ABSTRACT
When we arrived in Italy in 1986, I was one of Grotowski’s three assistants. Still, the responsibility was enormous: we would have to form the group, the practical team from the very beginning. At this point, Grotowski had already begun to turn his attention toward what he now considers to be the final phase of his life’s research. That year we began what can be viewed as the preparation for this eventual final phase. On one level, his intentions in this period paradoxically coincide with those which Stanislavski held in the final period of his life. Grotowski himself has observed:
“At the end of his life Stanislavski addressed the actors who assembled around him to work on Tartuffe, in the following spirit:
I want to transmit to you the technique of work, and only the technique of work. We are not going to do a premiere, we are just going to work to understand what the technique of work is.” 19
