ABSTRACT
Directing is not just about making shows and so we academics need to keep exploring how to write about theatre as a process as much as an event. Rehearsals may be the new frontier for theatre studies, but we can’t approach them as we would a performance. Much Polish theatre reinforces this, as does the work of director Piotr Borowski (b. 1953), who is as focused on developing a process as on the regular production of performances. Borowski worked with Gardzienice Theatre Association from 1977 to 1983 and with Jerzy Grotowski from 1985 to 1992. Both these great Polish theatre names have eschewed production-line theatre-making: Grotowski in years of relatively closed research and Gardzienice with only seven productions in thirty years. Such work as Borowski’s needs different evaluative criteria from the more usual frames of value and recognition linked to critical or public acclaim, reception theory and performance reviews. I will therefore analyse Borowski’s process as much as his performances to trace how he uses the theatre for continual self-investigation and questioning. Only then can we begin to gauge the value of his work in Poland today.
