz Kosiński.
The exhibition Veritas obscura runs during the festival, presenting an intriguing experiment in recording the physical presence of theatre performance. Pinhole cameras set up by Aneta Lis and Łukasz Kania documented Teatr ZAR's Caesarian Section. Essays on Suicide earlier this year during the Polska Arts programme in Edinburgh. ZAR's graphic, provocative piece impressed audiences and critics alike, and received the Herald Angel and Total Theatre Awards. For Lis and Kania, pinhole camera-obscura technology, which minimalizes human intrusion, became a means of exploring theatre performance. Images of the play were also taken by Wojciech Bednarek using thermal-imaging cameras, which recorded changes in body temperature of actors and spectators bodies through ZAR's performance.
Ludwik Flaszen's seminars take place in Teatr Laboratorium's former space at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław. They begin on the 23rd and 24th of November, at 5 p.m., and are open to the public and free of charge.The exhibtion is on view from the 22nd of November until the 1st of December 2012 at the CaféTHEI on Przejście Żelaźnicze 4.
For more information about the seminars, visit the festival’s website: www.swiatmiejscemprawdy.pl.
Editor: SRS
Source: press release