"I said yes to the past" interview with Grotowski (Margaret Croyden) P.83 - 87

P.83 Croyden: What do you mean by 'poor theatre'?

Grotowski: 'Poor theatre' gives up the trappings used in the other visual arts. It is a theatre that concentrates on human actions only, and the relationship between the actors and the audience. It gives up all conventional stage effects like lights, music, scenery, makeup, props, and spectacular effects because they are not essential...We want to use ourselves only; we want to work through our own impulses and instincts, through our own inner beings and through our own individual responses. To be poor in the biblical sense is to abandon all externals. And that is why we call our theatre 'poor theatre.'

P.83-84 Why do you consider the actors and not the playwright the core of your theatre?

The actor is the creator because he brings the literature of the theatre to life. He must be like a magician and entrance the audience...We don't want to illustrate these dramas on the stage. We want to confront the text, which is an entirely different matter. To confront the text means to test it, to struggle with it, to come to grips with its meaning in terms of our own modern experiences, and then to give our own answer. Since we use mostly the classics as our texts, it means we must also confront the past...It is the actors who, during the performance, ultimately experience this confrontation. And that is what is really decisive.

P.85 Is confrontation with myth the key to the avant-garde theatre?

I don't know what avant-garde theatre is today...It is impossible to create if we destroy the bridge to the past. Myth or archetype links us to the part. The past is the source of our creative efforts. To be sure, our life is individual and personal; we live in the present, but we are the result of something larger - a greater history than our own personal one - an interindividual and interpersonal history.When we produced Akropolis I was forced to confront my own roots and, at first, I discovered that I wanted to crush the mirror of the past. I know it was impossible; my image was reflected in the mirror. Consciously I said 'yes' to the past, and realized the past was not annihilated (毀滅) but reinforced.

P. 86-87 What is the role of the audience in your theatre?

...The audience is confronted with a human act, and he is invited to react totally, even at the moment of the performance. We do not care to assault or provoke the audience, nor do we wish to do all kinds of stupid things to get a rise out of the audience. What is important is to confront the spectator and that is something quite different. One can use many stimuli to provoke, but we prefer to use only common aspects of our common experiences, polarize these aspects, and then involve the audience in such confrontations.

Translated from French by Helen Klibbe.

Croyden, Margaret. ‘”I said yes to the past” interview with Grotowski’ in The Grotowski Sourcebook. ed. Schechner, Richard, and Lisa Wolford. (P. 83 - 87) New York: Routledge, 1997.