Akropolis
A legendary version of Stanisław Wyspiański's play, Akropolis was staged by Jerzy Grotowski and Józef Szajna at the Teatr 13 rzędów (Theatre of 13 Rows) in Opole in 1962. It was also one of the most signficant stagings of 20th century theatre. According to Paweł Gawlik, a long-time artistic director at Kraków's Stary Theatre, Akropolis is also one of the most radical stagings we could have ever witnessed on our Polish stages.
The artists shifted the action of the play into the drama of 20th century Europe. They moved it from the original Wawel, the Polish Acropolis, a centuries' old royal castle which had served as a national sanctuary and burial place for the nation's rulers. In their version, the drama is played out in "the cemetery of tribes", that is, the reality of concentration camps. According to the Grotowski.net portal, this widely commented on and vigorously interpreted piece still remains unrecognised for many of its aspects. One of the heroes of a documentary film by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz recalls decades later that "we arrived in Opole, and we went to see Akropolis, it was a huge shock for us". The prominent theatre scholar and author of the book Teatr Zagłady (Theatre of the Shoah), Grzegorz Niziołek, commented in an article for Dwutygodnik.com:
Akropolis is not just images of a concentration camp, but also a very well-articulated theme of the Shoah of Jews, albeit one articulated in a strange, and somewhat subliminal form (…) In fact, the performances of Grotowski and Kantor are difficult to interpret, it's hard to understand what actually happens in them. In my opinion, a certain disturbance of the strategy of artistic representation that takes place there is intricately bound with the experience of the Shoah, and with the existence of a powerful taboo within the collective consciousness. In both cases, the viewer is placed in a new situation, and he is exposed to dealing with something that is located, as I said in the case of Akropolis, "beyond the pleasure principle" [a concept and phrase coined by Freud]. The experience of shock, of some kind of an emotional disturbance, seems very important to me."
Barba and Brook
These are the two masters of European theatre whose biographies are forever linked with Grotowski. The Italian Eugenio Barba was a director and the founder of Odin Theatre, a scholar of the performing arts and the founder of an anthropology of theatre who first visited Poland in 1961. He was a recipient of a UNESCO scholarship, as part of which he took up a course at PWST - Poland's Higher School of Theatre in Warsaw. He collaborated with the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, and soon became one of Grotowski's closest collaborators. He was officially appointed his assistant, and, due to his fascination with his master's theatre, Barba also became the biggest propagator of his creativity in the West. Barba was the author of the first book about Grotowski, and he co-authored, edited and published Towards A Poor Theatre. Eugenio Barba also described the time he spent in Poland in a book titled Ziemia popiołu i diamentów. Moje terminowanie w Polsce (The Land of Ash and Diamonds. My Stay in Poland). He was presented with an honorary doctorate from the University of Wrocław, and he is also a recipient of the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for contributions to Polish culture.
The British artist Peter Brook found himself in Poland after he set off on a search for theatrical experiments. This is how he met Grotowski, and in 1966, he invited him to work on an anti-military documentary, together with Ryszard Cieślak. From the mid-1960s, he supported Grotowski's work by regularly inviting him to collaborate on projects, and through hosting his work in the theatres he headed – from the RSC to the Bouffes du Nord, where the first lecture of Grotowski as professor of the Collège de France was held in 1966. Peter Brook is also one of the most important contributors to commentaries on Grotowski's work and writings. He authored a large fragment of the Empty Space which was devoted to Grotowski, and he wrote a preface to Towards a Poor Theatre. It was in the latter publication that Brook coined the concept of "art as a vehicle", a term later appropriated and used by Grotowski in the last stage of his work.
To find out more about the collaboration of Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba with Grotowski, we recommend visiting the bilingual www.grotowski.net portal, operated by the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.
Cieślak
He acted in all the performances ever staged by Grotowski, the front man of his theatre, and a living symbol of the new acting method – the concept of "poor acting".
The period of close and intense collaboration between Ryszard Cieślak and Grotowski was connected with his legendary impersonation of Don Fernando in the Książę niezłomny (Constant Prince) production. This role brought Cieślak international fame and acclaim. Following the series of showings in the US in the autumn of 1969, New York critics hailed him as the best off-broadway actor. Cieślak thus commented on his work on the role, nowadays considered a breakthrough moment in the art of acting:
"It is anyhow impossible to treat it in merely artistic terms. It resulted in my fundamental transformation, not only as an actor, but also as a human being. It was a compound process, wherein the maturation of an actor was bound with the maturation of a human being. The role evolved, it was shaping itself just as my personal stance towards various phenomena, towards my surroundings and the world was formed. ("Aktor - marzenia, myśli, rozterki. Ryszard Cieślak" A talk conducted by Leonia Jabłonkówna, "Teatr" 1971, nr 14). Ryszard Cieślak also added "It was the deepest kind of self-penetration, a type of a personal confession." ("Aktor natchniony" A talk conducted by Tadeusz Buski, "Gazeta Robotnicza" 1974, nr 74)
After Cieślak's death, during a special meeting devoted to the actor in Paris, Jerzy Grotowski recalled: "When I think about Ryszard Cieślak, I think about a creative actor. I think that he himself was the embodiment of an actor who creates in the same sense in which a poet writes, and in which van Gogh painted."
Cieślak's last role at the Laboratorium Theatre was that of Ciemny in Apocalypsis cum figuris. It was a part that won him acclaim, especially in the United States.
Dziady: Forefathers' Eve
The all-time Polish classic, written by Mickiewicz in the early 19th century, formed the base of an experiment for Grotowski. It was a sketch, an essay, and a research project. Grotowski was interested in reaching the sources of ritual customs depicted in part II of the play, and he also aimed at inaugurating a sense of unity in the experiencing of theatre. The division between the audience and the actors was blurred, as the performers acted among those who were spectators. The director decided to do away with the patriotic and national themes of the play, and he only worked with what seemed crucial to him. He threw out Part III, usually regarded as the most important, and left only the scene of Wielka Improwizacja (The Great Improvisation). He decided to underscore the usually overlooked motifs of rebellion and love. In conversation with Jerzy Falkowski, he said:
We concentrate the meaning of the performance in the Improvisation. In a narrowed meaning, one could say that a lonesome and omnipresent rebellion is hopeless. A meaning that is wider and superior would be identical to the constant object of our search, which Władysław Broniewski described as (…) 'feeling' your voice and body into the human fate (Dziady jako model teatru nowoczesnego. Jerzy Falkowski talks with Jerzy Grotowski., "Współczesność" 1961, nr 21 quoted after Dziady. Od Wyspiańskiego do Grzegorzewskiego, edited by Tadeusz Kornaś and Grzegorz Niziołek, Kraków 1999)
In an interview, Grotowski explained that he was not at all interested in rendering the classic a contemporary piece, nor was he into mocking the romantic convention. He claimed that Mickiewicz wrote good texts, and that was the reason why the writer appeared in his theatre. Although the adaptation diverged significantly from the standard ideas of what a staging of Dziady should be about, taking up this classic was the result of a fascination with Mickiewicz's texts. It was not a very lenient fascination. What it aimed at was employing the text's possibilities in order to build theatre with avant-garde ambitions.
Emigration
On the 12th of August, 1982, Jerzy Grotowski left Poland. He arrived in Denmark, but from there, he travelled to the United States. He announced his split from relations with "the regime in Poland", and his decision to emigrate in a letter to the members of Teatr Laboratorium. Yet, as a long-time member of the PZPR communist party, he was never persecuted, and he never officially spoke out against communism. After the political transformation of 1989, Grotowski never returned to live in Poland. He continued to work in the Italian town of Pontedera until the end of his life. This is how he commented on his decision:
I left Poland because of the Martial Law. It was a decision that was impossible for me to avoid, because in such a situation, there is a huge difference between directing a theatre which makes performances for a wide audience within one country – even if it is financed by a state that is considered oppressive – and directing a closed international laboratory which uses the funding of a country with special regulations. I received asylum in the USA.
Flaszen
"You will be the head and director, and I will be your main collaborator", wrote Ludwik Flaszen in a letter to Jerzy Grotowski, as he offered him the position of director at the Opole theatre. This is how their common path began, and with it, a bond lasting years between an intellectual and an artist, a director and a renowned literary critic from Kraków. It was one of the most prominent duos of Polish theatre, and this is how the two spoke of it themselves:
"In our collaboration with Ludwik, his stunning and invigorating role was to be the devil's advocate. Eruption and turmoil, especially in the early years […] were MY domain, and Ludwik, thanks to the his calm and precise criticism, granted me a fuller objectivisation of what came out of the sources, a kind of ability to formulate, so that things could be defended and be filtered as something consistent. Here, I am referring to the inner [collaboration] between us, the one that is not known to other people, while there are many very important elements of this collaboration which are known or obvious (…)" Zbigniew Osiński: Grotowski on "theatre couples" (Osterwa – Limanowski, Stanisławski – Niemirowicz-Danczenko, Grotowski – Flaszen) and his Centro di Lavoro – Workcenter w Pontederze, "Pamiętnik Teatralny” 2001
Let us give Flaszen a voice. In one of the interviews published in the Echa Krakowa (Echoes of Kraków) magazine, he spoke about the new theatrical form of contact with the audience: "We are well aware of the fact that a viewer unaccustomed to this kind of theatre will not grant us considerable attendance, especially in the early stages. I don't think, however, that this would the most important reason to give up the search. We hope that victory will be ours, hopefully before the grave".
