Grotowski

cool polish guy, poor theatre, minimalist, fits into the absurd genre

Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish theatre practitioner who was born in 1933 and who died in 1999, and pioneered his style of poor theatre, which is distinctly reminiscent of Brook's style of theatre but even simpler. This style was minimalist too and used as few props and set items as possible, relied on the imagination and intense engagement of the audience, could be performed in any (and not just traditional) theatre spaces, and allowed the actors to break the fourth wall and walk anywhere in the audience and space (which improved the actor-audience relationship).

Grotowski believed in acting being a tool to reveal the truth and being a mirror to life, which clearly sounds like quite naturalistic ideas, but did not fully agree with Stanislavski's methods despite being trained in them. He instead believed that the actor should be fully comfortable in a character's physicality, as this was one of the biggest barriers to believable acting. He also believed that this could be obtained through intense physical training, such as yoga and stretching. This made acting natural and instinctive. His style is challenging because of the difficulty in acting but extremely rewarding with endless possibilities, hence went about a similar objective as Stanislavski but in a different way. By being completely aware of your own body, you become a blank canvas for other characters.

In our lesson, we first went through various Grotowski warm ups that were designed to engage your physicality, such as 'The Cat,' in which an actor begins lying on the floor and must get up like a cat that has just been woken up from their sleep - engaging the spine by moving it like a cat, using breath, moving organically, increasing the energy, applying emotions to the action (like the Brook exercise on the previous blog) and then returning to a neutral state again (lying on the floor). This is also extremely similar to 'Plastiques,' where an actor simply isolates and moves body parts in fluid, repetitive motions, then uses the whole body, applies emotions and returns to neutral. These teach the actor to be aware of their own physicality and moreover how emotions are portrayed through physicality.

A partner based exercise could be very similar, in which, whilst holding eye contact, one person leads in motion (like shifting weight or moving limbs) as in Plastiques and the other follows, before switching roles. Then after this, the leader will place their hands on different body parts of the follower and moves them around the space (like in hymn hands or other similar Frantic Assembly warm ups and practices) exploring different dynamics and speeds, and possibly laying emotions over this too to tell a story. Finally, for trust work, the partners can practice leaning into each other and moving, focusing on breath, and maybe even doing slow falls and catches. End this in a neutral position as started and focusing on breath-work. Plastiques must always be in relation to a partner or an object and always be impulsive, not rationalised.

Then we had to show a journey from one place to another using four different modes of transport to reach there, at first with no sound at all, and later with sound effects but not dialogue, only using a single object in the room and a stage block to show this. This exercise is designed to force the actors to use their physicality to tell a story and by removing vocal skills, there is less to focus on. These were very funny and absurd at times but showed a clear story when performed well but also forced us to use imagination. 

For example, in 'Waiting for Godot,' such a sequence could be used when they try and put the boot on Estragon's foot, that is high energy and chaotic, funny, and shows a clear story.