Grotowskis Bridge Made Of Memory PDF Download

This dissertation explores several themes central to the work of theatre director Jerzy Grotowski including body-memory, vigilance, witnessing, "verticality," and transmission. The study identifies two types of body-memory in Grotowski's research: personal and ancestral. The former was deployed as a tool of self-penetration undertaken by the actor, in which memory constitutes an instrument for the rediscovery of impulses of a past moment. The latter phases of Grotowski's research were concerned with "ancestral memories." Active remembering in relation to "the ancestor" - real or imagined - functioned as a means for the search for one's essence, understood as the most intimate, pre-cultural aspect of the self which precedes difference. Next, the dissertation examines vigilance, or heightened awareness, by considering paratheatrical events such as Night Vigil and The Vigil. These events are set against the background of traditional Polish and Eastern European rituals associated with the vigil. I argue that vigilance facilitated acts of witnessing, both on the part of the actor and spectator. I explore the ways in which the performative act constitutes evidence of the actor's heightened awareness, and argue that it is this very act of testification that transforms the status of spectator into witness. Working with Haitian songs and ritual movements as well as textual material from the Christian Gnostic tradition, Grotowski developed extremely precise performance structures, deeply tied to what he considered archaic vertical structures, figured in images such as that of Jacob's ladder. These opuses constituted tools for the refinement of one's energies. The study explores Grotowski's conceptualization of human relationality, particularly vis-?is the notion of twinship, which recurs both in the Gnostic literature and subsequently appears in the performance work. Finally, the dissertation examines the complexity and multi-directionality of transmission by examining Grotowski's real and imagined relationship with Haiti. I explore Grotowski's broadly-construed understanding of ancestral relations and multiple lineages by considering his relationship with the Haitian Vodou priest, Amon Fr?n, as well as Grotowski's work with the "performative artifacts" of the Afro-Haitian line, which constitute the embodied practices associated with Vodou.