A Conversation and Screening on JERZY GROTOWSKI

The Watermill Center invites Dominika Laster of Yale University to moderate a discussion with former actors of the Polish Laboratory Theater, Mieczyslaw Janowski and Andrzej Paluchiewicz, on the influential Polish director and experimental theatre innovator Jerzy Grotowski.

The evening will include a screening of excerpts from Akropolis and The Constant Prince, two of Grotowski’s famous performances, as well as a dialogue with Mieczyslaw Janowski and Andrzej Paluchiewicz on their experience working with Grotowski. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the moderated discussion.

JERZY GROTOWSKI: Considered one of the most important and influential theatre practitioners of the 20th century, Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999) revolutionized contemporary theatre in multiple ways. Grotowski changed the way Western theatre practitioners and performance theorists conceive of the audience-actor relationship, theatre staging and the craft of acting. Perhaps best known for his notion of ‘poor theatre,’ Grotowski’s practice extends beyond the confines of conventional theatre assuming a long-term and systematic exploration of the possibilities of the human being in a performative context. In practical terms, Grotowski’s praxis explores the ways in which specific performative techniques unlock forgotten potentialities in the human being. Drawing most significantly on the traditional songs and ritual movement of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, Grotowski’s latter work known as “Art as vehicle,” deploys performative techniques as an instrument in the work on oneself.

MIECZYSŁAW JANOWSKI worked in the Laboratory Theatre for eight years, playing in the theatre’s core productions, including Faust, Akropolis, and The Constant Prince. After the Laboratory Theatre’s dissolution in 1984, Janowski continued acting in the Dramatic Theatre in Wałbrzych and the Wspołczesny Theatre in Wrocław. Janowski’s acting was not limited to the theatre; from 1962 to 1986 he appeared in over 85 feature films. In 1999, the President of Poland awarded Janowski with the Golden Order of Merit for his entire artistic oeuvre.

ANDRZEJ PALUCHIEWICZ worked with Jerzy Grotowski from 1966 to 1976. He was an actor in the Laboratory Theatre and took part in the paratheatrical activities, which followed the Theatre of Productions phase. Paluchiewicz was also the ensemble’s resident photographer. He is the author of some of the most iconic images of Grotowski’s productions.

DOMINIKA LASTER is a Postdoctoral Associate in Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale (IPSY) and a Lecturer in the Theatre Studies program at Yale University. She has published articles in Performance Research, Slavic and Eastern European Performance, New Theatre Quarterly and TDR. Her books A Bridge Made of Memory: Embodied Memory, Witnessing and Transmission in the Grotowski Work and Loose Screws: Nine New Plays from Poland (Editor) are forthcoming from Seagull Press, distributed globally by the University of Chicago Press.

Please note that The Watermill Center grounds will remain closed until further notice. The building will be open for this event.