GROTOWSKI AND HIS LEGACY
Film Documentation
Part of “Grotowski and His Legacy. A three-day event at Lincoln Center”

Saturday, July 11, 2009
GROTOWSKI’S LABORATORY THEATRE AND THEATRE OF SOURCES PERIOD

6:00 PM
Akropolis, James MacTaggart, 1968; UK, 85 min.
Introduced by Paul Allain, University of Kent.

Laboratory Theatre, Akropolis. Courtesy of The Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland

The film documents Grotowski’s and his Laboratory Theatre’s epochal rendering of Polish modernist Stanislaw Wyspianski’s play, Akropolis, which introduced Grotowski and the Laboratory Theatre to the West. It premiered in 1962 and its final version was presented in 1967. For this performance, Grotowski worked with Auschwitz survivor, late Jozef Szajna, famous Polish director, stage designer and playwright, who aside from being Grotowski's main collaborator for the production, also designed its costumes and props. Performed to great acclaim (and controversy) at the 1968 Edinburgh Film Festival, the piece features actors representing Auschwitz prisoners building a crematorium around the audience while interpreting stories from the Bible and Greek mythology. The film includes an introduction and analysis by Peter Brook.
Buy Tickets

Ryszard Cieslak in The Constant Prince, 1965, photo by A. Paluchiewicz

8:30 PM
‘The Constant Prince’ by Jerzy Grotowski: Reconstruction, (‘Il principe costante’ di Jerzy Grotowski. Ricostruzione). Reconstruction by Feruccio Marotti, 2005; Italy, 48 min.
Introduced by Paul Allain, University of Kent.

In 1965, Grotowski directed one of the greatest theatrical landmarks of the 20th century, the Laboratory Theatre’s production of Juliusz Slowacki’s adaptation of The Constant Prince, Calderon’s classic play about torture and martyrdom. Ryszard Cieslak’s performance in the title role is considered the apogee of Grotowski's approach to acting. Grotowski worked individually with Cieslak for more than year to develop the details of the actor's score, based on an extraordinary and luminous moment from his adolescence, before combining this central element of the performance with the work of other actors and the context of Calderon’s drama. In 1977, Ferruccio Marotti united silent footage of the landmark production with recorded dialogue, resulting in this 2005 digital restoration by the Università La Sapienza in Rome.
Buy Tickets





With Jerzy Grotowski, Nienadowka, 1980, Jill Godmilow, 1980; USA, 59 min.
Introduced by Jill Godmilow

Jerzy Grotowski, Nienadowka, photo: Jan Fiolek

In 1980, Jerzy Grotowski asked his friend Mercedes Gregory to put together a film crew and to travel with him to the small village of Nienadowka, Poland, where he and his family were sheltered during the German Nazi occupation. In this search for the people, places, images, sounds, and memories indelibly linked to his art, Grotowski reconnects with the locations where he had deeply penetrating experiences and tells us of what one can rediscover – our original joy, what he eloquently calls “the movement within the repose.”
With Grotowski, Nienadowka, 1980 was conceived by Mercedes Gregory. Cinematography by Maurice Jacobsen.



Sunday, July 12, 2009
THE WORKCENTER OF JERZY GROTOWSKI AND THOMAS RICHARDS

1:00 PM
Art as Vehicle, Mercedes Gregory, 1989; USA, 60 min.
Introduced by Lisa Wolford Wylam

Downstairs Action (1989) – Nitaya Singsengouvanh and Thomas Richards. (Still from the rushes of the film Art as Vehicle by Mercedes Gregory.)

This film offers a rare look at the performance opus Downstairs Action, created by Thomas Richards under Grotowski’s supervision as a first step by the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski into “Art as Vehicle”. From 1988 to 1992, the Workcenter members involved in Downstairs Action were either performing or rehearsing their actions, eight hours a day, six days a week. Due to the nature of Art as Vehicle, the work was rarely seen; however, witnesses were invited on numerous occasions not only to have the chance to perceive the work’s underlying content, but also, in Grotowski’s words, to test the work’s quality, and so that it was not “a purely private matter, useless to others.”
Buy Tickets



Action in Aya Irini, Jacques Vetter, 2004, France, 70 min.
Introduced by Lisa Wolford Wylam

Action (2003) in the church of Aya Irini in Istanbul, Turkey – Thomas Richards, Mario Biagini, and Francesc Torrent Gironella. (Still from the rushes of the film Action in Aya Irini by Jacques Vetter of Atelier Cinéma de Normandie – A.C.C.A.A.N.)

Thomas Richards’s ongoing opus Action, begun by the Workcenter in 1994, is composed of detailed lines of actions constructed with and around ancient vibratory songs from African and Afro-Caribbean traditions. Though created within the field of “Art as Vehicle,” which focuses on the impact an opus can have on the doers, those doing, Action has been performed before thousands of people, always in small groups. In 2003, the piece was recorded in the Byzantine church Aya Irini in Istanbul when it was done as part of the Workcenter’s three-year “Tracing Roads Across” project, supported by the EU’s “Culture 2000” program and a network of cultural institutions from five different countries.



4:00 PM
Dies Iræ: The Preposterous Theatrum Interioris Show, Jacques Vetter, 2009, France, 70 min.
Introduced by Thomas Richards, Artistic Director and Mario Biagini, Associate Director of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards; the heirs of Jerzy Grotowski.

Dies Iræ (2003) in the church of Aya Irini in Istanbul, Turkey – Pei Hwee Tan, Mario Biagini, and Gey Pin Ang.(Still from film material of Dies Iræ shot in Istanbul by Jacques Vetter of Atelier Cinéma de Normandie – A.C.C.A.A.N.)

Dies Irae, performed by the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards from 2003 to 2006, marks a first in Workcenter history, as it explores the ways in which work related to Art as Vehicle can reside in a performance that actively takes into consideration the spectators’ journey of perceptions. It combines work by T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, and ancient anonymous scripts with songs ranging from Gregorian to Chinese, resulting in a theatre piece unlike any other. The footage in this world premiere film presentation was recorded in Pontedera, Italy, in April 2006.
Buy Tickets