On Grotowski and the Poor Theatre

I am astounded to realize this morning that Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999) would only be turning 90 years old today. Absent the cancer that killed him at age 65 he could still be around, an aged guru leading a flock, like the present Dalai Lama.

When my theatrical criticism perplexes you, when some of the theatre I’ve presented seems very much at odds with vaudeville and the Broadway tradition, you and me both have Grotowski to blame. As a young person, prior to my formal theatrical training, I had no fonder wish than to someday be a successful commercial playwright like Neil Simon. After two years at the Conservatory I attended, my entire brain was rewired, and I’ve never been able to quite put it back the way it was, even in the name of my own material self-interest.

Grotowski was a Polish theatre director, theorist, and teacher whose professional career began in the late ’50s. He drew from the inspiring Jeremiads of Antonin Artaud, Jungian psychology, the biomechanical physical work of Vsevolod Meyerhold, and the common sense acting discoveries of Konstantin Stanislavski to forge what was probably the most influential experimental theatre vision of the second half of the twentieth century. One is always astounded to remember that he developed it in Communist Poland, using state resources after all, but then again, the key tenet of his work, what he called the “Poor Theatre”, was above all non-commercial, scornful of nearly every aspect of what most western theatre-goers (to this day) want or expect from a “show”. Costumes, sets, and most props are either de-emphasized or eliminated — the actor does the whole thing. In its most extreme form, the script and even speech are done away with, or at least reassembled in some sort of non-linear and poetic fashion, so as to be non-literal. The onus is on the actor, using guts and skill alone to take the audience someplace. In later years, Grotowski also took the production OUTSIDE the theatre, staging works any place, any place at all: a street, a hotel lobby, somebody’s house. This he called “paratheatre”.

Grotowski brought his work to the U.K. and the U.S. starting in the ’60s, influencing figures like Peter Brook and Andre Gregory, and deeply influencing what was then called Off-Off Broadway. As I say, I had been deeply inculcated in it at school. The aspect of it that took root most deeply was more the ethic of it than the aesthetic piece, though that influenced me as well. And to this day, I find that I have a very hard time working in what is deemed the “professional” theatre — the division of labor, the union-protected, straight-jacketed work functions that each person is assigned and cannot deviate from, and the catering to an increasingly disengaged audience’s tastes and expectations through the use of things like marketing surveys, and what-not. Total freedom is the highest artistic goal or should be, it seems to me. That was last happening with any widespread energy and momentum in this country about a half-century ago.

10, 20 years ago there was a debate in the Indie Theatre community about what exactly Indie Theatre even was. To some, it was work in the Grotowski mold; to others, it was more like indie cinema, and could indeed be something along the Roger Corman lines, scrappier, smaller-budgeted productions with commercial aims, up to and including community theatre productions of Broadway musicals. I always found myself drawing from both, because, what the hell, I’m chucking spaghetti at the wall.

When I first learned about Grotowski (circa 1986) he was living in Italy. By then interest in, and resources for, pure art of his kind had evaporated in the U.S. Today, we’re down to something like fumes. On the other hand, I have to say the commercial theatre in this country has gotten very good over the last couple of decades. There are many ways to skin a cat — if your goal is skinned cats.