Download Grotowski`s poor theatre and its relevancy with Asian practices in

Grotowski’s Poor Theatre and Its
Relevancy with Asian In-body
Training
Spring 2007
DFL
Steven Yang
Overview




Introduction to Jerzy Grotowski.
Why does Poor Theatre matter?
Asian acting practices, like kathakali and
noh theatre
The relevancy between these two
disciplines
Thesis (tentative)

Grotowski’s poor theatre is greatly
influenced by Asian theatrical practices that
both disciplines achieve the psychophysical
training by having actors to use their bodies
as the organism of performance and acting.
Jerzy Grotowski



Polish theatre director who’s famous for his
theories in poor theatre and vertical
transculturalism.
Influential in performance theory aside from
Stanislavski, Brecht (the Epic theatre) and
Artaud (theatre of cruelty).
Grotowski vs. Suzuki Tadashi
Two Main Ideas
1.
2.

The Poor Theatre
Performance as an act of transgression
Instead of rich theatre (the total theatre),
Grotowski proposes the Poor Theatre for
it can not be replaced by other genres
such as films and television.
Poor theatre



Challenges the theatre as the synthesis of
disparate creative disciplines, such as
literature, sculpting, lighting, acting, etc.
Actor only uses his own body as the craft
for characters transformation.
Confrontation, contradiction, via negitiva
Poor theatre (continued)




Elimination instead of teaching
Strips off the masks or habits the actor accustom
to have in his life make them leave the comfort
zone.
Actors should accomplish the “movement of soul”
(psychic) with his organism in the performance.
Reconfiguration of actor-spectator dichotomy
relation theatre becomes a bare laboratory and
an area for investigation
Kathakali practices (India)

The becoming of actors

The martial art training freeing individual
from the very form he’s learning.

The manipulation of breath the release of
internal power

Detailed examples will be elaborated in the
written paper.
Noh theatre (Japan)

Zeami’s(1363-1443) treatises

The goal is similar to that of kathakali
training method.

The arousal of actor’s ch’i (activating force)
Psychological preparation for performance.

The relevancy

1.
2.
3.
4.


Same:
Intensive training on acting bodies
psychophysical unity in the performance.
Sign
The becoming of a character
Difference:
Grotowski expects that his actors to be creative in the
performance, but this tendency is not emphasized in
the Asian in-body training.
Bibliography




Barba, Eugenio. The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre
Anthropology. Trans. Richard Fowler. New York: Routledge,
1995.
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. Ed. Eugenio
Barba. UK: Methuen Drama, 1969.
Schechner, Richard. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture
and Performance. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Zarrilli, Philip B. “What Does It Mean to ‘Become the
Character’: Power, Presence, and Transcendence in Asian
In-body Disciplines of Practice.” By Means of Performance:
Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Ed. Richard
Schechner and Willa Appel. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.