ABSTRACT

In many ways, the work of Jerzy Grotowski parallels Peter Brook’s search for a theatre of myth through a return to‘roots’, exploring the fundamentals of stage performance. Grotowski had already developed his ideas and distinctive style, cut off behind the Iron Curtain, before there was any direct contact between them. However, Brook realized the potential of Grotowski’s work for his own research as soon as the Polish Laboratory Theatre reached the West, and invited Grotowski to conduct a three-week workshop for his acting group as early as US in 1966. Even if never direct collaborators, they appeared at several of the same theatrical forums over the next decade; and their approach was similar enough for Ryszard Ciéslak, the star example of Grotowski’s training methods in the 1960s and early 1970s, to fit in with Brook’s troupe when he produced The Mahabharata in 1985.