ABSTRACT
I saw Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre for the first time in the early 19605 in Opole, a small town in Silesia. The audience was restricted to twentyfive, but that evening only four or perhaps five guests from Warsaw anc two young girls from the local school came to the performance of Akropolis. I saw Grotowski’s theatre for the second time three yean later. He had already moved to Wroclaw, where he was given space in the old town hall. I came then to a festival of contemporary Polish plays and some sort of symposium, for which critics from the entire country had gathered. The forum was boring, the plays mediocre, the productions uninteresting, but all the theatres were filled to capacity. At Grotowski’s theatre the audience was again restricted to thirty or forty, but at that performance of Calderon’s The Constant Prince there were no more than a dozen or so. Grotowski already at that time had his enthusiasts and his enemies, but the number in both camps could be counted on one’s fingers. During all those years Grotowski’s theatre did not enter into Poland’s theatrical life; it did not attract even the young. It was in Poland but really did not exist in Poland.
