1. Grotowski’s Poor Theatre and Its Relevancy with Asian In-body Training
Spring 2007
DFL
Steven Yang

2. Overview Introduction to Jerzy Grotowski.
Why does Poor Theatre matter?
Asian acting practices, like kathakali and noh theatre
The relevancy between these two disciplines

3. Thesis (tentative)
Grotowski’s poor theatre is greatly influenced by Asian theatrical practices that both disciplines achieve the psychophysical training by having actors to use their bodies as the organism of performance and acting.

4. Jerzy Grotowski
Polish theatre director who’s famous for his theories in poor theatre and vertical transculturalism.
Influential in performance theory aside from Stanislavski, Brecht (the Epic theatre) and Artaud (theatre of cruelty).
Grotowski vs. Suzuki Tadashi

5. Two Main Ideas The Poor Theatre Performance as an act of transgression
Instead of rich theatre (the total theatre), Grotowski proposes the Poor Theatre for it can not be replaced by other genres such as films and television.

6. Poor theatre
Challenges the theatre as the synthesis of disparate creative disciplines, such as literature, sculpting, lighting, acting, etc.
Actor only uses his own body as the craft for characters transformation.
Confrontation, contradiction, via negitiva

7. Poor theatre (continued)
Elimination instead of teaching
Strips off the masks or habits the actor accustom to have in his life make them leave the comfort zone.
Actors should accomplish the “movement of soul” (psychic) with his organism in the performance.
Reconfiguration of actor-spectator dichotomy relation theatre becomes a bare laboratory and an area for investigation

8. Kathakali practices (India)
The becoming of actors
The martial art training freeing individual from the very form he’s learning.
The manipulation of breath the release of internal power
Detailed examples will be elaborated in the written paper.

9. Noh theatre (Japan) Zeami’s(1363-1443) treatises
The goal is similar to that of kathakali training method.
The arousal of actor’s ch’i (activating force)
Psychological preparation for performance.

10. The relevancy Same: Intensive training on acting bodies
psychophysical unity in the performance.
Sign
The becoming of a character
Difference:
Grotowski expects that his actors to be creative in the performance, but this tendency is not emphasized in the Asian in-body training.

11. Bibliography
Barba, Eugenio. The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology. Trans. Richard Fowler. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. Ed. Eugenio Barba. UK: Methuen Drama, 1969.
Schechner, Richard. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Zarrilli, Philip B. “What Does It Mean to ‘Become the Character’: Power, Presence, and Transcendence in Asian In-body Disciplines of Practice.” By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Ed. Richard Schechner and Willa Appel. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.