Acting after Grotowski

Theatre's Carnal Prayer

Kris Salata

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429593871
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Performing Arts

For whom does the actor perform? To answer this foundational question of the actor's art, Grotowski scholar Kris Salata explores acting as a self-revelatory action, introduces Grotowski's concept of "carnal prayer, " and develops an interdisciplinary theory of acting and spectating.

Acting after Grotowski: Theatre's Carnal Prayer attempts to overcome the religious/secular binary by treating "prayer" as a pre-religious, originary deed, and ultimately situates theatre along with ritual in their shared territory of play.

Grounded in theatre practice, Salata's narrative moves through postmodern philosophy, critical theory, theatre, performance, ritual, and religious studies, concluding that the fundamental structure of prayer, which underpins the actor's deed, can be found in any self-revelatory creative act.

1Grotowski’s carnal prayer

Sri Ramana Maharshi – Grotowski’s childhood hero, whom he had first encountered in Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India and whose philosophy he would follow throughout his life (Grotowski asked that his ashes be scattered at the holy mountain Arunachala, where Maharshi lived and taught) – practiced and taught self-inquiry via an uncompromising examination of self-awareness. Maharshi approached this self-examination by asking himself the question: “Who am I?” Grotowski embarked upon his own quest of self-unveiling inspired by Sri Ramana Maharshi’s meditative practice. In his 1975 interview, Grotowski describes it this way:

“Who,” ask yourself, “Who?” “I am so-and-so, born in such-and-such.” “Who is born?” “I so, I, now, the one who now…” “Who so?” “Who now?” Etc. In a way it led to shifting to the reverse gear and finding the all-embracing center – or perhaps one could say: a cosmos that an individual can embody.

In fact, asking oneself this question, going backwards, one reaches the state similar to thought-free clarity, and because this thought-free is “inner,” it could be associated with the icy-cold air of the mountain peaks, as Nietzsche phrased it about himself.¹

But then, he continues: “For me, there was lacking in it something human, the senses.” For Grotowski, “lacking something human,” does not mean “the body” – in opposition to “the mind” – interrogating the identity of the self, but rather, the “senses”: – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, balance, but also intuition, consciousness, even clarity of mind – all of these meanings come into play in the Polish notion of the “senses.” Hence Grotowski directs Maharshi’s question not to the mind, but rather to the whole person; and the answer is a deed that he would call the total or complete act. Grotowski’s actor-as-person works on him/herself – as Stanislavsky would wish – by answering the Indian guru’s question.

To find a way into the contemporary Western imagination, Grotowski employed some Catholic vocabulary and gnostic narratives. The actor as a whole, undivided person asks him/herself who s/he is and confesses with his/her whole self in answer and, by means of this confession, sacrifices himself, becomes holy. In his search for this holistic, East-meets-West, theatre-meets-contemplative practice-meets-liturgy, Grotowski set out from that period of his work known as Poor Theatre, and gradually arrived at a philosophical and theatrical crossroads, which he called Art as Vehicle. Its realm is a deep encounter, carnal and mental, first with oneself, and then with others.

Grotowski first used the term carnal prayer in 1990, quite late in his life. He introduced the phrase in a speech dedicated to Ryszard Cieślak’s legendary performance of Prince Ferdinand in the Laboratory Theatre’s production of The Constant Prince (1965–1970). Originally delivered in French, the speech was transcribed and later published in Polish in a translation by Magda Złotowska, edited by Grotowski. In Polish, the term is modlitwa zmysłów, literally, a “prayer of the senses.” Yet in his essay “From the Theatre Company to Art as Vehicle,” which Grotowski contributed to Thomas Richards’ book, At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions (1995), the English term becomes “carnal prayer.” Grotowski’s deliberate choice of words, among other factors, prompted me to propose the term soma in place of the body in my discussion of carnal prayer and the total act, as soma includes the sensual and “poetic” being that inhabits the body. “Carnal,” as used in this context, implies physical, mental, undivided.

It is during the formative period at the Workcenter in Pontedera, Italy, two decades after the closing of The Constant Prince, that Cieślak’s process was rearticulated as a carnal prayer and embraced as a major theme in the Workcenter’s research. At the time he coined the term, Grotowski had been pursuing practical research in Art as Vehicle, while simultaneously cultivating Thomas Richards as his artistic heir. Thus carnal prayer, while articulating something of key importance about a production developed in the 1960s, gained a particular meaning in the context of the work at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in the mid 1990s. In view of the fact that this concept emerged two decades after the close of the production to which it refers, during a phase of Grotowski’s work far distant from that conducted at the Laboratory Theatre, it is only natural to conclude that the ideas resulted from newly evolving perspectives within Grotowski’s artistic research.

In the body of over 1100 pages of Grotowski’s Teksty Zebrane [Collected Texts], “modlitwa zmysłów,” carnal prayer, appears just twice, both times in reference to Cieślak’s total act. First in his 1990 talk:

Ryszard [Cieślak’s] entire part was based on a recollection, on a very precise moment in his life (one could say it was based on physical actions – in Stanislavsky’s sense – that were connected to this experience), and came out of his personal memory from his early youth, when he had lived his first great, truly great experience of love.

Everything was connected with that experience. It was related to the kind of love, which, as it happens only in early youth, carries its entire sensuality, all that which is carnal, but simultaneously there is something different behind it that is not carnal, or something that is carnal in some other way, and which is more like a prayer. It is as if between these two aspects a bridge has been formed, a bridge which was a prayer of senses.

