Guślarz i eremita [The Guslar and the Hermit] (review)

Much has been written and many brilliant (and not so brilliant) things have been said about Jerzy Grotowski since the 1960s, however, a decade after his death, theatre scholarship has yet to account for the full impact of his legacy. While “poor theatre,” “holy actor,” and “total act” made it into the theatre’s vernacular, few can recognize much less relate notions such as “theatre of sources,” “objective drama,” or “art as vehicle” to contemporary practice, or understand Grotowski’s post-presentational work (1969–1999) as nascent stages of ongoing research in and through performance. Charmed or puzzled, the generation directly influenced by Grotowski often proved unable to get past the power of his myth or apprehend his uncompromising and tireless investigation. Therefore, paradoxically, understanding Grotowski’s project as a whole may become a task passed on to those who have not seen the work, or at any rate to those able to demythologize Grotowski without degrading him. Grotowski himself would respect a thought that embraces his vocabulary without being crippled by it, one capable of “a high-level betrayal” towards him.¹

Among the recent wave of “kiss-and-tell” testimonials published on Grotowski in Poland by some of those formerly close to him,² Guślarz i eremita by Grzegorz Ziółkowski seems at first an exception. The author belongs to a younger generation of Polish scholars and artists who, despite never having worked with Grotowski or met him personally, publicly position themselves as bearers of his legacy, and consequently disseminate their own expropriation of the man and his project. “Can this man be someone close to us? To those who never saw him and never received his charm? Who never worshipped him like a god? Who never were nor are his pupils?” asks Ziółkowski in the introduction by quoting Grotowski’s remarks on behalf of his own adopted artistic father, Juliusz Osterwa (9). Grotowski’s answer was affirmative both in verbal declaration and in his work, which, like Osterwa’s, functioned as a laboratory. Therefore the question is not “if” Grotowski can be close to us, but rather, “how”? What does it mean for us today to be close to Grotowski? What can we learn about him from the work continued at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards?

Ziółkowski wrote and published Guślarz i eremita during his tenure as the director of the Grotowski Institute (2005–2009).³ One of the pivotal publications foregrounding the UNESCO Year of Grotowski in Poland, Guślarz i eremita deals with Grotowski’s last project based in Poland, Theatre of Sources, and the Objective Drama and Art as vehicle projects based in Irvine, California, and in Pontedera, Italy, respectively. Lacking direct experience with Grotowski, Ziółkowski reaches out to a vast assortment of Polish and international material, from well-known to obscure, with a particular focus on two pivotal lecture series given by Grotowski: at La Sapienza, the University of Rome (1982) and at the Collège de France (1997–1998), of which the former remains published only in fragments in Italian, and the latter exclusively as an audio recording in French (per Grotowski’s wish). Due to limited access to these and other sources, and more importantly, due to the fact that the period in focus is among the least known, Guślarz i eremita has the potential to have a formidable influence on Grotowski scholarship in Poland, and thus requires careful analysis.

Impressive archival research and laboriously collected references make Guślarz i eremita one of the most complete scholarly resources on Grotowski. But, as much as one can admire the scope of the research, one can become disappointed by an often meager and sometimes questionable outcome. Close comparative reading of the source materials in search of clues leads Ziółkowski to trace changes in phraseology in Grotowski’s consecutive edits of his texts only to contemplate, for example, the replacement of...