ABSTRACT
Organic theater (in Grotowski’s terminology) strives to attain the via negativa: the state in which the actor is a transmitter, an empty vessel ready to receive and convey transcendence. The controversies about sacrality in Europe and America, as well as the ever-increasing interest in non-European rituals induced twentieth-century artists to turn their backs on traditional theater and classical dramatic texts (e.g., Grotowski, Kantor, Eugenio Barba, Ariane Mnouchkine). The theater opened up by the French Valère Novarina’s literary work—his deep drilling into language, his theatrical experience, and his essays—is the act of incinerating and resurrecting the creating word through the actor, who gives himself over to action and the text’s hidden liturgy in space. This chapter provides an overview and theoretical foundation with respect to theatrical forms in which it is in the course of working with the actors (e.g., in directing them) that self-emptying becomes the basis of a new approach not only in a theological or ethical sense but also in its use as an esthetic tool in the theater of kenosis. As presented extensively in the theological chapter, according to Christian theologies (and within them, the so-called Christologies), the expression ekenōsen (κένωσις = emptiness) is the primary expression of the Holy Trinity’s second Person: God the Son, Jesus Christ. It also means that a person empties his own will in order to become completely receptive to God’s will. The word έκένωσεν (ekenōsen) appears in apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “… [Jesus] emptied Himself ” (2:7), using the verb form, κενόω (keno = to empty).
