I signed this message of thanks on 29 September 1963, at the end of three weeks spent at the Kathakali Kalamandalam in Cheruthuruthy. It is a formal note about which I had forgotten until, 10 years ago, I had the surprise of finding it on page 147 of Richard Schechner's book Performative Circumstancesfrom the Avant Garde to Ramlila (I983), published in Calcutta by Seagull Books who, incidentally, have the same emblem as the Moscow Art Theatre. Schechner read my words in the school visitor's book when he also went to the Kathakali Kalamandalam in 1972. He quoted them as a reminder of how a 27-year-old Italian passed on to a young Pole of barely 30 the news of the kathakali exercises. This young Pole-Jerzy Grotowski-incorporated them into the actors' training at his Theatre Laboratory where they played a certain role. That letter of so many years ago is merely a footnote in the history of theatre research in the second half of the 20th century, in the chapter