ABSTRACT
This chapter employs Michel Foucault’s more specific understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and practice as it is inherent in Jerzy Grotowski’s work. It explores the interface between post-structuralist challenges to religious experience and examines how these challenges are useful for understanding Grotowski’s work, illuminating the religion/body connection in theatre, and redefining thinking about the religious body. Polish cultural scholar Halina Filipowicz applauds Grotowski’s work at the edges of thought questioning the authority of intellectual assumptions not just about theatre, but in the broader categories of art, as well as the function and purpose of religious belief and experience. One of the primary areas of Foucault’s work and critique was the prison system. As the philosopher and Jesuit James Bernauer astutely recognizes, Foucault’s special interest in critiquing prison can be likened to a critique of the modern imprisoned identity of man himself.
