Grotowski's Akropolis: A Retrospective View

Abstract

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 of Western theatre, and as a result there is presently no fully adequate vocabulary either to describe or to evaluate these works. 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.