How Grotowski Became Taiwanese: The Dissemination and Remaking of Grotowski in The Project of Tracing Back

Abstract

No Western theatre practitioner has had a greater impact on the Little Theatre in Taiwan than Polish director Jerzy Grotowski. The introduction of Grotowski to Taiwan during the late 1980s coincided with its vibrant Little Theatre Movement and provided much-needed actor training. With Grotowski’s influence growing throughout the 1990s, the Taiwanese cult of Grotowski was born. After briefly mapping out the transmission path of Grotowski in Taiwan, this article examines the Grotowski that Jing-min Liu, founder of U Theatre, constructed and presented in The Project of Tracing Back, through which Grotowski was widely disseminated. Situating this project in the larger context of post-martial law nativization movement, I argue that Grotowski’s popularity also arose from the fact that his emphasis on searching for roots was well suited to Taiwan’s burgeoning interest in native cultures at the time. Most importantly, I demonstrate how the appropriation and misinterpretation of Grotowski in this project accidentally revolutionized modern Taiwanese theatre in three aspects. First, by drawing parallels between certain activities in Grotowski’s Objective Drama and Chinese martial arts or Taiwanese folk rituals, Jing-min Liu helped make taiji daoyin and the Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage popular pedagogical practices in performing arts circles. Secondly, ‘body’ emerged, for the first time, as important critical vocabulary in theatrical practice and theory. Thirdly, by incorporating long-despised native ritual and performance elements, the project engendered fresh theatrical aesthetics. To varying degrees, these three effects of the project could be considered the indirect legacies of Grotowski that helped shape modern theatre in Taiwan.