The entire work was connected with this experience – which we never discussed in public, and even what I just said is only a partial information. I feel that I have the right to talk about it because Ryszard himself talked about it with some of his students. That is what he said, and so I am also speaking about it. Two things in it should be noted: yes, it was carnal, but not really. There is something that reveals itself – like life that flows in the body – through the body, and it serves as a runway; however the true takeoff is not merely related to a physical aspect.²

And then in his 1995 essay in Richards’ book:

All the river of life in the actor was linked to the martyr that, in the drama of Calderón/Słowacki, is the theme of the role of the Constant Prince. All the river of life of the actor was linked to a certain memory, which was very far from any darkness and suffering. His long monologues were linked to the actions which belonged to that concrete memory of his life, to the most minute actions and physical and vocal impulses of the remembered moment. It was a relatively short moment of his life – we can say some tens of minutes, a time of love from his early youth. This referred to that kind of love which, as it can only arrive in adolescence, carries all its sensuality, all that which is carnal, but, at the same time, behind that, something totally different that is not carnal, or which is carnal in another way, and which is much more like a prayer. It’s as if, between these two sides, appears a bridge which is a carnal prayer.³

Richards too speaks of carnal prayer twice in his book, which suggests that the term was gaining significance during the period of his work with Grotowski at the Workcenter (1986–1999). These four instances provide the only basis for assessing the significance of this term. Such a scant reference to the term might seem to render the concept insignificant in Grotowski’s normally consistent philosophy. I will strongly argue otherwise, however, particularly in the context of the work Richards and Biagini do today.

Throughout his life, Grotowski regularly reflected on his work on past projects, from a perspective gained by a newly shifted focus. In his texts, he continually revised the narrative of his artistic path, rearticulating his approach through the lens of insights derived from new directions of work. Always moving forward in his research, Grotowski used this hindsight-based discursive perspective to provide a new outlook on previous work and clarify the aim of newly reconfigured practices.

For those who study his entire lifework, it becomes apparent that what he intuited, realized in practice, and theorized as a young director, he was able to rearticulate in the later stages of his post-theatrical research in ways succinct and profound, reflecting his new awareness and accumulated experience. Characteristically, in his analysis he would remain careful and reserved about his current work. For Grotowski, practical research and critical discourse were not compatible, and he thought that extensive theorizing subjected practice to conceptual restraints. His epistemology privileged the deed as a medium for creating, retaining, and disseminating knowledge. Favoring embodied (or pathic) knowledge, similarly to experiential phenomenologists, Grotowski proclaimed the primacy of practice in his studies of the human encounter. Therefore to read Grotowski often means to subject the meaning of his words to the authority of his developing insights that foreground the experiences of his new work.

In “From the Theatre Company to Art as Vehicle,” Grotowski introduces the work on ritual songs as his practical approach to an actor’s work on him/herself. In the preface to Richards’ book, he introduces Richards as his “essential collaborator.”⁴ The content of these two late texts was meticulously reworked and edited to leave a clear message about his legacy, and perhaps about the nature of theatrical legacies in general.⁵ With his health deteriorating, Grotowski invested the final phase of his lifelong research to work on “verticality,” and to cultivating continuators. Ultimately, he envisioned his legacy as disseminated through practical research in ritual arts.

Even though Grotowski conducted his work in distinct phases/projects, each radically different in approach, methodology, and objectives, his pursuit of the “work on oneself” and on the potentiality of the human encounter was present throughout, a throughline in the embodied narrative of his investigations. With the accumulation of experience and the insights from his life-long pursuit, the choice of vocabulary that addresses this thread of research sheds new light not only on the earlier work it addresses, but on his entire lifework, and importantly, on the work that is continued today by Richards and Biagini.

The questions that matter for me are: What is at stake in this progression from total act to carnal prayer? What does the notion of prayer bring to the total act? How does it relate to Grotowski’s research trajectory? What does it mean in regard to Grotowski’s research in Art as Vehicle?

From Poor Theatre to the liturgies of Art as Vehicle

I see in Grotowski’s last phase of work, though so radically different from his experimentations with theatre in 1960s, a deep connection with the philosophy that brought about the concept of Poor Theatre (which seemingly dissolved when he abandoned productions in 1970). Even if Art as Vehicle can be defined as a genre of performance in opposition to theatre – because it shifts the aim from producing a semiotic mise en scène to serving the performer’s self-disclosure – it nonetheless shares a number of key features with Grotowski’s early experimental performances, including the actor’s self-disclosure, the emphasis on the acting craft, and the simplicity of the external means. In my opinion, the essence of Poor Theatre did not so much disappear with the turning away from productions in Grotowski’s practice, as, rather naturally, if gradually, find its place in new work.

In speaking of Poor Theatre in this regard, I do not intend the mundane meaning of the term – the ascetic reduction of the means of production – but rather its philosophical basis. The concept of Poor Theatre was inspired (if indirectly) by the writings of Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, particularly by his discourse on the efficacy of rich and poor temporal means in liturgy. Maritain considered humble temporal means spiritually superior to rich temporal means (opulent, forceful, ornate, imposing, profuse). The latter tend to be more visible (spectacular) and wide-reaching, while the former create deeper, transformative impact. A good (non-Christian) example of a master of humble means would be Sri Ramana Maharshi. In Christian culture, perhaps the most potent model of the success of humble means would be Jesus. If Maritain suggests that the growth of the richness of liturgical means is a symptom of the deterioration of the original quest, and a compensation for the subsequent loss of efficacy of the liturgical practice, Grotowski understood this notion in practical, theatrical terms: growth of richness of theatrical means is symptomatic of the loss of the efficacy of performance. Perhaps they meant the same thing.

Grotowski’s longstanding interest...