Toward the Non-(Re)Presentational Actor

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Toward theNon-(Re)presentational ActorFrom Grotowski to Richards

Kris Salata

Here you mustdo with your sel, the way you are, the way you were born, with your whole lie, your dreams,

needsdo with your whole sel.

Jerzy Grotowski (1979)

What does it mean, not to hide rom another person? Not to veil or mask yoursel rom another person? Not

to play a diferent person? o reveal yoursel? o reveal yoursel? o disarm yoursel beore another person and

to come orth like that?1

Jerzy Grotowski (1972b)

Jerzy Grotowski was once a sign maker. In his period o making theatrical productions, he

composed dense semiotic structures thickly layered with signifcation using minimal theatricaldevices.2 On Grotowskis stage,3 signs were clearly articulated, separated rom one another by

Figure 1. Tomas Richards in Action at the Church o John the Baptist, Cappadocia, urkey, 2005. (Photo

by Frits Meyst; courtesy o the Workcenter o Jerzy Grotowski and Tomas Richards)


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syncopation, contrast, and displacement, and delivered with high speed, efciency, and velocity,

thus building a syntagmatic perormance text, or rather multiple texts, all released simultane-ously as a palimpsest. This condensed interplay o signs created a paradigmatic resonance inwhich the multitude o meanings unveiled themselves simultaneously. Polish critic and scholar

Konstanty Puzyna saw it this way:

[InApocalypsis cum fguris, Grotowski] multiplies and clashes meanings: the ace o theactor expresses something dierent than his simultaneous hand gesture, and still some-

thing dierent is carried in this moment by the reaction o the opposing person; thereis a threat in the voice, joyul light in the eyes, and pain in the spasm o the body. Theexpression impresses with its virtuosity, every sign shines with precision, but it all crams

together, vanishes, gets away. Hal o these things we register merely with peripheralvision. They all into our consciousness, but in order to describe them in detail, one must

see each scene several times and dedicate a couple o columns o print to it, as one woulddo while analyzing a good poem. (1999:16768)4

With this approach, Grotowski disabled a distanced second level reading o the perormance

and its narrative(s), orcing the spectator to ace the density o the work in toto in a mode oevent as a witnesseddeed, rather than as a text that unolds its narrative and surrenders itsel to

the reader. The primary sign maker or Grotowski was always the actor, an artisan o articulationable to simultaneously engage in a dense and complex meaning-making process and in the living

1. Froma1972VinterviewwithJarosawSzymkiewicz,elewizjaPolska,mytranscriptionandtranslation.Stated

quitepoeticallyinrontothecamera,thisquestionandquesthasatellingprovenience.Asayoungboy,Grotows-

kireadPaulBruntonsA Search in Secret IndiaandwasdeeplymovedbythechapteronBhagwanSriRamana

Maharishi,aholyman,whosettledontheslopesoArunachala,aholymountaintheMountainoFlame.Te

holymansinstructionwas,Askyourselwhoyouare.Asanadult,Grotowskikeptcopiesothischapterindi-

erentlanguagesandhandedthemtohisriends.UponhisdeathGrotowskiaskedorhisashestobescatteredon

thesacredmountain.

2. Grotowskisperiodotheatricalproductions(19591969)endedwithApocalypsis cum fguris.Fortheremain-

ing30yearsohislie,until1999,Grotowskiconductedaudience-lessresearchwithashitingocus.Paratheatre,

orActiveCulture(19691978)involvedpeopleasparticipantsratherthanspectators.ForTeatreoSources(19761982)Grotowskiinvitedtraditionalperormersromvariousculturesaroundtheworldtosearchor

traditionalormsoperormancesuitableorworkononesel.In1982GrotowskimovedtoCaliornia,whereat

UniversityoCaliorniaIrvineheconductedtheObjectiveDramaproject,whichservedasatransitiontohisnal

phaseoresearch.In1986GrotowskisettledinItaly,whereheestablishedhisWorkcenterinPontedera.Eventually

ledbyTomasRichards,theworkattheWorkcentertheworkonthecratotheperormerandtheworkon

oneselisreerredtoasArtasvehicle(1986).

3. ermssuchasGrotowskistheatre,orTomasRichardssworkareparticularlydangerousshortcutsinthe

contextoaworkbasedoncollaborativecreationandtheinnerprocessesoindividuals.Iusethesetermshere

intheliteralsense,reerringtotherolesotheleader/directorandleader/director/doer,toconnecttothethread

thatmakestheworkpersonal,whichitdenitelywasorGrotowski.Refectinguponthecreativeprocessbehind

Apocalypsis cum fguris,Grotowskisaid:Whatwasmyroleinalloit?Tewholeparadoxisthat,orme,itwas

themostpersonalperormance(2008b:51).

4. Unlessnotedotherwise,alltranslationsromPolishlanguagetextsaremyown.

Kris Salata teaches stage directing and performance at Stanford University. He left his native Poland,

where he was an author and performer, in 1983. He has translated a number of texts by Jerzy

Grotowski and has written on the Workcenter forOpere e Sentieri: Il Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski

and Tomas Richards (edited by Antonio Attisani and Mario Biagini, Bulzoni Editore, 2007) and

Doorways: Performing as a Vehicle at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Tomas Richards

(edited by Lisa Wolford Wylam and Mario Biagini, Seagull Press, forthcoming). A member of the

documentation team for Tracing Roads Across, he has followed the research conducted at the Workcentersince 2004.


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creative process in which the score was rooted, while also continuously conronting the con-

creteness o here and now. Grotowski directed a theatre o literal action: his actors didinrelation to their own lives, and in conrontation with the event o perormance. Grotowskicreated a rich theatrical situation (characters, a story, narratives), that did not unction solely

by means o illusion. The props consisted o real objects; inApocalypsis cum fguris5they included

a knie, candles, a loa o bread, and a bucket o water on a hardwood foor that showed candleburns rom previous perormances. Overcoming himsel and reaching a density o signs thatwas almost inhuman (Grotowski 1979:139), the actor did not hide but rather exposed his workas sign making (in a presentational mode), or oered his organic actions or the director to

suture together into a perormance score.

In his Theatre o Productions period, when he was still presenting theatrical works,

Grotowski pursued research in three distinct areas. First was the search or new possibilities inthe relationship between the actor and the spectator, with its daring spatial experimentswelldocumented and most oten recognized as one o Grotowskis main contributions to the

avantgarde. It is perhaps because o the persistence o material evidencelms, photographs,programs, texts, props, and design drawings orKordian (1962), Dziady (Foreathers Eve;1961),

Akropolis(1962), Tragiczne dzieje doktora Fausta (The Tragic Story o Doctor Faustus;1963),andKsie Niezomny (The Constant Prince; 1965)regardless o their limitations, that theatreacademics remain ocused on this period, this particular aspect o Grotowskis LaboratoryTheatre, and this side o Grotowskis work. Grotowski moved away rom his ocus on the actor/

spectator relationship, realizing that interaction and collaboration with spectators usuallyslipped into stereotypes (1979:139).

Grotowskis second area o research was the crat o the actor as sign maker, which culmi-nated inAkropolis. AterAkropolisGrotowski shited his interest rom the theatrical sign to theactors sel-revelation, a shit that began with The Tragical History o Doctor Faustusand matured

inApocalypsisas Grotowski moved toward his departure rom making productions:

Then, the moment came when it became obvious that not the sign but what is called asymptom was important. It is through symptoms that human lie reveals itselthe way

man is and what he does. I we look at someone, what we rst see is a kind o prepared,preprogrammed act, and thats why it reminds us o signs. Sometimes we can have aeeling that behind it, there is something real. It is hard to say why. But i you study this

matter very closely, you will nd symptoms o an organic process. It is an old truth. Onediscovers old truths throughout ones entire lie.

So then, in the second phase, the actor-as-Man(Czowiek-aktor)6 appeared. Andsimultaneously, the spectator-as-Man. Not the audience, not someone unidentied, but a

human being, each dierent, each with his own lie. We could say that our research in the60s, despite being technical in many aspects, in its essence ocused on Man (Czowiek)himsel. We were already dealing with doing. We staged The Tragical History o DoctorFaustus, The ConstantPrince , andApocalypsis cum fguris.(Grotowski 1979:139)

5. Apocalypsis cum fgurisociallypremieredinitsFirstVersionon11February1969.Scriptcompositionandstagedirecting:JerzyGrotowski.Co-director:RyszardCielak.Assistantdirector:Stanisawcierski.Costumes:WaldemarKrygier.Actors:AntoniJahokowski,ZygmuntMolik,ZbigniewCynkutis,RenaMireckaorElisabethAlbahaca,Stanisawcierski,RyszardCielak.SecondVersionpremieredinJune1971,andTirdVersion,inJuly1973,castunchanged.TelastperormanceoApocalypsistookplaceinMay1980.

6. GrotowskiinsistedonthetranslationothePolishwordczowiekintoEnglishinhistextsasMan(Czowiek).Honoringhiswish,Icanonlyaddthatczowiekisamasulinenounthatmeansman,mankind,whilePolishequivalentsormanandwomanhaveaquitediferentrootrombothmankindandeachother:mczyznaandkobieta,respectively.


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Grotowski shited ocus in the actors score rom the sign as symbol to the symptom. Heprivileged the actual rather than dramatic dimension o perormance and the pursuit o theorganic lie this actual dimension unveils. In that shit, which can also be described as a moverom symbolic tosymptomaticperormance, Grotowski privileged natural signiers, i.e., thosecausedby the signied (such as smoke caused by re).

Grotowskis departure rom productions must be seen as a crisis o the traditionally under-stood notion o the director, whom he saw as usurping the meeting between the actor andthe spectator.7 InApocalypsis, as well as inFaustusand The Constant Prince, the actor came orthto meet the spectator not as a sign maker but rather as a person who, through perormance,resigns rom his role and brings orth something real in himsel. Thereore, even i madeavailable by means o perormance, this meeting could take place only in and through resigna-tion rom (re)presentation. In brie, Grotowskis departure rom productions entails a movebeyond semiosis.

This departure marked a shit rom the sign to the symptom, rom acting to doing, rommediated to direct reception, and nally rom productions to audience-less work. The shitoccurred gradually or Grotowski, but it culminated during the long and painul process o

working onApocalypsis.From the solidity and crat oAkropolis, Grotowski pushed the workto its utmost ragility bydoingand revealing the one who does. When several years later (andater several stages o research) Thomas Richards arrivedto apprentice at the Workcenter inPontedera, Italy, he worked both on himsel and as a leader o the group under Grotowskisintensive mentorship, which in many ways continued the practical exploration originatedthroughApocalypsis.8

Destroying the Symbolic inApocalypsis cum fguris

In her short article Grotowski: Niszczyciel Znakw (Grotowski: The Destroyer o Signs),Polish scholar Seweryna Wysouch observes that inApocalypsis, Grotowski kills symbols, signs,and conventions that mediate humanitys daily encounters with the sacred (1971:13031).Wysouchs remark conrms the Laboratory Theatres sel-description o their work as rites ullo sorcery and blasphemy. This line rom Adam Mickiewiczs 1832 dramatic poem, Dziady,became the companys motto.9

For example, the act o ablution represented in the Church by the sprinkling o a ew dropso water on the priests hands was simultaneously destroyed and rendered immediate in theperormance oApocalypsiswhen Mary Magdalene jumped into a bucket o water and brisklywashed her eet, splashing the water around. Similarly, the symbolic sharing o the body oChrist and the drinking o his blood became inApocalypsisa suggestive cannibalistic east withthe actors biting into the body o the Simpleton. At another moment, a treatment o the lineVerily, verily I say unto you. Except ye eat the fesh o the Son o Man and drink his blood ()or my fesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed brought the theme o untamedsexuality to the scene:

John plunges a cupped hand into the ront o his jeans, and his body jerks spasmodically.Withdrawing his hand he lits it reverently to his lips and sups noisily. Mary Magdalenegazes on, now ascinated and a little repulsed. John repeats the action, this time oering

7. Terewasaperiodinourwork,whenwedidlookorsigns,symbols,etc.,toexpresssomething,or,evenworse,

toillustratesomething.Ihopewecanconsiderthisperiodmanyyearsbehindus.Itwasaruitlessefort.[I]n

thesearchorsigns,theactorcouldntbehimselhecouldnotrevealhimselasMan[ Czowiek].Somebodywas

buildingastructureosignsabovehim.Tissomebodywasthedirector.TisiswhatIcallusurpation.Neverthe -

less,duringthatphaseweachieveddisciplineandprecisionowork(Grotowski1972a:37).

8. RichardsmetGrotowskiinIrvine,Caliornia,in1985.

9. ItalsoappearedintheprogramnoteorApocalypsis.


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his hand to Mary Magdalene. She takes it greedily with both hands and drains it.

(Kumiega 1987:241)

In these acts o blasphemy, Grotowski unveils the yearning or the real that underlies the sign,

and at the same time aimswith Artaudian crueltyat the restoration o the sacred that has

been lost in representation.There is something cruelly truthul in what Lloyd Richards made evident to his son

Thomasthat church ceremonies are oten made up o bad actingan observation thatThomas reers to on occasion with a smile. I fnd this statement important as it indicates that or

competent theatre artists liturgical rituals can in moments register as ineective perormance.The symbolic gestures and props without the believable deed do not hold the reoriginatingeect desired rom ritual.10

The Polish Catholic Church did not appreciate Grotowskis blasphemy inApocalypsis, to putit mildly. In a highly publicized sermon, Cardinal Wyszyski called one o the 20th centurysmost celebrated perormances a flth (in Osiski 2003:456), a reaction that only provesGrotowski was able to shock. What remains to be answered, however, is what does blasphemy

achieve through shock? What, in the context o ritual, do we actually understand as goodtheatre and good acting, and how does it relate to the rituals efcacy? Additionally, whatis the payo in this destruction o the symbolic through shock?

