In Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory
The event “In Jerzy Grotowski’s Workshop”, organized by the Polish Institute and the Camil Petrescu Foundation with support from the NTF and and Jerzy Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, gives George Banu the opportunity to approach a new topic: Brancusi and Grotowski, two modern “anti-moderns”. At the same event, Leszek Kolankiewicz will speak about The Alchemy of the Laboratory, and Dariusz Kosinski will speak about Grotowski and the Polish Theater of Transformation.
George Banu, a prominent critic and theoretician, essayist and professor, is the author of many theatrical studies, of which the following were also published in Romanian: The Memory of Theater; Red and Gold; The Actor on the Traceless Path; The Cherry Orchard, Our Theater; Oblivion; The Last Quarter-Century in Theater; Peter Brook – Towards the Theater of Simple Forms; Man Seen from Behind. President of the International Association of Theater Critics, director of the Experimental Theater Academy, professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and Louvain la Neuve (Belgium), George Banu has always been close to major figures of world theater, following their careers and studying their work, always with a fresh look at theater making.
The great figures of the “stage revolution”, Craig and Grotowski, stand at both ends of the 20th century. As kindred spirits, they transformed theater and its thinking, rejecting the adoption of the “spirit of the time” and its consequent symptoms, expression or imperatives of modernity. They were the only ones with the courage to be radically “anti-modern”, and by this refusal – not reactionary, but unexpectedly productive – their originality was an inspiration throughout the century. The modernity of “anti-moderns” is the paradox of Craig and Grotowski in theater, one cultivated in sculpture by Brancusi. Their intransigently polemical stance allowed them to be “modern” without being “modern”. George Banu makes an analysis of this exemplary inversion.
Leszek Kolankiewicz is a theorist of culture, a specialist of theatrical anthropology, Director of the Polish Culture Institute of the University of Warsaw, and professor at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theater Academy in the capital of Poland. He collaborated with Jerzy Grotowski between 1973-1982 and edited the Polish edition of Towards a Poor Theater.
He published many books, among which Na drodze do kultury czynnej. O działalności instytutu Grotowskiego Teatr Laboratorium w latach 1970–1977 (The Road to Active Culture. On the Activity of the Grotowski Institute – Laboratory Theater between 1970–1977, Wrocław, 1978). He edited several writings by Jerzy Grotowski: Świat powinien być miejscem prawdy (The World Should Be A Place of Truth), Wędrowanie za Teatrem Źródeł (Following the Theater of Sources), Ćwiczenia (Exercises), Głos (The Voice), Hipoteza robocza (Working Hypothesis), O praktykowaniu romantyzmu (On the Practice of Romanticism), Odpowiedź Stanisławskiemu (Answer to Stanislavski), Teatr Źródeł (The Theater of Sources).
Grotowski named his theater Laboratory. Throughout his career, until the end of his life, he used very frequently terms that reminded of the laboratory specifics of artistic creation. But art is not science. Grotowski’s artistic laboratory resembled rather the alchemists’ laboratories, where ars magna was practiced. If Grotowski approached gnostic themes in his art, he did it like the alchemists of yore. This line of tradition will be presented in the lecture.
Dariusz Kosiński teaches at the Theater Department of the Faculty of Polish Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He published several books of theory and history of the actor’s art, and the essay Polski teatr przemiany (The Polish Theater of Transformation, Wrocław, 2007). Recently he published Grotowski. Przewodnik (Grotowski. A Guide, Wrocław, 2009). He contributes to Dialog magazine and is a member of the Scientific Council of the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw.
"The Polish Theater of Transformation" is a specific Polish theatrical tradition originated in the thought and works of the Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz; it tends to use theater and its methods as tools of personal development and revolutionary transformation of the world. In theatrical practice, this tradition was embodied by Reduta Theater, to which Jerzy Grotowski makes a direct reference. In my lecture I present the fundamental characteristics of the Polish Theater of Transformation, emphasizing the aspects that create an important context in understanding the accomplishments of the creator of Laboratory Theater.
