POOR THEATRE AND GROTOWSKI Flashcards
Given circumstances of Poor Theatre
When: 1950s/1960s
Where: Poland
Why: Return to essence of theatre - intimate relationship between actor and audience
Who: Jerzy Grotowski
What: Poor Theatre
How: Features and Characteristics
WHAT: Poor Theatre
- Theatre stripped of artifice, with a focus on pure presence of the actor
- Actor is trained to remove all obstacles that would get in the way
- To perform at a highly demanding level: physically, emotionally, psychically
- Heart: intense encounter between audience and actor – reveal the essence of humanity (WE MUST DROP OUR MASKS)
- Poor theatre has been created in situations where economic constraints demand ingenuity (creativity), and also in periods of political turmoil
- Focuses on the actors’ ability to tell the story without aid of tech or design elements
- Very influential in development of South African Protest Theatre
BEGINNINGS OF POOR THEATRE
ORIGINS
- 1959 : Grotowski created the Theatre Laboratory in Opole, Poland
- Investigated the nature of theatre, the art/pure presence of the actor
- Approach used in experimental theatre practitioners + political activists as a means of propagting ideas.
GROTOWSKI’S EARLY LIFE
ORIGINS
- Grotowski studied acting, however his theoretical work far surpassed his practical work.
- Influences: Stanislavski (spiritual father), Asia (eastern philosophy, yoga, meditation, esoteric texts), Marceau, Artaud
POLITICAL UNREST IN POLAND
ORIGINS
- ** WWII: After effects**, millions of Polish dead or deported to Nazi concetration or Soviet Union labour camps.
- 1956, Polish October: Riots between independance vs keep Soviet Union happy
- Grotowski politically active; secretary of a socialist youth movement.
LABORATORY THEATRE
ORIGINS
- Ludwig Flaszen + Gotowski dissatisfied with the existing theatre.
- Created the Laboratory Theatre; experimental
- Explored archetypal myths from Western and Eatern philosophy/cultures
HOW: CHARACTERISTICS OF POOR THEATRE
FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
- Emphasis on ensemble work
- Complete dedication to the craft of acting
- Belief: theatre had borrowed too much from film, therefore violated it’s own essence
- Goal: to eliminate everything not required by theatre, remaining actor and audience
HOW DOES GROTOWSKI ACHIEVE THESE CHARACTERISTICS?
FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
- Actor is elevated; reduction of any artistic means of expression in addition to the actor
- ASCETICISM: self denial, austerity, self discipline, often for spiritual improvement
- No make-up, costume changes to indicate role
- All music/sound to be produced by the actor IDEOPHONES
- No traditional scenery, few functional props
- Abandoned the Proscenium Arch in favour of a large rearrangable room
AIM
FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
Make the audience and actors confront themselves in something
resembling a religious experience
Explore the relationship between ritual and play. He saw theatre as a ritual to which spectators were admitted.
SCRIPT
FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
- Found patterns to have universal meaning for audience
- Much of script abandoned; the remainder rearranged with focus on universal archytypes
THEATRE PRACTIONERS ON GROTOWSKI
FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
- As Grotowski came from an Eastern European tradition heavily seeped in Catholicism, this had a major impact and influence on his work.
- Christ-like figures often suffer in his plays.
- Athol Fugard influenced by Grotowski
GROTOWSKI’S FIRST PRINCIPAL OF THEATRE
FEATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS
Theatre provides an opportunity for what could be called intergration, the discarding of masks, the revealing of real substance: a totality of physical and mental reactions. This opportunity must be treated in a disciplined manner, with a full awareness of the reponsibility it involves. Here we can see the theatre’s theraputic function for people in our present-day civilization.
AUDIENCE-ACTOR RELATIONSHIP
- Essential concern to find perfect audience-actor relationship + embody this in the spacial arrangement of the theatre.
- Sets were entirely functional rather than decorative.
- Set designer = architect
- Intergration of actors and spectators, eliminate the division
- Initially, audience were assigned roles, but this was abandoned and they were seen as spectators or ‘witnesses’
AKROPOLIS
- Actors = inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp
- Potato sacks with holes revealing torn flesh fabric; metaphore for degraded, tortued bodies
-
Auditorium = exterminating room and ; piled with pieces of metal
(stovepipes, tubs, wheelbarrows etc) - Audience represented the dead and sat on tiered bleachers (similar to the double cots from concentration camp)
- Actors enacted daydreams between performing their daily routine
- They attacked metal objects and used them to build a structure over the heads of the audience which became a crematorium
- Ritualistic procession ended the play: God (played by a headless corpse) led the inmates to ‘Paradise” – the gas chamber
KORDIAN
- Setting = psychiatric ward and audience became patients with the protagonist
- Action took place on and around hospital beds, where some audience members were also seated