To answer these questions, one needs to analyze the dierences between reproduction,reenactment, and reorigination in terms o mediation and representation. The key actor,and what dierentiates these three terms both rom one another and rom the sacred, is their

relationship to the deed. In a very basic way, one can defne reorigination as the deed oreturning to the original source; reenactment as an attempt to restore the deed o reorigination,

with some key connection to the already lost source; and reproduction as a mechanical repeti-tion o the part o the deed registered in the symbolic, where mediation and representation lie.The dierence among these three notions is marked by their degree o deterioration in which

the nonsymbolic aspect o the deed gradually vanishes, thus separating the signifer rom thesacred. Grotowskis reorigination takes aim at the symbol and its metaphorical unction toconront the sacred directly. The seemingly trivial substitution o a ew drops o water with a

bucketul in the actresss deed does more in this particular instance than overpower and destroythe symbolic gesture o the priest, and more than restore the original orce o the metaphoro cleansing. The substitution shows the limit o all representation as an act o sublimation.

Ultimately, one must ace the act that no quantity o the signifer will ever be able to replacethe signifed, even i the bucket works. It works through the quality and truthulness o thedeed o the actress who destroys its symbolic unction, leaving the spectators without a prop

to mediate their conrontation with the sacred. Aimed against the religious signifer, but notexclusive to the religious worldview, blasphemy shocks because it unveils representation as

representation and thus orces Man to stand ace to ace with the represented itel. Blashemyshakes the oundation o the psychic investment, removes the sense o order, progress, andhistory in the relationship with the sacred, and conronts Man with the void where elemental

ears reemerge as part o being. InApocalypsis, conrontation with the sacred catalyzes theefcacy o the perormance.

With this destruction o the symbol, Grotowski reactualized myth within the immediacy omaterial reality as a act taking place between actors and spectators. The premise oApocalypsis

10.Andsomepriestswouldagreehere.RogerF.Repohl,apriest,scholar,andtheauthoroLiturgyasVehicle

(1994)fndsinGrotowskisworkromthelaterperiod(Artasvehicle)aperormance-deedabletorestorethe

orceandfreotenmissinginliturgy.HenotesthatseeingtheWorkcentersopusknownas Downstairs Actionand

listeningtoGrotowskispeakmadehimrememberhisdaysasayoungparishpriestinaworking-classsuburbo

LosAngeles,whenliturgyitselwasanAction.


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involves a game, or rather a vulgar joke at a drinking party, in which the Simpleton becomes

the Chosen One:

Simon Peter return[s] in determination to kneel beore the bread again and say[s] tothe Simpleton, with a wily smile: You were born in Nazareth. They all grin at the

Simpleton. You are the Savior.They begin to laugh. You died on the cross or them.The laughter becomes uproarious and the Simpleton simpers guilelessly back at them.You are God.Then to Judas: You are Judas and turning to the girl who is screech-

ing uncontrollably: MaryMagdalene.(Kumiega 1987:244)

Bareoot, in an oversize black coat, holding a white cane,11 the Simpleton might be a cross

between the village idiot and the seer: perect or picking on and laughing at, but mysterious anddangerous enough to give the game the necessary tension. The biblical theme is here exposedas concrete human act. Grotowski oten located the archetype or this role in the Eastern

Orthodox concept o theyurodivy, a holy ool who played his role or Christs sake, a peculiarorm o asceticism and saintly madness. The yurodivy is an eccentric vagrant who eignsmadness, walking hal-naked and talking in riddles. By renouncing all norms o decency, the

yurodivy makes himsel a socially disruptive spectacle. However, only a ew see the yurodivy asGods messenger; the sinners perceive him as a madman and source o amusement, reacting

violently to his oensive mode o social critique by beating him and chasing him away (Kobets1998:305). As a phenomenon, the yurodivy aims at revitalizing or restoring a direct connectionwith the divine by destabilizing its established structure o representation, i.e., the institution

that mediates between the divine and quotidian existence, making the divine bearable througha system o codes and symbols that merely separate humanity rom the signied. Perceived asunbearable and as a violation o codes, conrontation with a yurodivy provokes violent reactions

and oten acts o cruelty. Violence against the yurodivys humble sacrice is not a representationbut a reoccurrence o the event reerred to in the biblical story; it appears spontaneously and outo order, unlike in rituals or passion plays that are regulated by social norms. Although (in some

localized way) an institution itselater all it has its name and traditionthe yurodivy is anunbearable act, a spark o connection with the sacred, evidence rather than illustration o divinetruth. Those conronted by the yurodivy are not merely spectators but rather participants

and witnesses.

Like the yurodivy,Apocalypsismoves against theatre, working as a mediator between the

actor and the spectator, and turning them respectively into the one who does and the one whowitnesses. This shit oregrounds the terms Grotowski adopted in his later workdoer andwitness. The spectators oApocalypsisdid not behave like spectators. They did not clap and

otendid not leave the room immediately ater the perormance ended; instead, they remainedseated, maintaining complete silence. Some would stay or a long time; some would share and

eat the bread let on the foor.12 As a consequence o the event and its transgression againstillusionand thus its challenge to the institution o theatrethey chose to act counter toconventional theatre behavior.

Grotowskis intolerance or the hypocrisy oten hidden under terms such as tradition orcultural treasure was requently mentioned in his speeches o the period, or example in his

Reply to Stanislavsky included in this issue:

I think oneshould treat theatre as a house that has already been abandoned, as somethingunnecessary, as something not really indispensable. [] What I am saying here is that the

11.InthelastversionoApocalypsisthecanewaseliminated.

12.Havingobservedthatpattern,Grotowskiaskedhisstafmember,CzesawSzarek,towaitaslongasnecessaryand

allowthespectatorstoremainintheroomoraslongastheywished.Somewouldstaythereoranhourormore

(Szarek1999).


