ABSTRACT

The Centre for Theatre Practices ‘Gardzienice’ have produced few productions – just five in twenty years1 – but they have earned the group an international reputation. Richard Schechner recognises Gardzienice as ‘one of the world’s most important experimental and community-based performance groups’.2 Almost since their inception in 1977, Gardzienice’s reputation has precipitated invitations to tour internationally throughout Europe, North America and in the Far East. In their introduction to Gardzienice’s British tour in 1989, Richard Gough and Judy Christie described them as ‘one of the most extraordinary theatre companies in the world today; working at odds with any current trend – post modern, autobiographic, dispassionate – pursuing an artistic endeavour that merges with a “Life Project” ’ (Gough and Christie 1989: 3).