ABSTRACT
I first heard Grotowski speak about physical actions in his 1985 conference at Hunter College in New York City. He gave a lecture on Stanislavski. Among other things, Grotowski spoke about the performance of one Russian actor he had seen in a Tolstoy drama, The Fruits of Enlightenment. The character the actor portrayed talks for practically a whole act. He is a professor interested in parapsychological phenomena, who visits the house of some friends and tries to convince those present of his theories. The whole act revolves around this professor’s discourse to the other characters. Grotowski said the probability of this performance being boring was high, and the actor’s task truly difficult: he had to dominate an immense monologue which, even worse, was a lecture. The performance, however, was on a high level. Why? Thanks to the use the actor made of the “method of physical actions.”