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unction o theatre that was evident in the past is disappearing. What operates is more

cultural automatism than need. (Grotowski [1969]2008a:3233)

To reconnect with the archetypal need or theatrei such a need existsGrotowski defned

theatre in the most basic way as an event between spectator and actor in which human truth

otherwise difcult to perceive becomes available. He looked or the revealed man (czowiek)in the actor himsel, thus making the theatrical event an act o conession:

[T]he actor should reuse to do with this personality o his that is known to others,worked out, calculated, prepared or others like a mask. By the way, it is oten not onepersonality, but two, three, our... Thats why I was able to discover that the actor should

seek what I calledwith Theophilus o Antiochhis Man [Czowiek]: Show me yourMan and I will show you my God. (Grotowski [1969] 2008b:41)

The bishop o Antiochs expressed desire orshowingandseeingparallels Grotowskis interest inseeing the actor reveal himsel, not to play another person, not to hide rom another person(Grotowski 1972b). These are key themes in Grotowskis liework and legacy. When one looks

more closely at Theophilus o Antiochs striking phrase in context, it expresses the dimension operormance and spectatorship that unveils itsel inApocalypsis, and subsequently transorms inArt as vehicle into doing and witnessing:

But i you say, Show me thy God, I would reply, Show me yoursel, and I will show youmy God. Show, then, that the eyes o your soul are capable o seeing, and the ears o yourheart are able to hear; or as those who look with the eyes o the body perceive earthly

objects and what concerns this lie, and discriminate at the same time between things thatdier, whether light or darkness, white or black, deormed or beautiul, well-proportionedand symmetrical or disproportioned and awkward, or monstrous or mutilated; and as in

like manner also, by the sense o hearing, we discriminate either sharp, or deep, or sweetsounds; so the same holds good regarding the eyes o the soul and the ears o the heart,that it is by them we are able to behold God.(in Roberts and Donaldson 1994)

The phrases eyes o the soul and ears o the heart could be spoken by MickiewiczsRomantic hero in Dziady, the poet who sings his songs with his soul. Theophiluss thoughts o

a whole Man and the direct organ-less showing and seeing that erase the distance betweenGod and Manperhaps an early articulation o Artauds concept o the body without organscorresponds with Grotowskis idea o direct perception o Man who, by dropping the veil o

representation and sel-presentation, becomes whole:

What about perception? It is a release o Man [Czowiek] and the world that he enters, likea bird enters the air. Then the eyes see, the ears hear as i or the frst time, everything is

new and frst. Seeing like a bird, not like a thought o a bird. A bird, and not a thoughtabout whats seenthought is urther away. Around there is the world, but man doesnt

see it. Everything is veiled rom him. How can one uncover the world? There aremeetings that involve what is alive and organic. People give up masks, roles, and return tobeing with another. They enter the world like a bird enters space. (Grotowski 1979:140)

Grotowski ollowed this desire to see like a birdto see with his heart and to see theinvisiblein the consecutive phases o his research: in paratheatrical projects with activeparticipants; in Theatre o Sources through the search or orms and techniques within various

traditions o embodied practice that could lead one to begin to look or what the human beingcan do with his own solitude (1995:120); and in Objective Drama research through the use othe crat o theatre as a means o approaching traditional perormative techniques.

At the end o this extended research trajectory Grotowski again chose to ocus on a small

group o perormers with whom he could work on a long-term basis. At the Workcenter inPontedera where he settled in 1986, he ocused on what he considered the essentialquality that


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emerged in work, which he called verticality. At this point he also sought the possibility o

continuing this research and ound the answer in Thomas Richards. Grotowski dedicated thelast 13 years o his lie to verticality and the process o transmission as understood in traditionalinitiatory practices. In his essay From the Theatre Company to Art as vehicle, published in

Richardss bookAt Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions, Grotowski attempts to explain the

meaning behind the term:

Verticalitywe can see this phenomenon in categories o energy: heavy but organic

energies (linked to the orces o lie, to instincts, to sensuality), and other energies, moresubtle. The question o verticality means to pass rom a so-called coarse levelin acertain sense, one could say an everyday levelto a level o energy more subtle or

even toward the higher connection. At this point to say more about it wouldnt be right. Isimply indicate the passage, the direction. There, there is another passage as well: i one

approaches the higher connectionthat means, i we are speaking in terms o energy, ione approaches the much more subtle energythen there is also the question o descend-ing, while at the same time bringing this subtle something into the more common reality,

which is linked to the density o the body.

The point is not to renounce part o your natureall should retain its natural place:

the body, the heart, the head, something that is under our eet and something that isover the head. All like a vertical line, and this verticality should be held taut betweenorganicity and the awareness.Awarenessmeans the consciousness which is not linked to

language (the machine or thinking), but to Presence.(1995:125)

In his 1997 Collge de France lectures, Grotowski clearly and simply stated that what he was

looking or in Man, he sought through crat: I am a cratsman in the feld o human behaviorunder meta-daily conditions(in Osiski 1998:222). Using the tools o the acting crat,Grotowski pursued research on being with another through a perorming opus. It is crucial

to remember, however, that the outer orm o perormance served as a necessary but ultimately

secondary means toward the aim o seeing with ones heart, seeing the invisible, or seeing, asDerrida puts it, at frst sight what does not let itsel be seen (1994:149), which I call here

inner theatre.

Art as vehicle creates a great deal o conusion or those unwilling or unable to drop theatri-

cally conventional ways o seeing and reading perormance. Many witnessesincluding myselduring my frst encounter withAction (the Workcenters opus directed by Richards since1994)cannot suspend their attachment to the outer theatre and remain preoccupied with

reading and interpreting theatrical signs.

Apocalypsiswas still primarily a sign-making work. From 24 hours o material developed with

the actors, Grotowski selected and composed a one-hour piece o dense signifcation createdwith the spectator in mind. But it was also a step outside o theatre and into the search or what

appeared years later, ultimately realized in Art as vehicle. Direct, literal, actual, blasphemous,and transgressive,Apocalypsiswas itsel an act o the yurodivy, thereore not merely staged butdone. Doing (as opposed to staging) the Gospels (see Attisani 2008), Grotowski and his actorstreated biblical themes as a pretext or work in which passions, desires, and needs stripped away

dramatic, theatrical, and human layers o role-playing. Only when the acting score was comple-tely discovered did Grotowski introduce texta composition o ragments rom the Gospels,

T.S. Eliot, Simone Weil, and Dostoyevskythat the actors wove into theirApocalypsisscores.13Devoid o interpretation but carried by the deed, words were simultaneously alienated romtheir literary context and embodied by the actor through the score.

13.Grotowskiaskedtheactorstobringtextsthatweremeaningfultothemandusedthesetoarrangethetextof

theperformance.


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Grotowskis shitaway rom productions aterApocalypsisshould be seen as a urther destabil-

ization o representation and a move to regather postmodern Mans ragmented sel into a whole(a move that gathers in Heideggerian sense o reactivating elemental deeds, such as caring,giving, dwelling):

Indeed it would be hard to argue whether or not bread is a symbol in Apocalypsis. Bread issomething that lives, bread is a body. It is a child. This meaning has accumulated not as asymbol, but as something written into us. Only into us? It was written into our athers.