GITIS
This is Grotowski and the Russian experience. The mysterious abbreviation, as the Grotowski Institute reveals to us, stands for Gosudarstvennyi Institut Tyeatralnovo Iskusstva – The National Institute of Theatre Art in Moscow (which is currently called RATI – Rossiyskaya Akademia Tyeatralnowo Iskusstva, the Russian Academy of Theatre Art). This is the famous Russian theatre school, one of the country's most significant educational centres. Jerzy Grotowski was a student of the institute from late August 1955 to April 1956. The biggest revelation of the months spent in Moscow was the tradition of the institute's greatest students – Meyerhold and Vakhtangov. Grotowski delved into the achievements and ideas of Meyerhold as he worked on the documentation in the archives. The story goes that he was led into rooms which contained the documentation material – which was forbidden at the time – by an old lady, the head of the institute's archives, who had a soft spot for Poles.
The Idiot
Grotowski's favourite novel, and also the only performance of the Theatre of 13 Rows that he had directed by Waldemar Krygier, the artistic director of the theatre. Why? It remains a mystery, but the internet encyclopaedia, Grotowski.net reveals that:
"The actors performed in historic costumes, with their faces painted white and transformed into some kind of mask. The transitions between scenes were marked by a dreamy dance to baroque music. The finale of the whole was constituted of a talk between Rogozhyn and Myshkin after the death of Nastasia, which finished with a brief laugh"
According to the actors, the performance was a success, and it was liked by those performing and the audience alike. The critics were also univocal in their judgement, and they especially praised the acting of Antoni Jahołkowski and Zygmunt Molik. The performance was shown in Opole, and also in Wrocław, Katowice, Kraków and Łódź.
Jahołkowski
From the very beginning, he was connected to the Laboratorium Theatre and he performed in all of its productions. The actor Antoni Jahołkowski had a distinct cabaret talent and was also gifted musically. He used his skills in the piece called Błażej Sartre Cabaret, for which he also composed the music. He was cast in dozens of roles, and among the most remembered are the role of King in The Constant Prince and the role of Simon Peter in Apocalipsis cum figuris. Jahołkowski passed away on the 1st September, 1981. His last performance was called Thanatos polski (The Polish Thanatos). His accompanying artists, Teresa Nawrot, Ryszard Cieślak and Lucyna Pijaczewska recalled it in the following way:
"We knew that it was Antek's last role. In my opinion, Antek went beyond himself in this piece. Antoś was never the way he was in this performance. Antoś performed the last role of his life. It is a wonderful coming into being of this constantly warm, cordial friend, the best man – Antek Jahołkowski."
Książę Niezłomny: The Constant Prince
Ryszard Cieślak said, "One day, Grotowski brought in the text of The Constant Prince that he had put together himself. He didn't bring it to the group, but he asked me to meet him in a cafe late in the evening. He offered the role to me. I stared blankly. He said that it would be very, very difficult, and that he was imaging a finale in which the Prince enters living, real fire. 'So, are you decided, Mr. Ryszard?', and I asked 'But do you imagine that we will perform only once?'"
The theatre scholar Tadeusz Kornaś called the meeting of these two artists and their work on the monologues for The Constant Prince one of the incredible adventures in the history of theatre. The first rehearsals for the performance took place in Opole in 1963. Grotowski worked with Cieślak separately and he also worked with the rest of the team. Kornaś writes:
"The score of the actions was so united with the memories that were found within the body, that almost always it was at the exact same place in the monologue that the Prince's solar plexus began to quiver. As Grotowski used to say, it was an element that wasn't worked upon, but something that surfaced organically in each performance. The energetic centres were simply always triggered at a given moment. The action was so deeply planted within the body that the organism reacted to them in exactly the same way in each performance. Cieślak, I presume, acted within the present tense, as if on each occasion he was taking up the role for the first time."
The actress Maja Komorowska recalls her first confrontation with Cieślak, "What I saw was shocking. I remember that I thought to myself, all right, this one time, ok! But how to repeat this? Every day, every evening?! (…) Ryszard succeeded in doing this. It was precise, meticulous composition, but there wasn't the slightest sign of artificiality. (…) Grotowski's method found its full materialisation here, it became credible. In any case, this explosion, an eruption of emotion and truth – this was no longer merely theatre".
Grotowski and Cieślak worked on this piece for years, and the director admitted that the rehearsals lasted up until the very last showings. Książe Niezłomny was never recorded in its entirety, and the fragments of Cieślak's legendary monologue from a performance in Oslo can be viewed at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy.