ABSTRACT
In this chapter I summarize the main insight that has emerged from my collaborative research with laboratory theater makers in what is referred to as the legacy of Jerzy Grotowski. Namely, that laboratory theater practitioners develop a way of knowing that is processual, prospective, and ecological, and that cultivates the ability to simultaneously attend and respond. However, this way of knowing, and many others such as Black, Indigenous, and neurodiverse ways of knowing, are routinely excluded and considered not “properly” academic. Such exclusions perpetrate epistemic colonialism. I go on to argue that one possible way to begin dismantling epistemic colonialism is by opening up anthropological orthopraxy to the different ways of knowing of our research collaborators in ways that are appropriate to them. In this chapter I offer an example of how I revised one practice, reading, through collaborative research.