This is a true association, and not on the intellectual level.(Grotowski 1972a:37)

Grotowski aims at restoring

the unction o the thing buriedin language, disembodied asobject and symbol. As a body,

a child, bread is bothgathered (vis--vis Heidegger)as bread and gathersor

usesMan with mankind.One could analyze the usion

Grotowski seeks as occurringinitially between the signiferand the signifed but ultimately

directly between signifeds. Torediscover bread as breadandsimultaneously as corporeality

and the collective sacredmeans to do with ones wholesel and consequently to do

away with representation.

One cannot simply resign

rom making signs; immersedin the symbolic order, we areall sign-makers and sign-

readers, composers andexecutors o our ongoingnarratives in daily lie. The ordering power o these narratives operates along cultural arche-

types, obeys laws o causality, and recharges itsel rom the desire or certainty (which inFreudian terms is the death drive). The master narrator in us constantly updates the story,

knots up loose ends, and reconfgures the plot, all in an attempt to stay in charge.

One cannot avoid making or reading signs on the stage, but one can fght against theirdominance. Grotowskis initial approach, which we might call an outer way, led him throughan ongoing exposure and destruction o sign-making (e.g., dense signifcation, blasphemy,and/or literality) and, via the actors crat, toward disabling mediated reception. This approach

locates the import o the perormance in the reception o the spectator, who consequentlyproduces meaning. Eventually, Grotowski shited his ocus to an inner or doers way, in whichthe perormance primarily serves the perormers inner work,thusbecoming a composition o

organic actions-vehicles logically justifed within the rame o the doers creative work. The shitrom the outer to the inner way is evident inApocalypsis, although not there exclusivelyor entirely.

Following the outer way, one unveils the signs attempts to substitute or the reerent, that is,

or the actual element in the world. In other words, one exposes the substitution as substitu-tionone destroys representation while using its medium. This was Tadeusz Kantors approach

Figure 2. Tomas Richards and Mario Biagini, with Jrn Riegels Wimpel,

Marie De Clerck, and Francesc orrent Gironella in the background, in Action

at the Church of John the Baptist, Cappadocia, urkey, 2005. (Photo by

Marcella Scopelliti; courtesy of Te Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and

Tomas Richards)


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in his Theatre o Death, where

he accepted the apparentprevalence o illusion only inorder to destroy it endlessly

(in Porbski 1997:151).14

The ongoing destructiono illusion, o human masks,and o other elements o theinstitution o mediation, set

theatre against itsel. Indeed,both Kantor and Grotowskiwere interested in the exposure

and destruction o theatricality.While Kantor explored theextremes o outer theatre,

Grotowski eventually resigned

rom the outer and movedtoward inner theatre. How-ever, in their extreme moves,both sought unmediated Man.

Already built into thenature o the Symbolic, the

loss entailed by representationdeepens through social and

individual usage in agreement with the law o entropy. Both representation and usage are part o

the institution o mediation. It is in representation, with its mediating power and its repetitiveapplication, that the sacred nds and preserves its institution. At the very core o that institution

lies the act o signication, orfguration, whose unction is to supply a symbolic surrogate (anoun) or something to which we reer via an adjective, such as holy, or sacred. Blasphemyremoves the gurative (as inApocalypsis cum fguris) rom the phenomenon o the sacred andorces it to ascend rom the gure o language to the sphere o tangible lie. In other words, the

sacred moves rom the social sphere to a concrete account o an individual in conrontation withthe sel. Blasphemy is an act o courage insoar as it enables individual, direct conrontation withthe divine Signied, removing mediation, its power, its rule, and its enslaving allure o saety. It

removes the Other as institution rom the relationship I-the sacred in me.

The Unmediated I-You

The main dramatic confict oApocalypsisis located between the mediated sacred and Man

yearning or a direct experience o it. By using the term sacred, I reer to the tangible possi-bility in a human being that exists when acing another when, as Theophilus o Antioch putsit, a directshowingandseeingunveil Man, or when they simultaneously and directly unveilMan and God. Anything short o this directness constitutes mediation, or the third who at

the most assented to heart o my identity to mysel, [] pulls the strings(Lacan 2006:436).For God, and particularly human-God as already a mediation between Man and the sacred(Derrida 1978:243), is also mediated by the Word placed by the scriptures at the beginning o

the Narrative and as the seed in Marys womb. Thus God is doubly mediated as the signierand through the narrative. The doing o the yurodivy, as inApocalypsis, aligns Man with thenarrative in a search or the divine directly present in the human experience o lie.

Figure 3. Mario Biagini, Tomas Richards, Francesc orrent Gironella, and

Marie De Clerck in Action. Te Church of John the Baptist, Cappadocia,

urkey, 2005. (Photo by Marcella Scopelliti; courtesy of Te Workcenter of Jerzy

Grotowski and Tomas Richards)

14.TadeuszKantorsays:Iamagainstillusion./ButIamnotofanorthodoxmind,/Iknowwellthatwithoutillusion/thereisnotheatre./Iallowforillusiontoexist./Becausethisway,Icankeepdestroyingitendlessly

(inPorbski1997).


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The impossibility o living in the sacred and the simultaneous entropic allenness o repre-sentation onto the signifer as merely a representation o itsel might in act constitute what islet o the tragic in the post-Auschwitz world. Human dignity can no longer be ound in asymbolic gesture o sharing symbolic bread as the metaphoric body o Christ. Instead, real breadtorn and devoured without regard to social convention reveals its metonymic nature as unsatis-

fed desire, unable to be sublimated by representation, including that o the narrative o the LastSupper where bread is already etishized as a metaphor or the body.

Martin Bubers ormulation o two basic modes o relating to the world, I-Thou and I-It, oers a way to think about Grotowskis research on the nonrepresentational aspects o peror-mance. The relation I-Thou leaves no room or the symbolic structure. When placed betweenMan (I) and the sacred (Thou), but also between humans, as I in You, the signifer assumesthe unction o a grammatical It. In other words, I-Thou operates without representation,thus without the Figure. In this context, Grotowskis attempts at the directness o I-Thouparallel the attempts o those who revitalized Christianity (St. Augustine, the Gnostics, St.Francis, Meister Eckhart)or even those o the Zen masters, a direction o associations exploredby Richard Schechner in his Exoduction: Shape-shiter, Shaman, Trickster, Artist, Adept,

Director, Leader, Grotowski (Schechner 1997:45892). The key actor in these examples isthe eort to restore unmediated experience.

