ABSTRACT
Over the past ten years, Jerzy Grotowski, one of the most pervasive and misunderstood influences of the sixties, had been quiescent. We had heard that he was conducting “researches” in Pontedera, Italy, and, for the past five years, had been spending the spring term at the University of California at Irvine. Like Solzhenitsyn and other emigres, he seemed to have been swallowed up by American academe, which is a little like disappearing down a beautifully furnished gopher-hole. In early May 1988, an invitation was dispatched to some sixty-five theatre people announcing that Mr Grotowski would be conducting a seminar. This was followed by a small printed booklet which included a short piece by Peter Brook and an essay by Grotowski himself (see Chs 37 and 38). These were the texts, we were informed, on which the seminar would be based.
