Jerzy Grotowski

Jerzy Grotowski Photo by  Andrzej Paluchiewicz

Jerzy Grotowski could easily be depicted as the pioneer of physical theatre and even the biggest impact on our piece as far as I'm concerned, his work is what we strived for the most. He focused on the real emotions of his performers, he used techniques like emotional recall and training an actor's body to the point that their emotions would be peeked.

He created 'Poor Theatre' a type of performance space where all that would be provided is the performer and the audience. Grotowski focused on the interaction between the two he wanted everything that wasn't necessary to telling the story to be removed.

Even the concepts of "character" seemed to be suspicious to Grotowski, he believed that it was a waste of an actor's time to pretend to be something that they are not nor may never be. his believe is that it is the audience that create a character based on what is provided to them by the actor's body and voice, so instead of having a performer having to learn a body action he would let them draw upon previous experience. This plays so nicely into our work that we were using our own experiences of the actions to make it even more realistic for us and the audience.


Jerzy Grotowski used very little but the impact of what he did was large, he rearranged what physical theatre could achieve, he knew what needed to be shown to make an impact on an audience and he knew what needed to be taken away to make an impact on the actor.


Grotowski Interview


Grotowski knew that theatre was not an image, it was not an ever repeating event. It was an experience made real to the audience by the presence of an actor that is why so little is used in a performance and this is also why he doesn't want anything to be pretended for a performance as he always said:

“If you want to create a masterpiece, you must always avoid beautiful lies.”
― Jerzy Grotowski