InI and Thou, Buber talks o yearning or the impossible as a paradox: withoutIta humanbeing cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not human ([1923] 1996:85). For Buber,the world is twoold, with two basic words that are themselves twoold:I-You andI-It, thus theIo man is twoold (53). ThereoreI-Itcannot be said with ones whole being:

The basic word I-You can be spoken only with ones whole being. The concentration andusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplishedwithout me. I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All actual lie is anencounter. (64)

Seen in light o Bubers discourse, Grotowskis search or human wholeness by defnition aimsagainst the It o the signifer. In I-It, the mode o being turns the world into objects (i.e., thebearers o characteristics; graspable, analyzable, static entities which or Heidegger result romthe post-Socratic mode o science, marked by writing). As a consequence, in I-It, possession ispossible and eagerly sought. Thus the primary modus operandi o daily lie turns a human beinginto an It o another. Hegels Master-Slave dialectic or Sartres concept o turning the Other intoan object o my gaze can serve as examples o philosophical narratives o the I-Itrelationship.

In the realm o Grotowskis practice, the I-It operates as a difcultyin human interaction.Thomas Richards puts it this way:

Lets analyze what takes place on many occasions in human relations. There is an aspect o

human nature that to a certain extent likes to operate on strength. So, i there is a polemicbetween two persons, as one becomes stronger or more dominant, the othersince theyare linked in the polemicgenerally becomes weaker. The one goes up and the othergoes down. But the latter doesnt want to go down, so he struggles to go up. When hedoes, the other goes down. We can see this in human relations all the time. For example,in the moment when two lovers are fghting: they are identifed with their polemic. Whenone laughs, the other eels bad. Oten even i the frst is merely demonstrating she eelsgood, the other starts to eel weaker and subsequently eel the need to show he is okay,which might eventually cause the frst person to go down. These subtle games are oten atplay when we ace one another. We lock ourselves in a kind o never-ending binary hell.And this is part o our existential trap, or what seems to me to be the basis o the existen-tial trap o the human being, part o our prison. (2004)


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In practice, inRichardss

description, the I-It becomesentangled in a Darwinist contest,expressed as a degree o posses-

sion rom which the doer must

learn to resign. This resignationmeans a removal o daily pro-tection rom the other and anexposure o ones vulnerability.

A signifcant portion oGrotowskis and Richardssresearch (and indeed expertise)

involves creating the necessaryconditions or the doers toabandon their social armor.

When they succeed, the I-You

begins to operate:I we give attention to the

quality o the way we seeanother human beingseeing with an active

comprehension, withouteara special inner territorycan begin to open in which

the word we is preponder-ant. You can notice this

territory even in your daily

lie, in the special moments oa living and intimate conver-

sation, or example, when thepositive and negative o theperson to whom you are

speaking is not to yourdetriment. There is no powergame, lets say. Instead, you

are riding a wave o empathy, as i your partners positive is your positive and his negative,your negative. In this kind o union there is just the beginning o this special action you

were detecting. (Richards 2008:131).

The modality that this level o work oers and requires is one oevent. In What Is anEvent, Gilles Deleuze recaps the Stoics view, in which the world is made o two kinds o

things: bodies with their tensions, physical qualities, actionsand passions, the correspondingstates o aairs, and incorporeal entities, which are eects o bodies that relate. The latterare not things or acts, butevents(1993:4248; emphasis added).

While event is a mode o the unveiling unmediated now, corporeal action unolds asdestiny, with a designation thus with the signifer. In Bubers terms, the opposition event/

signifer that I propose here translates into I-You (relation) and I-It (experience). I, as Buberclaims, all actual lie is an encounter ([1923] 1996:64), then lie is negotiated between thesetwo modes, with the mode o the signifer dominating at the level o daily human interaction.

The notion o possession divides these modes by existing only with the signifer, the structure,

and history (I-It), and ceasing to exist with the event (I-You). An owned event becomes a

Figure 4.Tomas Richards, with Pere Sais Martinez and Marie

De Clerck in the background, in Action at the Church of John

the Baptist, Cappadocia, urkey, 2005. (Photo by Marcella

Scopelliti, courtesy of Te Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and

Tomas Richards)


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signier o the authority o the owner-narrator; it becomes a historical entry, since history isa orm o ownership over the past, and ownership is a antasy as well as an exercise o power.

Buber thinks along the same lines: Whoever says You does not have something; he hasnothing. But he stands in relation (55). So i I-You is a mode o relation unreduced to transac-tion (an unrestricted fow between two people), I-It is a mode o a mediated experience orderedas history. However, i I-It orders the world, an ordered world is not the world order, but merelya world livable: Without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not ahuman (85).

The signicance o Bubers thought here lies in his ability to capture the dierence betweenbeing and existence as dierent relations the I has with the world, and not as a phenom-enon exclusive to the I(as in cogito ergo sum). In Grotowskis work, being as I-You is asought-ater orm o unmediated relationship with the world, despite the necessity o I-It towhich being must devolve. As I-You, one operates exposed, unprotected but whole, while as I-Itone negotiates survival, saety, and comort. In his description o an encounter involving oneswhole being, Buber reaches something remarkably resonant with theatre practice, particularlythat o Grotowski and now Richards. One can nd it in Richardss description o his experience

as a doer, where he uses the metaphor o a highway through which one dissolves:

You cannot assume your own tempo-rhythm, or example. The logic o I ollow youor the tempo, the tuning, the rhythm o the song always has to be respected. But themoment may arrive in which its as i the limits o what you perceive as I expand,become more transparent; nevertheless, you continue to respect the score. This transpar-ency can happen when the work is on a good level. Then, in relation to the inner lie, thehighway is open and all is connected. The process that fows in your partner also fows inyou, as i theres no dierence. Some-thing is appearing and you just let it do its thing.(Richards 2008:13233)

Richards describes an event to which I can relate as a witness, but not as an observer. The

moment I begin to distance mysel, to read the perormance, the doers become bodies in space,completely impenetrable (rontal) to me. And even as a witness I cant say that I really knowwhat Richards is talking about, other than that he speaks o something real to him that takesplace in meeting another ace to ace, and that his words resonate with my experience.

The relation o I-Thoudesignates what Grotowski calls true meeting, which the unveilingperson enters when she comes towards an other. There, the theatre o revealing becomes to alarge degree the theatre o the I where, as Emmanuel Levinas puts it, truth is not grasped bya dispassionate subject who is a spectator o reality, but by a commitment in which the otherremains in the otherness (2002:67). The otherness can preserve its integrity because, asHeidegger would put it, the I lets it be. Levinas, who explores the link between Heidegger andBuber, sees in the meeting o I and Thou the act obeingbeing acted:

The Relation cannot be identied with a subjective event because the I does notrepresent the Thou but meets it. The meeting, moreover, is to be distinguished rom thesilent dialogue the mind has with itsel []; the I-Thou meeting does not take place in thesubject but in the realm o being. [] The interval between the I and Thou, the Zwischen,is the locus where being is being realized. (65)

Levinas positions the human not as the subject but rather as the articulation o the meeting:Man does not meet, he is the meeting. As the articulation, Man is not at the centre insoar ashe is a thinking subject, but with respect to his whole being, since only a total commitment canbe the realization o his undamental situation (66).

