ABSTRACT

Unlike Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Michael Chekov, Brecht, Lecoq, Artaud and Craig (perhaps his greatest mentor), Kantor did not produce works of theory or practical workbooks. With the exception of The Milano Lessons, which we will come to later, he never saw himself as a teacher of theatre, although he had taught visual art on several occasions in his life. It seems as though he never considered that he had pioneered or originated a way of creating theatre which could be passed on, although everyone who saw any of his productions must have thought long and hard about the process used to create them. Although Kantor often used texts by Polish writers, particularly Witkiewicz, Wyspianski, Schulz and Gombrowicz, the spoken word was often only one among a collection of signifiers of the drama, and by no means always the most important. In fact one of the reasons why Kantor’s productions were able to speak to so many audiences that did not understand Polish was because the visual clarity of the works conveyed much of their essential meanings.