ABSTRACT
In the name of audience participation in the 1960s, audiences were insulted, sexually groped, manhandled, locked out of the place of performance and kept waiting for an hour or longer, divested of their shoes or other clothing, even thrust on stage during the last act οf Hamlet (in Central Park, New York) and invited to shoot the King and thus affect the play's direction; yet always the spectator knew that he was being manipulated; he was not genuinely being invited to take part, only to dance to the tune of the actors. With each of his productions for the Polish Laboratory Theatre, Grotowski had systematically explored the relationship of the actor and the spectator by his use of the scenic space. In Apocalypsis cum Figuris, he abandoned all attempts to organize the space. Actors and audience, together, without pretence, on equal footing, entered the large empty room that was the playing area. The scenic space in this production was allowed to be fluid, dictated by the movements of spectators and actors. Towards the end there is a scene in which the Simpleton, nearing the end of his torment, gazes around in mute appeal at the faces of the audience. Yet there is nothing that any spectator can do to reach out and assist this silent call for help from a fellow human being in distress. It was this final realization of the ultimate passivity of the spectator in the traditional performance situation that led Grotowski to announce, in the early 1970s, that he and his actors would no longer perform plays, but that their future research would concern itself with the creativity of the spectator rather than that of the actor.