What happens to the I when it is relating to the Thou? What happens to the I when two

perormers ace each other in an opus? The act o unveiling in the Zwischen opens the possibil-ity or reciprocal inclusion, in which the I is simultaneously abandoned and ound in the Thou.


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Here one approaches the ragile point where Bubers philosophy keeps the I in simultaneousrelatedness and distancing. The Idoes not orget or lose itsel in the other, but rather sharply

maintains its active reality (Levinas 2002:68). This double movement o relateness anddistancing makes the I-Thou relation or Levinas not psychological or natural, but ratherontological (66).

In ordinary seeing and in the quotidian encounter with an other as It, the world remainsexternal and rontal. Yet rontality is not just a problem related to socially constructed simulacra

to which human authenticity surrenders itsel and rom which Grotowski wants to liberate it.Frontality emerges as a secondary concealment or impenetrability in the one who stops reusingonesel to onesel and begins to come orward to meet an other. It is contained in the desire and

inability to penetrate, which Heidegger would phrase with a reversed blamebeingreuses itselto uswhile in act we reuse ourselves to being. And here Grotowskis project can no longer be

taken as a search or the utopian brotherhood o humanity (as many do in eeding their nostalgia

or the 1960s), but rather as a search or a ull meaning o human unconcealment when it reusesitsel to us. And it is precisely here that Heideggerian phenomenology with its thinking-

perceiving subject at the center shows its limitation as, theatrically speaking, traditional stage/audience orientation. For we can only endlessly chase whatever reuses itsel to our discourse,hoping to reach nearness but never fnally reaching the thing itsel. The spectator, the scholar,

createsfrontality with her own concealment in language, scholarship, and spectatorship. Askingwhat it means to reveal onesel, Grotowski already resigns rom the stage/audience and subject/object dichotomy, and works toward his answer in a plain room without observers (but with

eventual witnesses) where he uses knowledge as crat to bring one towards another and havethem ace each other. There, the mutual reusal is challenged by the weakening o the us/object dichotomy, or indeed nothing can reuse itsel to us i we and it become I and

You, as Buber has it. Coming nearer the step that ollows ater someone has already unveiledand begun to move orward to ace another requires a labor about which Heidegger is silent. As

Figure 5. Tomas Richards in Action in Vallicelle, Italy, 1995. (Photo by Alain Volut; courtesy of Te

Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Tomas Richards)


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Levinas says, It is impossible to remain a spectator o the Thou (2002:66), or in the meeting

that ollows the unveiling, when one comes orward, the other must instantly respond. In thatresponse, the others unveiling comes as an event.

The act, the encounter o I-Thou, exists strictly as unmediated directness (with ones wholebeing). It cannot be possessed. Thus, seen in light o Bubers thought, Grotowskis theatre in

Apocalypsisaimed at directness rather than distance, being rather than existence, immediacy andpossibility rather than history, and relating rather than experience. For experience is remote-ness rom You (Buber [1923] 1996:50).

The Doer

In spite o its active implication, doing is closer to letting than to orcing. Recalling the creativeprocess oApocalypsis, Grotowski considers resignation a key notion or the actor:

I mentioned the resignation that dictated this thing. Even inside me it was not conscious.Not even I was conscious o that. One day during the tour ater the frst premiere, one omy colleagues said something positive about my work, and I replied to him, I was lost

so many times during it. He then said, All I saw the whole time was resignation rompretending. Resignation. I believe this was the only theme o our work onApocalypsiscum fguris. (Grotowski [1969] 2008b:50)

This resignation rom pretending brings the work rom the realm o illusion out into theacticity o the world, turning it into a deed aimed against humanitys descent into role-playing

within social narratives. To resign rom pretending also means to reveal the imposition oconvention, o something that represents us but is not o us. Between being and existence,between I-ThouandI-It, and between doing and role-playing, alls a screen o mediation that

like a scenario orders the unexpected into a rame o recognizable possibilities. In this context,not to pretend means to resign rom reacting mechanically in lie and beginning to act/do.

How does one actrather than react to the world? World here indicates a structure o signsthat engages interpretation, yields meaning, and produces narratives; in other words, the worldrepresents and mediates rather than directs Symbolic order. People become direct in it when

pushed by the extremes o desire, love, or suering, and become whole beings conronting whatLacan calls the Real. These moments o spontaneous organicity can be starting points or the

development o the one who is the way he is:

It is hard to tell how the symbolic operates in what you call perormance. Today, thesymptom is much more important than the sign to us. [Ludwik] Flaszen was analyzing itat one point, but I will say it dierently: what is important is sharing the whole human

being as you share bread. When man doesnt hide, when he reveals his whole selhe isholy and pure. Then man is the way he isI am what I am. He doesnt deend himsel.

Thats all. Not that this will mean that, and that. But rather it all comes out rom thetangibility o his act, rom the act that or a moment one is the way one is. (Grotowski1972a:37)

Behind Grotowski-the-destroyer-o-signs stands the seeker or directness in meaning, wherethe act becomes act, an eventpresencingthe actor in his deedperormed not in dramatic butrather in real time and space. The word presencing re-signifes presence as deed: the act

oresigningrom the veil.

Grotowskis transition to audience-less research came with a crystallization o his interest in

doingand in the task o the one who does, by which he sought to recover the orgotten meaningo actor as a person o action, one o presence rather than representation, an actor who israther than a sign maker, even i he plays himsel, reaching an iconic identity with the object

o representation. In his homage to Ryszard Cielak, Grotowski sees doing as an act o uncom-


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promised giving, an act primarily between the actor and his process in relation to the

director-witness:

You may notice in the lm that at the end o the monologues a particular reaction appears,shaking o the legs which had its source around the solar plexus. We never worked on it

as on something that should be part o the score. It was an autonomous psychophysicalreaction resulting not only rom the work o the body but also rom the entire nervoussystem, and it seemed entirely organic and matter-o-course. Simply, the actors act was

real. This was the diagnosis o a psychiatrist who saw the perormance and who thenadded: You have reached something that I always considered impossible. Some symp-toms, even i never sought, repeated themselves during each perormance because the

centers o energy became activated each time. And why did they become activated eachtime? Because or Cielak as well as or mysel it was impossible to even think that

something like this could be produced. His oering had to be real every time. Hundredso times during rehearsals, not to mention hundreds and hundreds o times during theperormances, his act was always real. (Grotowski 1996:2728)

Grotowski points to the symptom maniested directly by a real act: an involuntary sign thatprovides evidence o the invisible internal process. What matters to Grotowski (and should

matter to the spectator) is not the maniestation o that symptom and its reading as directorialeect, but rather its emergence as proo o the work being done below the level o the signier.Something lively and real shows its trace in a well-articulated score.

