Towards A Radically Relational Post-Grotowskian Performance Paradigm

Abstract

Jerzy Grotowski chose to name his College de France lecture series La „lignee organique” au theatre et dans le rituel (The „Organic Lineage” in Theatre and Ritual), and the author, who attended and documented these final public talks, contends in this article that organicity constitutes a through-line connecting Grotowski’s theatrical and post-theatrical research. The author draws from these talks, as well as from her Grotowski-based training, including her work with Rena Mirecka, and her research collaborations with Indigenous artists and scholars from Turtle Island (North America), including Floyd Favel, who worked with both Grotowski and Mirecka. The author points out that in diverse traditional cultural practices whose role it is to enhance, restore, and sustain balance between human and non-human forms of life, organicity is understood as a living force endowing performative processes with energy, power, and efficacy. The post-Grotowskian performance paradigm envisioned by the author hinges upon a non-anthropocentric perspective informed by the ecological and spiritual dimensions of relationality articulated by several generations of Indigenous scholars. She contends that such a paradigm shift, which challenges artistic practices glorifying human creative agency, can provide a viable alternative to the dominance of (Eurocentric) new materialist/posthumanist theories of non-human agency.