ABSTRACT
Jan Kott observed that Grotowski's theatre developed at a historical moment of prolonged political unrest, continuing that in conditions of arbitrary and unlimited political repression every public activity is a compromise. Central to Grotowski's approach both to training and to performance is this tension between the form of an exercise and the inner life of the actor which can turn it into a total act. Stanislavsky and Meyerhold had used the studio as a place of training, experiment and research, while their performances took place in larger thateres; Grotowski made it the place for theatrical performance. As a creator of performance montages Grotowski acknowledged the influence of Meyerhold but went far further in creating a unique performance space and text. Richard Schechner noted that not only was Grotowski a stage director and deviser of a training method, but following Meyerhold a stage-author creating unique performance texts through the montage of images and actions drawn from dramatic literature.