While the actors work can be read as part o a larger perormance text, the bulk o thedeed takes place in the inner theatre and is received directly, outside o meaning and without

a meaningor all meaning is post-evental (Badiou 2003:16). The deed is perceptible as aresonance in the spectatorthus an event, and thus without representationin silence. Whatcan be spoken o, however, is the knowledge that leads to this work, along with some objective

processes that the actorrepeatedly experiences. We can also near it with language through the

discourse on being. The notion o perormance text and the actor as a body on the stage dominate contemporary

thinking about theatre. Not only does Grotowskis mature phase o research as and in peror-mance (as well as that o the Workcenter under Richardss direction) become unapproachable by

a well-established body o semiotic-based critical literature (Kowzan, Pavis, De Marinis, Runi,Fischer-Lichte), but indeed also by most conventional scholarship surrounding reception. Tobegin reapproaching the work Grotowski and Richards did at their Workcenter, one rst needs

to think o the nature o the event and the phenomenon o meeting.

In his productions, Grotowski ound the substance o his work beyond the sphere o the

visible and readable. Initially, he attempted to reach this substance by means o the simultaneousreduction o the theatres sign-making apparatus and the dense layering o perormance texts.

Consequently, he reduced the work o theatre to the actors labor:

At rst, there are some questions: Why a stage set? Why costumes? Why play with lights?Why makeup? Why recorded music? Why occupy onesel with all this i theatre may besimply a search or truth between people? And not in the sense o the proession, but on a

purely human level. (1979:139)

In another text, he adds:

And it is always then that what is not consciously xed, what is less perceptible but

somehow more essential than physical action, is released. It is still physical, and alreadypre-physical. I call it impulse. Every physical action is preceded by a subcutaneousmovement that fows rom inside the body, unknown, but palpable. An impulse does not

exist without a partner, not in the sense o an acting partner, but another humanexistence.(Grotowski [1969] 2008a:37)


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An impulse, as described by Grotowski, is the objectively perceptible element indicating a

process directed towards apartner in the mode o I-You, in which signs, like property, ceaseto exist. There is no communication in I-You, but rather a co-being.

What happens between the actor and the spectator in search o truth between people(Grotowski 1979:139) is an event that unolds within the perorming score. This event is not

only a structure o signs and thus not only an object o aesthetic perception. The orm itseldoesnt contain it, yet it is able to carry it. In other words, a mimetic reproduction o the ormmay not produce the event. The articulated score is a visible vehicle, which may be able to

deliver, through induction, something otherwise imperceptible. The score neither represents theevent nor presents it, but merely provides a possibility or it to emerge. That event happens asan unmediated human act that only partially corresponds to a semiotic reading o the score.

Thus a reading that relies solely on the externally perceptible details o the score inevitablyleads to misreading the work.

The Doers Presencing

Even though the inner theatre doesnt exist apart rom articulated orms (i.e., presentation), itsactual work is nonrepresentational. What the doer arrives to through his score is both presenta-

tional (has components enabling it to be understood by a witness, i present) and representa-tional (it is repeatable and contains other recognizably representational elements, e.g., bits otext, story, simple objects). Careully composed, the score is a vehicleor the intended and

expected event, unrepeatable and unmarked except with what constitutes the inner surge olie elt:

Impulses that fow rom the body, rom organicity, emerge in important moments o lie.

In the moments o great joy, in the moments o love and evil, in the most dense momentso our lives. When we are not divided, but whole. [] It is a particular doing. It is like astream, like something that fows in time and space. It doesnt close itsel. It is always in

motion. Only it has preset points o support. And it always has an initial phase, needed sothat people stop being araid o each other. (Grotowski 1979:14041)

Grotowski observes that when a human being acts with his own sel, his act unolds as aparticular orm. This orm allows truth to appear, and this truth is the truth o being.

Unreading a Performance

When I witnessedAction or the rst time in June 2004 in Poland, I could not stop mysel romconstructing a narrative and searching or a meaning, and consequently I let conused, although

not unmoved. Since then, I have seenAction numerous times as I ollowed the Workcenterduring its Tracing Roads Across project through its residencies in Poland, Austria, Russia,Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy. I have since tuned my attention to the subtle work the opus per-

orms under its outer orm: the work o the inner theatre, where what is at play is the ragilenature o human acticity unmarked by the sign.

There are numerous scholarly readings o the perormance texts oAkropolis, The ConstantPrince , andApocalypsis cum fguris, in which the unutterable [is]unutterablycontainedinwhat has been uttered (Wittgenstein in Monk 1990:151). Yet the same approach in regards to

Art as vehicle leaves the unwritten out, making it practically untraceable in the writing. LisaWolord concludes her article onAction with an admission o ailing to capture this dimensiono the work she clearly sensed as a witness: But there is also something else present in this

structureanother register, more mysterious, almost unknown (1997:424). She stops there,wisely passing in silence what we cannot speak about, as Wittgenstein would have it (1974:89).When speaking about Art as vehicle, we are let to struggle with language and revive old words

or invent new ones, as when we try to speak about being. Grotowski and Richards did notinvent the mystery o perormance, but they certainly restored it to its origin.


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1979 wiat powinien by miejscem prawdy. Dialog10 (October):13842.

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Porbski, Mieczysaw

1997 Tadeusz Kantor: wiadectwa, Rozmowy, Komentarze. Warszawa: Murator.

Puzyna, Konstanty

1999 Powrt Chrystusa. In Teksty z lat 1965-69 byJerzy Grotowski, 16777. Wrocaw: Wiedza okulturze.

Repohl, Roger F.

1994 Liturgy as Vehicle.America , 24 September:1820.

Richards, Thomas

2008 Heart of Practice: The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. London: Routledge.

2004 Personal conversation with author. Checked and authorized by Thomas Richards. Vienna,Austria, OctoberNovember.

Roberts, Alexander, and James Donaldson, eds.

1994 Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Schechner, Richard

1997 Exoduction: Shape-shifter, Shaman, Trickster, Artist, Adept, Director, Leader, Grotowski.In The Grotowski Sourcebook, edited by Lisa Wolford and Richard Schechner, 45892.London: Routledge.

Schechner, Richard, and Theodore Hoffman

1997a [1968] Interview with Grotowski. In The Grotowski Sourcebook, edited by Richard Schechner andLisa Wolford, 3855. London: Routledge.

Szarek, Czesaw

1999 TV interview.Jerzy Grotowski: Prba portretu [Jerzy Grotowski: An Attempt at a Portrait].Maria Zmarz-Koczaniewicz, dir., Telewizja Polska S.A.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

1974 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge.

Wolford, Lisa

1997 Action: The Unrepresentable Origin. In The Grotowski Sourcebook, edited by Lisa Wolfordand Richard Schechner, 40926. London: Routledge.

Wysouch, Seweryna

1971 GrotowskiNiszczyciel Znakw. Dialog8 (Sierpie):12731.


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Documents

Toward the Non-(Re)Presentational Actor