Grotowski's Akropolis: A Retrospective View

Grotowski's Akropolis: A Retrospective View ROBERT FINDLAY It is impossible presently to estimate the value future theatre historians and critics will place on Jerzy Grotowski's more recent experiments in such exotic areas as paratheatrics and theatre anthropology. Such experiments have broken drastically with traditional conceptions ofWestem theatre, and as a result there is presently no fully adequate vocabulary either to describe or to evaluate these works. I Nonetheless, those who write in future about Grotowski will inevitably have to contend with his inherently difficult but strictly theatrical work with the Teatr Laboratorium. Such work developed, of course, in the period from the founding of the group in 1959 through the various transformations of Apocalypsis cum figuris during its thirteen years of performance (1968 to 1981). Clearly the most dominant and influential experiment'alist and theorist during the 1960s and early 1970s, Grotowski has been hailed by many of his contemporaries as the most significant twentieth-century theatrical figure since Stanislavsky. It remains to be seen whether such an estimate ultimately will be sustained, but it seems clear that Grotowski's prominence in the broad spectrum of twentieth-century theatrical history is assured. 2 What is curious about Grotowski's fame is that it rests on a relatively small number of productions seen by relatively few people. Before Grotowski embarked on his paratheatrical experiments in the early I 970s, for example, the Laboratorium had produced only eleven different works over a period of approximately a decade, and typically all of these were designed for very small audience groups. Moreover, when the Laboratorium first performed in New York for eight weeks in 1969, presenting three different works in forty-eight performances, Stuart Little wryly noted that "[t]he total audience for the whole engagement would scarcely have filled the Majestic Theater for the two performances on a matinee day of Fiddler on the Roof."3 What is even more curious about Grotowski's celebrity is that his performances have been in 2 ROBERT FINDLAY Polish, a minor European language spoken and understood outside Poland by almost no one except emigres. Grotowski's art has always existed in the ephemerality of performance, and even if his promptbooks and notes were translated from Polish, they would be poor substitutes. Thus, non-Polish audiences and critics who have seen Grotowski's work almost inevitably focus on the extreme discipline of his actors, their athleticism, and their incomparable vocal skills. What too frequently has been missed, or at best only partly understood, is the sheer brilliance ofGrotowski's directorial conceptions. To be sure, these conceptions have always depended heavily upon nonverbal means: the actors' essential physicality, the utterance of inarticulate sounds, animal roars, chants, etc. But, as in most theatrical performances, the more intricate and subtle nuances have depended as well upon essentially literary elements: namely, the dramatic form of the performance, the words spoken by the actors, and, perhaps most importantly, some awareness by the audience of the original text from which the performance has evolved. A specific case in point is the production of Stanislaw Wyspia6.ski's Akropolis, performed originally in 1962, the first of Grotowski's four acknowledged masterpieces.4 THE TEXT OF WYSPIANSKI' S AKROPOLIS Wyspia6.ski's original is a long, plotless, essentially actionless drama in four parts, first published in 1904 but not produced until 1926 - and never, of course, translated into English.5 While the play shows some influence of the late nineteenth-century symbolists, Akropolis still owes its largest debt to the early nineteenth-century Polish romantic tradition of Adam Mickiewicz, luliusz Slowacki, and Zygmunt Krasinski. From these earlier poet-playwrights , Wyspia6.ski gained the sense, uniquely Polish, of the playwright as a kind of seer and national leader. Thus, his Akropolis of 1904 is both a religious and a political statement to a then nonexistent Polish nation, partitioned from the late eighteenth century until after World War I by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Grotowski's directorial genius becomes clearer through examining some of the specific features ofWyspianski's original before discussing the remarkable transformation wrought by the Laboratorium's production.6 The action of Wyspia6.ski's play occurs in and around Wawel cathedral...