The end of the theater

Meeting with Eugene Barba, moderated by Jarosław Fret

Jerzy Grotowski, during a meeting with directors and actors at the Brooklyn Academy in New York on February 22, 1969, summing up his work in the field of theater, concluded that “it is most reasonable to speak of the theater as a ruined house, almost abandoned”. The creator of the Laboratory Theater fully embodied the perspective of what, in his opinion, was possible “after the theater” in the declaration-manifesto “Feast”. In it, he explained his main goal: the formation of new interpersonal relationships, based on the courage to “hide oneself”, to reveal oneself in the encounter with nature and the other man, so as to “be born a brother”, and at the same time to bring about social transformation and, above all, to reach that dimension of human existence which in the art of acting It was to form the nucleus of the “total act” of self-knowledge. This goal was to be achieved by Grotowski by “leaving the theater”, while still using the means characteristic of the performing arts.

From today's perspective, it can be said that Grotowski did not abandon theatre so much as he wanted to redefine it, or even save it from imminent death, thanks to which his ethical strength and tools — the performatives that Western societies have had since then — are invaluable for their development.

Referring to Grotowski's thought, we want to look at theatre understood as a factor of social change, and above all as a tool for monitoring and giving direction to it — theatre as an instrument for describing the direction of cultural changes seems to be an irreplaceable benchmark of social metadysourse.

“The End of the Theatre” is a series of performances by the most outstanding theatre creators of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, representatives of the middle and youngest generation, whose task is to try to diagnose, at the beginning of the 21st century, the challenges that theatre faces (not only from the perspective of Jerzy Grotowski's tradition) in the face of dynamic social changes. The invited artists will give speeches that are both “defense” and “accusation” of the theater.

The series will open a meeting with Eugene Barba, director of more than eighty plays. The creator of Odin Teatret repeatedly, in various ways, crossed the boundaries of the theater, for example, developing the original practice of intercultural exchange (the so-called barter) or founding the International School of Theater Anthropology (ISTA), but never abandoned it. He has been faithful to the art of theatre since the 1960s: between 1962 and 1964 he was Grotowski's assistant at the 13 Rzędów Theatre in Opole, and after leaving Poland he founded his own ensemble, with which he works to this day. What, in Barbie's opinion, represents the strength of the theater, and what about its weakness?

The meeting will take place in the Great Hall of the Town Hall — the place where on 12 January 2009 the Jerzy Grotowski Institute inaugurated the Grotowski Year 2009 under the auspices of UNESCO. In the same hall on 14 June 2009, as part of the International Theatre Festival “The World a Place of Truth” in Eugenio Barba, he received the Gold Medal “Merited to Culture Gloria Artis” from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski.