Acta Gnosis

Figure 1. The first version of The Constant Prince, with ( from left) Rena Mirecka, Ryszard
Cieślak, Maja Komorowska, Mieczysław Janowski, Antoni Jahołkowski, and Andrzej
Kulig. The Laboratory Theatre, Wrocław, Poland, 1965. (Photo by Teatr Laboratorium;
courtesy of the Instytut im. Jerzego Grotowskiego, Wrocław)

Antonio Attisani
translated by Elisa Poggelli
Antonio Attisani is Professor of Theatre History at the Univeristy of Turin and the author of numerous
books and essays, most recently Un teatro apocrifo: il potenziale dell’arte teatrale nel Workcenter of
Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards (Medusa, 2006). His other research interests include Tibetan
theatre and the esoteric dimensions of the European avantgarde. A professional actor for many years,
he currently contributes to the Open Program directed by Mario Biagini at the Workcenter.
Elisa Poggelli has been in residence at the Workcenter since 2002, performing in One Breath Left,
The Twin: An Action in Creation, and Dies Iræ: My Preposterous Theatrum Interioris Show. She
currently participates in the Open Program. Poggelli frequently provides simultaneous translation
between Italian and English at Workcenter conferences and events, and also contributed to the
redaction of Opere e sentieri, a three-volume collection edited by Attisani and Mario Biagini
(Bulzoni, 2007).

TDR: The Drama Review 52:2 (T198) Summer 2008.

©2008 Antonio Attisani 75
 Here men grow up, in this house / become sighted for all their life / many who wandered blind in the
crowd, / here is the church, here god is offered / and where you put your foot is hallowed ground.
—Rainer Maria Rilke ([1902] 1988)

Grotowskian hermeneutics consists of three principal aspects that often overlap: the first is the
interpretation of a life that coincides with work, the second considers Grotowski’s distinctive
way of understanding texts and traditions, and the third deals with “Grotowskian” ways of
confronting theatrical questions, meaning by this not Grotowski’s own procedures, but rather
those principles that many claim to have been derived coherently from him. Regardless, an
indispensable further task would be to follow the Gnostic traces scattered throughout the Polish
director’s work. Grotowski’s references to Gnosis and his singular approach (though not yet
analyzed in depth) constitute a fundamental element of his palimpsests that allows one to
understand Grotowski’s reticence and discretion regarding these matters.
I will try to broach the subject in a concise way, though a few apparent digressions are
necessary. My analysis underlines the surprising lack of in-depth study about this essential figure
in contemporary theatre; at the same time, I argue that Gnosis and Gnosticism represent a
thread running more or less undetected through a considerable portion of theatre history.
Stating that Grotowski is still little known might seem like a paradox or provocation, since
most scholars and students of theatre have at least a vague idea who he was, not to mention the
many who present themselves as his accurate interpreters, either in theory or in practice—
unfortunately most often basing their work on received ideas or lazy assumptions. Although
immense, the existing bibliography lacks contributions that take into account the complexity
of this work, and above all one feels the lack of in-depth readings of Grotowski’s “texts,” the
editions of which are unsatisfactory in many languages.1
I myself share in such ignorance, which I’ve reflected upon for a few years. Since I first met
the Workcenter members, my interest in their activity, both Art as vehicle and the more theatre-
oriented work, has also prompted me to reconsider Grotowski’s work and writings, as well as the
traces of his activities in and outside the theatre.
Grotowski himself, shortly before dying, gave Richard Schechner credit for the first serious
attempt to outline the “totality of [his] searching for the essential” (Grotowski 1999:441), which
is to say his human and artistic journey.2 By doing this, the master demonstrated the low regard
in which he held the numerous books and essays published until then, including those by Polish
authors who devoted themselves (sometimes with remarkable critical results) to reconstructing
the genealogy of his work, for example Zbigniew Osiński and Leszek Kolankiewicz. It is difficult
to say precisely what is signified by Grotowski’s statement in the relative seclusion of his final
years, a chosen solitude due above all to his worsening physical condition and the need to
dedicate all his remaining energies to the process of transmission taking place at the Workcenter—
but also, if I am not mistaken, marked by a certain detachment from several scholars and theatre
people with whom he had previously been more closely linked.
Having lost touch with Grotowski’s work in the ’90s for various reasons, my rediscovery
of his decisive worth in the context of 20th-century theatre (and not in that context only) has
occurred through observation and through meeting and then establishing friendships with
Mario Biagini and Thomas Richards. Anyone familiar with these artists must know that they
can’t be considered merely as Grotowski’s followers or as disciples propagating his word, but
rather as the principal figures embodying, differently and in accord with their diverse profes-
Antonio Attisani

1. A bibliography of texts by and on Grotowski, containing over 800 titles, is posted on the Tracing Roads Across
website (http://www.tracingroadsacross.info).
2. The reference is to The Grotowski Sourcebook and in particular to Richard Schechner’s “Exoduction” (Schechner
and Wolford 1997:460–94).

76
sional and social backgrounds, what they received from their teacher during many years of
intimate association.3
After Grotowski’s death, a collection of his writings, introduced with a helpful note by
Ludwik Flaszen,4 was published in Pontedera at the initiative of Carla Pollastrelli, thus making
available, at least in Italy, some of his fundamental statements still awaiting study (Flaszen and
Pollastrelli 2001). Can we then expect a revival of interest that on the one hand would do justice
to this fundamental work, and on the other would link it to contemporary theatre research? The
answer would seem to be positive if one were to judge by the number of articles and essays
appearing all over the world, less so if we consider their average worth: excesses of intellectual-
ism, still scant attention to Grotowski’s writings, pseudo-discoveries, along with academic theses
(Grotowski and: Hindu thought, Castaneda, Gurdjieff, etc.) that, while revealing something,
divert us from the core of Grotowskian phenomenology.5 In particular they fail to consider
the indispensable Rosetta stone represented by the Workcenter (including also its theoretical
productions, such as Thomas Richards’s The Edge-Point of Performance, an essential actor’s text
that was not even adequately reviewed (see Richards 1997 and 2008).6
Therefore the first urgent appeal of this text regards the necessity of reading Grotowski and
the Workcenter together. The operation of reading implies a text, understood here in Jacques
Derrida’s meaning of the word. An opus is a text, and the attention it invites stems from interest,
respect, need, and attraction rather than critical intention; from the fact that the text interpel-
lates us in our intimacy.
For a hint at the density of Grotowski’s texts, consider the repeated Nietzschean references,
direct and indirect, strewn throughout his earliest writings, which still have not been considered.
The influence of Polish Romanticism, especially Adam Mickiewicz, along with Grotowski’s
early readings of Indian texts, are frequently cited. Yet no one has examined his debt to
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a fundamental book for the 20th century avantgarde and for some,
perhaps Grotowski among them, considered one of the first steps on the “third way” of anti-
anthropological Gnosis. Indisputably, Grotowski’s writings have not yet received proper
analysis; real interpretation has thus far been replaced by impressionistic exegesis rooted in
biography, insensitive to Grotowski’s language as an area of research in itself, and packed with
secrets, contradictions, and hidden kernels, such as his mistrust of theatre-as-product (see
Kolankiewicz 2005).

3. The esteem and interest I previously held for Grotowski did not correspond with my great passion for his per-
formances (although I saw only Apocalypsis cum figuris live), and therefore I underestimated the breadth of his
writings, except for those that gave a perspective on his work vis-à-vis Gnostic literature in 20th-century theatre.
My prejudice was strengthened by certain views I still consider erroneous, for example the passage on Artaud in
Towards a Poor Theatre (1968).
4. Ed. note: Ludwig Flaszen was cofounder, with Grotowski, of the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, Poland, in 1959.
A respected critic and literary director, he dramaturged Grotowski’s renowned performances, serving as an inter-
nal devil’s advocate in the developmental process. He also served a crucial role, along with Eugenio Barba and
Grotowski himself, in documenting the work of the company.
5. See for instance Intorno a Grotowski, a special issue of the journal Culture teatrali (De Marinis 2003), and in
particular the following thesis-driven essays: Tihana Maravic, “L’Esichia dell’attore: Grotowski e l’esicasmo” (The
Actor’s Hesychia: Grotowski and Hesychasm); Daniela Colaianni, “Il respiro e il corpo. Indagine attraverso lo yoga
dell’attore di Grotowski e dello Hatha Yoga” (The Body and the Breath: An Inquiry into the Yoga of Grotowski’s
Actor and Hatha Yoga); and Elena Fanti, “Castaneda e Grotowski.”
6. A new wave of studies in a more productive vein is now appearing. Thomas Richards’s new book, Heart of Practice:
Within the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards is forthcoming from Routledge. Mario Biagini and
I have collaborated in editing an ambitious three-volume collection, Opere e sentieri, which includes several texts
Acta Gnosis

by Grotowski previously unavailable in Italian, along with contributions by Richards and Biagini and essays by a
range of international scholars. Biagini and I are currently working with Lisa Wolford Wylam on a collection of
essays to be published by Seagull Press.

77
 Grotowski did not regard his texts as manifestos, descriptions of his future goals, or records
of intentions, but rather as post-facto syntheses, verbal indications of what he had discovered
through experience. (In this way also, his approach is exquisitely modern and scientific.) It’s also
true that his battle against the ambiguity of theoretical language took on a somewhat censorious
aspect, in the sense that each new text erased those that came before. At the same time, the
author didn’t take much trouble to preserve and anthologize his essays in lasting editions. In
light of this situation, it is certainly laudable that someone has attempted to “rescue thought on
Grotowski from the usual improvisation that not uncommonly seems to characterize it” (in
Osiński 2004:294), but nothing meaningful can arise unless we are prepared to drop academic
vanity and put ourselves personally at risk, and to collaborate (or at least initiate a dialogue)
with those who incarnate Grotowski’s most important living legacy.
It’s useful to dwell on the case of Osiński, perhaps the senior commentator on the Polish
director’s work, to grasp one of the main efforts to understand Grotowski in relation to
Gnosis. It is therefore necessary to reveal the imprecision of method and value in Osiński’s
scholarship—at least regarding the Gnostic theme—in order to see the outline of the huge
labor yet to be accomplished in order to understand not only what happened, but above all the
ongoing research. Osiński’s writings undoubtedly have merit, though sometimes they are based
on incomplete information.
Osiński proposes an “inverted perspective” (2004:294), departing from more recent circum-
stances and going backwards in time to grasp the elements of continuity and discontinuity that
characterize Grotowski’s experience. Yet Osiński underestimates Grotowski’s final decisive years
in Italy. It is no small gap, since Grotowski himself revealed his so-called “Gnostic secret” to a
broad public in 1982 in a cycle of lectures at the University of Rome (see Grotowski [1982]
1987).7 Osiński’s good intentions and erudition falter in this grave oversight, leading him to
point out several fundamental themes, but from an erroneous perspective.
One prime theme is that of Grotowski’s anti-anthropocentrism. According to Osiński,
Grotowski, desiring to “overcome an anthropocentrism entirely foreign to him” (2004:294) and
acknowledging that “theatre art is somehow condemned to anthropocentrism” (295), had to
abandon theatre. Here Osiński fails to consider that overcoming the centrality of the human
being (in theatre: of the too human actor-character) is a choice characterizing some of the most
significant artistic experiences of the 19th and 20th centuries. What matters here, indeed, is not
a limit inherent to theatre, but rather an obstacle that can be removed by means of concrete
performing propositions oriented toward new conceptions of life and technique that render the
actor operative and responsible in a broader context. To ignore the fundamental role of Craig,
Artaud, and Meyerhold in this regard is an error that generates many others in its train.
Nearly 20 years ago, in the introduction to Breve storia del teatro (Brief History of Theatre),
I specified that one can understand theatre
as research, a way of working neither rational nor irrational, but rather “trans-rational,”
generating new questions, new answers, and again new questions, in a circulation of
energies that manifests itself creatively in the evolution of scenic language. And so [one

7. The lectures are partially available as transcriptions under the title Tecniche originarie dell’attore (Originary Tech-
niques of the Actor; [1982] 1987), which includes complete transcriptions of the first five lectures and selections
from the remaining lessons, with the exception of the passages on Castaneda and discussions with students on
fieldwork. Mario Biagini is currently working in collaboration with Tinti on the vast labor of preparing a complete
version of the talks for publication in Italian, subsequently to be translated by Lisa Wolford Wylam, which would
eventually make this crucial material available for the first time to Anglophone readers. Previously Grotowski had
Antonio Attisani

spoken about Gnosis in a university seminar in Gdańsk in March 1981; his intervention was transcribed and
published in 1986, four years after the publication of notes from the Roman lectures. (Kolankiewicz agrees with
Osiński on this point; see his “Grotowski alla ricerca dell’essenza” [Grotowski’s Research on Essence], in Degler
and Ziółkowski 2005:216).

78
 can consider theatre] as Gnosis, a search for salvation through knowledge and experience.
(1989:9)

The reference to Gnosis also points to something beyond humanism and anthropology, where
“beyond” is to be understood in the sense of Aufhebung (“to go beyond” but also “to bring to
fulfillment”). In that same book, I noted the same distinction Grotowski made in his so-called
“Roman lectures” between Gnosticism and Gnosis, that is to say the difference between a
doctrinal, ideological, and intellectual approach to Gnosis and its historical derivatives such as
alchemy, hermeticism, and esotericism on the one hand, and on the other a sort of experimental
phenomenology characteristic of certain other authors:
If the current of Gnosticism reaches personalities of our century such as Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti or Luigi Pirandello (these are just “suspicions” that have been credited until
now by only a few scholars), Gnosis as a phenomenon of eclecticism and intercultural
syncretism is connected with the names of Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook, touching
also many artists without conscious philosophical knowledge, strictly speaking, though
concretely immersed in exactly the same current of research. (58)8
Having clarified the resonances with and distinctions from historical Gnosis, it’s
necessary to confront the problem of jargon. In the ’70s, his first decade outside theatre,
Grotowski retorted to strong accusations and suspicions surrounding his “retreats” by
affirming that it was not a matter of “magic” but rather “ecology,” with an explicit
reference to Bateson and his school and the surrounding philosophical context regard-
ing the crisis of the subject. In order to stress the distance of his interests from purely
theoretical speculation, he specified that he was more interested in techniques with an
“existential specificity” (techniques for seeing), than in “expressive” techniques (techniques
for showing). (Attisani 1989: 258)

Counter to Osiński’s hypothesis, one should therefore understand that what the “Gnostics”
and Grotowski did was also a theatre revolution, going beyond theatre by means of theatre,
rather than abandoning it. Personalities such as Brook, Grotowski, and others devoted
themselves to a vision of theatre clearly critical of its “bourgeois” past (Grotowski used this
term in his early years) yet constructive, a revolt against the present and the future, a way of
working that—looking to different traditions—anticipated the resurgence of performing arts
as work on oneself. In the Breve storia del teatro, I described the Polish master’s turning point
in this way:
This “dramatic-ecological” Gnosis that attempts to break the wall of energy and of
perception” (Grotowski’s words) is the working theme of the international group he leads,
where East and West, traditions and contemporary existential conditions, are not fields of
study but rather terms of a theatre encounter that happens offstage. (259)

It is then obligatory to consider the relation between theatre and the religious sphere, but here
also the field has thus far generated only superficial analysis. For “Gnostic actors” it is not so
much a matter of rediscovering the religious nature of theatre as of restoring the essence of
performing arts, which is to say of a physical, individual poiesis. Such a work on oneself has
nothing to do with modern religion in the sense of a communion based on a shared doctrinal
and liturgical apparatus; what in Grotowskian vocabulary is called “ritual arts” or “objectivity of
ritual” is an immersion in which the ways and results are strictly individual. It is a discipline that,
“dividing” rather than “uniting” individuals, does not reassemble a collective order, but instead

8. The references to Italian scholars included Umberto Artioli, Ferruccio Masini, and Massimo Cacciari. See
Masini’s revealing introduction to a selection of writings by Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka: Aforismi e frammenti
Acta Gnosis

(2004). According to Masini the work of Kafka, a key author for the Workcenter as Dies Iræ confirms, orbits
a “Gnostic-neo-mystical axis” (2004:5). See also Cacciari’s articles in Futurismo e futurismi, edited by Pontus
Hulten (Hulten 1986).

79
 it pushes each individual, through her or his own uniqueness, toward an origin without signs.
Departing from such an inverted historical perspective, one could begin (also within the
historical field) from the realization that the native territory of performing arts has been
assimilated and manipulated by doctrinal religions in order to be incorporated into liturgical
forms that no longer carry their originary function and have become apparatuses of manipula-
tive or empty images (see Repohl 1994).9
Not registering the shift of focus from body to life, not only in Grotowski’s work but also in
the line that connects Artaud with phenomenological neurobiology (see Goodall 1994, along
with the discussion of Varela in Attisani 2003), a scholar might consign Grotowskian anti-
anthropology to an eccentric dimension, thus creating a false perspective. Osiński is very
familiar with the events he describes, for example Grotowski’s cultural background,10 which
allows him to discern certain aspects of Grotowski’s intellectual formation, for instance pointing
out the central references to such a truly extraordinary writer as Mickiewicz,11 yet he does not
adequately emphasize the more cosmopolitan aspects of Grotowski’s education, such as the
Hindu readings he undertook since childhood. Based on the elements he highlights, Osiński
acknowledges Grotowski as one of the 20th-century artists aiming at a “third way,”12 though
he overlooks the particularity of 20th-century Gnostic phenomenology.
This third way or path merits a less officious definition. In a section of L’invenzione del teatro
(The Invention of Theatre) titled “The Third Way,” I quoted philosopher Roberto Esposito:
It’s time to leave aside the classical opposition between transcendence and immanence,
in order to think of a transcendence of immanence: a transimmanence, understood as
the difference internal to immanence itself, like the resistance of immanence to its own
closure. (in Attisani 2003:326)

There I noted that 20th-century theatre has been affiliated with (and often overtaken by)
philosophies and poetics looking for something other than the suffocating alternative between
theism and nihilism. It is a thought and an action, called by different names, that accepts the
invisible as part of reality. The third way, in brief, coincides with Gnosis as the Polish master
might have understood it (“Neither religious nor nihilist, Grotowski chose a difficult third way,
the practitioners of which had to endure the hostility and derision of the dominant ideologies”
[277]), and thus was part of one of the most important currents of action and thought of the
20th century.

9. Repohl claims, in an authoritative essay in the Catholic review America, that “the present liturgy [...] may
graciously be called a case of streamlined sterility” and that it “has lost exactly what Grotowski achieved in this
work: a transparency born of the precise execution of ancient acts that evoke a sense of timeless time for those who
participate” (1994:19). The current Pope Benedetto XVI, formerly cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has been fighting
for years against the liturgical degeneration of the Catholic Church, due also, according to him, to “extremist”
interpretations of the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council. Ratzinger writes: “I’m convinced that
the ecclesiastic crisis we are facing today depends mainly on the fall of liturgy, which is sometimes understood as
if it doesn’t matter whether God is present in it or not, whether he is speaking and listening to us” (1997:12).
10. On the peculiarities of Grotowskian exegesis by Polish authors, see Degler and Ziołkowski (2005:15–36).
11. Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) is considered one of the main exponents of Polish Romanticism, though the
features of his poetics and his spiritual vision make him a unique example. Osiński observes that the idea of “trans-
parent man” recurs with the same meaning both in Mickiewicz and one century later in Laing and Grotowski
(2004:298). Moreover Mickiewicz and Grotowski both attach great importance to traditions and the profound
Antonio Attisani

and heterodox roots of religiosity. Mickiewicz is little known outside Poland; very few of his works are translated
into European languages (see Fabbri 2000:9–152).
12. Osiński borrows the concept of a “third way” from Hans Jonas: “I intend to demonstrate that Grotowski himself is
one of the twentieth-century artists active in favor of this ‘third way’” ([1958] 2001:302).

80
 In this respect we could attempt, therefore, to define the most genuine work of the actor
and theatre itself as a form of Gnosis, Gnosis as a research of knowledge through experience
that prefigures a third way between the extremities of theism and nihilism; Gnosis as practical
philosophy located in the wholeness of the body-life (see Attisani 2003:37).13 It is true that
knowledge of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts since the 1960s/’70s represents a watershed
moment for studies on Gnosis, but the idea of performing arts as a privileged space for the
activation of a third way appears in different manners, times, and places, from certain aspects
of the Romantic tradition to Nietzsche and the historical avantgarde movements.
Indeed, a Gnostic attitude characterizes the most relevant theatre work of the 20th century,
including the avantgarde, though it is evoked through different key words in different contexts.
Umberto Artioli pointed out the phenomenon in the ’70s with a masterly essay on Artaud
(Artioli and Bartoli 1978; see also Artioli 1972 and 1975), following up with his studies on
Pirandello (Artioli 1989 and 2001a), Strindberg and several German authors (Artioli 2005),14
shifting finally to Gabriele D’Annunzio (Artioli 1995). Always privileging textual criticism and
seeking discoveries in texts that served as palimpsests for the work of studious writers, Artioli
finally characterized this current in the early 20th century as esotericism (see Artioli 2001b:1301–
34), shedding light on the underground “library” nourishing the phenomenon that, by the
second half of the century, can properly be called “Gnostic.” In this context Artioli cites
Grotowski as a leading figure, although without going into extensive detail. In his final years,
Artioli, who passed away in 2004, argued for (among other things) the necessity of certain
decisive clarifications about the role of Rudolph Steiner and of anthroposophy in the back-
ground of early 20th-century thought.
Other scholars embarked on the same paths as Artioli, extending them by applying similar
critical hypotheses to different authors and cultural contexts. In the book containing the above-
mentioned synthesis by Artioli, the prelude framing 20th-century events is entrusted to Mirella
Schino, whose essay on “Theorists, Directors, and Pedagogues” revisits certain fundamental
themes of contemporary theatre such as “work on oneself” and “the end of anthropocentrism,”
yet without acknowledging the existence of a third way, and taking recourse to such frustratingly
nebulous categories as “utopia” and “revolt” (Schino 2001:85). Her choice to privilege chronol-
ogy over meaning, emphasizing Meyerhold over Grotowski (as if the former were easier to
historicize, being more remote) is symptomatic of the failure to articulate a convincing keystone
reading of the entire century and the important trajectories revealed therein. Thus one risks
failing to recognize that what lies beyond anthropocentrism is not an “anthropomorphic vision”
or a “performance as a combination of life fragments to orchestrate” (85), but rather a concep-
tion of performing as process and product together, work on oneself and an opus,15 the “vertical-
ity” of which (to retain Grotowski’s terminology) implies a virtual dissolution of the performer’s

13. Conversely, Osiński specifies that Gnosis, magic, and mysticism represent the third way, “beside religion, based
on faith, and philosophy and science that adopted as fundamental tools experience, experiment, and reflection”
(Osiński 2000:305).
14. In this essay, Artioli considers the work of Georg Fuchs as the foundation of 20th-century theatre intended as an
esoteric tool. He points out important themes such as the orgiastic aspects of ritual, as well as the mystic elements
of light and the actor as “speaking mask,” thus configuring an antirepresentational line with such noble fathers as
Goethe and Rudolf Steiner, starting from Fuchs and proceeding with Artaud, Lothar Schreyer, and Grotowski
(Artioli 2005:66). Artioli does not neglect to observe the grave misapprehension of these authors and their con-
demnation by those concerned with resurrecting the Enlightenment tradition of representation. Rhythm and voice
are here the emblems of a battle against the “theatre of contents” (Rilke 2005) and a harbinger of the compensa-
tory turn to ritual seen in so much contemporary performance.
Acta Gnosis

15. The term opus used by Grotowski is suggestive of alchemical labor, a work on matter that involves personal trans-
formation and also a social dimension.

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 body in favor of “transparency” and a possible shared perception with the witnesses;16 there,
the features of I, you, and the other are blurred, and being-together becomes the new fleeting
subject of knowledge and transcendence.
One of the most poignant
examples of this search for
something analogous to what
Grotowski terms verticality
within theatre is Rilke: in 1902,
when he still thought it was
possible to paradoxically
combine a refusal of the
current theatre with a vision
of the necessary and perhaps
possible theatre—ideally
relying on Maurice
Maeterlinck to transfigure its
dramaturgical elaboration and
on Eleonora Duse for its poetic
transcendence on the stage—
Rilke, appearing onstage after
the Viennese premiere of Sister
Beatrice to recite the verse that
opens this article, pointed out Figure 2. From left: Antoni Jahołkowski, Andrzej Kulig, Rena Mirecka,
how contemporary theatre Mieczysław Janowski, Ryszard Cieślak, and Maja Komorowska in the first
could serve human becoming. performance of The Constant Prince. The Laboratory Theatre, Wrocław,
Poland, 1965. (Photo by Teatr Laboratorium; courtesy of the Instytut im.
One risk of adopting an
Jerzego Grotowskiego, Wrocław)
inverted historical perspective,
particularly in light of the
superficial acceptance of which Grotowski is now the beneficiary, is that it produces a distorted
image, also as regards its religious dimension. One of the most interesting aspects of Jennifer
Kumiega’s monograph is the demonstration of how controversially Grotowski was received
by critics and the public (Kumiega 1987). In Poland especially this was due to a Gnostic tone
considered heretical and blasphemous,17 while in the rest of the world there was irritation on
the part of the scribes of different religions, like the Marxists. If loyal Brechtian critic Eric
Bentley judged Akropolis “over-aesthetic and therefore distressingly abstract” and criticized
the “reduction” of Calderón’s three-act text in the The Constant Prince (in Schechner and

16. Ed. note: Grotowski defines this terminology most explicitly in his essay “From the Theatre Company to Art as
vehicle”: “verticality—we can see this phenomenon in categories of energy: heavy but organic energies (linked to
the forces of life, to instincts, to sensuality) and other energies, more subtle. The question of verticality means to
pass from a so-called coarse level—in a certain sense, one could say an ‘everyday level’—to a level of energy more
subtle or even toward the higher connection. At this point to say more about it wouldn’t be right. I simply indicate
the passage, the direction. There, there is another passage as well: if one approaches the higher connection—that
means, if we are speaking in terms of energy, if one approaches the much more subtle energy—then there is also
the question of descending, while at the same time bringing this subtle something into the more common reality,
which is linked to the ‘density of the body.’ The point is not to renounce part of our nature—all should retain
its natural place: the body, the heart, the head, something that is ‘under our feet’ and something that is ‘over the
head.’ All like a vertical line, and this verticality should be held taut between organicity and the awareness” (in
Antonio Attisani

Richards 1995:125).
17. Grotowski himself, in his penultimate lecture at the Collège de France, recalls how the transcription of meetings
between the Polish Church and the Polish State revealed that they agreed about nearly only one thing: closing the
Teatr Laboratorium! (see Grotowski 1998).

82
Wolford [1997] 2001:166),18 Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (1901–1981), Primate of Poland, in
1976 condemned Apocalypsis cum figuris [1969] as an “abomination,” a true obscenity (see
Kolankiewicz 2000:91).19
Unfortunately we have no indication of any reaction to Grotowski’s performances from
Karol Wojtyła, whose phenomenological formation might possibly have allowed him to discern
something beyond doctrinal dissent, if for no other reason than because the philosophical
orientation of the two Poles shared a notion of self-realization through self-transcendence,
the “gift of oneself,” with an insistence on “doing together with others” (see Wojtyła 2001).
Naturally Grotowski did not consider this principle in relation to the social and moral activity
of the Church (Wojtyła’s point of reference is the compassionate Virgin Mary), but rather in the
sense of the actor’s gift: giving himself (as an actor), the individual becomes fully himself. For
the director, the central figure is instead Christ, evoked in all Grotowski’s creations, and not
only from the theatrical period.
In the frame of textual analysis, the significant advancement in Grotowski studies now
underway will require immediate and accurate chronological recognition of the Polish master’s
influences and readings, which will also finally lead to a clarification of his references to the
sources and critical literature of hermeticism, esotericism, and Gnosis. It is an immense task that
some will confront with philological rigor and academic detachment, and others with a more
personal degree of involvement. In a few years, however, everything written thus far will appear
somewhat naïve and Grotowski will find the place he deserves in the scope of the 20th century,
at the crossroads between science, philosophy, and spiritual research, the site of much ancient
and contemporary art. It is necessary to emphasize, however, that Grotowski did not create
either a synthesis of the various disciplines in which he was interested or a system, but in the
way appropriate to performing arts, proceeded through a series of incarnations, incarnations
simultaneously lived and studied, therefore “studiable” by means of innovative methodologies.
In this essay, I don’t claim to replace a long-term collective endeavor, but rather limit myself
to acknowledging a few traces of certain cultural aspects of Grotowski’s work. Osiński’s essay
remains a useful reference in this sense, and the best way to do justice to it is to read it. He
irrefutably concludes that, “Grotowski’s creative activity and his worldview can be studied and
interpreted also within the field of contemporary Gnosis, more precisely neo-Gnosis,” thus
making it possible “to see this activity in a new light” (2004:316). Therefore it can be useful
to review the passages of Grotowski’s opus that Osiński considered fundamental to a Gnostic
classification.

18. The program of the performance: The Constant Prince, words by Calderón-Słowacki. Adaptation and direction:
Jerzy Grotowski; set design: Jerzy Gurawski; costumes: Waldemar Krygier; literay direction: Ludwik Flaszen.
Actors: Ryszard Cieślak (The Constant Prince), Rena Mirecka (Phenix), Antoni Jahołkowski (King), Maja
Komorowska (Tarudant), Mieczysław Janovski (Muley), Gaston Kulig (Henry). Wrocław, Teatr Laboratorium 13
Rzedow (Theater of 13 Rows): 25 April 1965. Second version: Stanisław Scierski substituted for Gaston Kulig.
Wrocław, Teatr Laboratorium 13 Rzedow - Instytut Badania Metody Aktorskiej (Institute for the Study of Acting
Methods): 14 November 1965. Third version: Ryszard Cieślak (The Constant Prince), Rena Mirecka (Phenix),
Antoni Jahołkowski (King), Zygmunt Molik (Tarudant), Zbigniew Cynkutis (Muley), Stanisław Scierski (Henry).
Wrocław, Teatr Laboratorium 13 Rzedow - Instytut Badania Metody Aktorskiej: 19 March 1968.
19. Kolankiewicz says quite a few Polish spectators considered Apocalypsis cum figuris “a real obscenity,” and some
would even go to see the performance to spit on the actors. On the other hand Helmut Kajzar, a critic faith-
ful to the regime, lambasted it as pro-religion and effectively reactionary. At least until The Constant Prince, the
Teatr Laboratorium provoked strong opposition and frequent demands for its closure. The heretical motives were
evident: even though the somewhat unorthodox references to the Gospels were not as pronounced as in Ewangelie
Acta Gnosis

[1967] and Apocalypsis, the performances betrayed a blasphemous radicalism according to practicing Catholics,
for example in the derision of the resurrection of the flesh (against which Gnosis juxtaposes the awakening that
distinguishes the “living”).

83
 One could also consider the contribution of another author, Leszek Kolankiewicz, professor
of theatre anthropology, who took part in Grotowski’s activities in the ’70s and authored a book
on the subject (1978). Kolankiewicz also deals with Gnosis, though without fully apprehending
the meaning it took on for Grotowski (see Kolankiewicz 1999:99–140).20 Kolankiewicz’s
argument is directed entirely toward demonstrating the topicality of Gnosis, the privileged
rapport established between Gnosis and art, and the specificity of Polish reception, which
acknowledges both Grotowski’s deep Catholic roots and the influence of late-modernist culture.
Displaying a vast erudition that often crosses into self-congratulation and intellectual pastiche,
Kolankiewicz proposes a synthesis of Freud, Jung, and Lévi-Strauss, according to which the
magic of theatre would consist of the reactivation of myth. Kolankiewicz cites Hans Jonas as
the highest authority on Gnosis, in particular his chapter on Glory,21 and in this regard points
out the importance of a text such as Song of the Pearl from the Gospel of the apostle Thomas,
invoked alongside Henri-Charles Puech. At this point, however, Kolankiewicz introduces a new
theme, the sense of Gnosis in Baudrillard’s “world of simulacra” and the possible apocastasis: in
Zarathustra’s hell, flames liberate one from impurities, and the wicked are restored to the world
on the day of resurrection, or apocastasis (the restitution of all). All this of course conflicts with
Catholic doctrine, which regards Hell as eternal punishment. The rebirth that makes it possible
to do new things—or more precisely, to make things new—should happen, according to
Valentin’s apocrypha,22 in a world that is a copy and a mirror, which is to say by means of images
and by extension through rituals, as advocated in the Gospel of Phillip.23 Similar arguments, in
the frame of an essay on the “Feast of the Dead,” allow Kolankiewicz to demonstrate in the
passages dealing with Grotowski how the director’s “blasphemy” resembles that of Mickiewicz,
with whom he shared the idea that “art is still a religious rite […] a sort of evocation of the

20. The chapter cited, “Kto wejdzie do sypialni, roznieci swiatlosc [The One Who Enters the Bedchamber Will Spark
the Light],” was translated into Italian for me by Zoria Doviat—who also translated Osiński’s text, now published
in Italian—whom I gratefully acknowledge. Pages 209–60 of the same book have were translated into Italian by
Lucia Petti Lehnert and Marina Fabbri (see Kolankiewicz 2000).
21. In high-level chatter, the work of Hans Jonas is credited for the maturation of research on Gnosis, in particular his
The Gnostic Religion ([1958] 2001). Jonas borrows from Lévi-Strauss the idea of a structural analysis of phenomena
and works on defining the “invariants,” identifying dualism as the primary invariant in the case of Gnosis. In fact
it is an outdated and rough conception, but Osiński seems to adhere to it when he asserts that Grotowski refuses
the dualism “so valued by all Gnosticisms and all Gnosis,” preferring a “principle of polarity” (Osiński 2004:309).
In relation to this point Grotowski, consistent with historical Gnosis, conceived the dualisms body-mind, inside-
outside, consciousness-unconsciousness, etc., as conditions to be overcome. In his analysis of the values and limita-
tions of Jonas’s studies, Ioan Coulianu condemns the possible creation of a vicious hermeneutic circle “thanks to
which we ultimately find in Gnosis exactly what we have put into it.” Of course one also runs such a risk when
applying the concept of Gnosis to theatrical creation. While Jonas defines Gnosticism as a religion, in this case
the historical phenomenon and also its theatrical application should be regarded, in the words of Coulianu, as “a
scientific movement, strongly critical towards the dominant paradigm,” which means that “it is defined within
its specific historical context as belonging to the counterculture” (Coulianu 1989:78). Therefore we could define
theatrical Gnosis as a laboratory of knowledge that utilizes primarily nonverbal materials, activated by a collective
work. On this basis we can understand why theatrical phenomena related to Gnostic strategies can also be defined
in their totality as antitheatre, which is to say in opposition to normative theatre and in this sense avantgarde and
countercultural. For further discussion, see Attisani (1999).
22. Ed. note: Valentin was a renowned second-century gnostic philosopher. Fragments of his works were found among
the texts of Nag Hammadi. He was excommunicated by Pope Pio I in 143 CE.
23. The Gospel of Philip, along with that of Thomas, is perhaps most consonant with a Grotowskian weltanschauung
Antonio Attisani

[worldview], not only for the central emphasis it places on ritual work (“Truth did not come into the world naked,
but it came in types and images” [in Robinson (1978) 1990:67]), but also for the poetic intensity with which it
negates canonical resurrection to affirm the one attainable during earthly life (“If they do not first receive the resur-
rection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing” [in Robinson (1978) 1990:56]).

84
spirits of the dead, art is a mysterious and holy action” (Kolankiewicz 2000:68).24 In this way,
Kolankiewicz helps demonstrate the tremendous scope of Gnosticism-Hermeticism and the
proportionate aversion it provoked in 19th- and 20th-century Poland.
Having clarified certain characteristics of the Gnostic background that constitutes an
important part of Polish culture that has only recently begun to be spoken of without reticence,
it’s possible to trace some of the most important stages of Grotowski’s spiritual journey, keeping
in mind that Gnosis, in his understanding, has unique connotations. One point of departure is
offered by the director himself:
Since childhood I have been interested in different kinds of “psychophysical” techniques.
In fact, since the age of nine, my first points of orientation have been the great figures of
Hindu techniques. And this first center of interest (how to work on oneself with someone
else, in a performative context, so to speak) subsequently passed through theatre. In the
course of my life I have always looked for contact with people who were in unbroken
connection with this or that technique and tradition. And there, in different fields, I have
received a direct transmission. (in Thibaudat 1995:31)

Various elements of these affirmations that Grotowski repeated on several occasions deserve
emphasis. First, the very early age at which he developed the interests that would remain with
him for the rest of his life. The credit goes to his mother for giving him as a present (in the final
years of WWII) the Polish edition of Paul Brunton’s book on Hindu mystics (Brunton 2003
[1934]).25 Among these, the figure who most fascinated Grotowski was Ramana Maharshi, a
spiritual master whom his mother also admired; she was a practicing Catholic, yet curious and
respectful of every form of spiritual research. The interest in this atypical holy man would
remain with Grotowski always, even if he never emphasized it. It is worth dwelling on his
direct recollection:
In the second book which my mother brought from the city was a report by Brunton
about a man who was living on the side of Arunachala Mountain in India, and who in
some way was projecting on this mountain the God-image. In his case it would be more
precise to say the Godhead presence. His experience was oriented of course towards
somewhere else than the mountain. This old man, who in our cultural context would be
probably judged as a simpleton or even a crazy person (the Russians have the perfect word
for this: yurodivy—maybe we can translate this as holy fool), this old man was repeating
that if one is investigating “Who am I?” then this question will send you somewhere back
and your limited “I” will disappear, and you will find something else real. Later I learned
that this something else he was connecting with hrydaiam, etymologically, heart-is-this.
My first reaction when I read the report of Brunton was a fever. Later I started to copy
the conversations of this yurodivy with his visitors. Then I discovered that I am not so
much a changeling as I was supposing before. I discovered that somewhere in the world
persons are living who are aware of and deeply involved in some strange, nonhabitual
possibility. It gave me a clear temptation, but at the same time put me more or less in
contradiction with a conventional Catholic education. But it is well possible that all
this I am saying is already some kind of rationalization, and that even if everything that
happened under the influence of this report about the old man from Arunachala opened
some horizon for me, at the same time, paradoxically, it was serving my need for self-
importance, for development of a big ego. Anyway, from this time on I started to try,
practically, to make this investigation: “Who-am-I?” which was not a mental investiga-

24. The first and most pertinent reference in the extract published in Teatro e storia is to Tadeusz Kantor’s Dead Class
[1975] and all his productions.
Acta Gnosis

25. See also the contribution by Jerzy’s brother Kazimierz Grotowski (2005); also in Degler and Ziółkowski
(2005:55–87).

85
 tion, but rather as if going more and more towards the source from which this feeling of
“I” appears. The more this source seems to be approached, the less the “I” is. It is as if a
river would turn and flow towards its source. And in the source, there is no longer a river?
(in Schechner and Wolford [1997] 2001:254–55).

In his final lecture at the Collège de France—final because the series was interrupted by his
declining health—Grotowski showed archival footage of the Hindu master, elaborating on some
observations about the quality of his presence (Grotowski 1998, lecture from 26 January). One
filmed sequence showed the Maharishi surrounded by some visitors; they were all posed for the
photograph, and Grotowski pointed out the extraordinary difference between the absolute and
quiet immobility of the Maharishi, to the point of seeming like a photographic silhouette, and the
agitation of the others. While their movements suggest an awkward nervousness and a sense of
all too human misery, his stillness expresses both great strength and peace, fullness and empti-
ness together, revealing the apparent oxymoron of a presence that is also transparency, a way
of being and not being there, which is essentially a bridge toward another reality, invisible and
yet concrete.
Leaving aside the question of Grotowski’s relations with Hindu and Buddhist philosophies,
it is useful to remember that the deepening of these interests passed on to Grotowski through
other readings never cited by scholars. Information on one such reading was given to me by
Ludwik Flaszen (whom I gratefully acknowledge here) who mentioned a book on mysticism by
an Italian author named Vittorino Vezzani, a truly singular character whose work had significant
international success in the ’50s and was translated into several languages (see Vezzani 1951).26
One could hypothesize that among the young Grotowski’s readings, this book functioned as a
connection between the Eastern and the Western aspects of his “religious” interests, insofar as
the Turin esotericist’s panoramic overview focused on a comparison of mystical experiences from
geographically distant locales that demonstrated both their differences and correspondences.
In this way it is possible to better understand the extraordinary expression “philosophic
techniques,” which refers to a vocation of changing the world concretely, above all starting from
one’s own self.27 To understand this matrix of Grotowski’s personality, one needs a philosophy
comprised of more than just ideas, one that also allows us to comprehend the fundamental
coherence with which he made all his life choices. From the beginning theatre was for him
an instrument—precisely, a vehicle—and insofar as knowledge is the aim of philosophy, his
philosophy concerned the “body” and the doing, the same conquests he would ultimately
attribute to the Performer, changing the terminology but never the objective.
On this basis, the connections Grotowski established with different cultural and religious
traditions must not be regarded as a sign of syncretism, but rather as fidelity to his fundamental
choice. Consequently the reference to Gnosis can be seen in the frame of rigorous research on
the fundamentals of human doing and feeling, rather than a phantasmagoric secret of secrets.
Although it’s impossible to know precisely when Grotowski discovered Gnostic literature, his
profound knowledge of canonical religious literature provides a clear point of departure. When
in 1995 he affirmed, “I have to admit that the Gospels and Judaic approaches played an impor-
tant role in my life” (in Thibaudat 1995:32), he might be referring to both sides, the canonical
and the apocryphal together, and the use of the term “admit” (avouer) suggests that he had not

26. Grotowski could have read this in the French edition, which appeared in an edition by a renowned publisher of
religious studies in 1955, translated by J. Gouillard. Vezzani (1885–1955) was credited on his books’ covers as
Professor at the University of Torino, without specifying that he taught Zootechnics for the Faculty of Agriculture.
Antonio Attisani

He had an eclectic career as can be seen from his long-term collaboration with the review Luce e ombra: Rivista
trimestrale di parapsicologia e dei problemi connessi (cf. http://www2. comune.bologna.it/bologna/fbibbdb/leo.
htm#Storia).
27. On the 20th-century revival of this fundamental aspect of Western philosophy see Hadot (1981).

86
previously revealed how important
these texts had been for him, probably
for a very long time.
In Grotowski’s performances, at
least through Ewangelie (1967)28 and
Apocalypsis cum figuris, many significant
Gnostic echoes are discernible in the
dramaturgical choices and in the
resulting connotations of certain
characters and situations, as reading
program notes for the early perfor-
mances of the Teatr Laboratorium
is sufficient to demonstrate. Through
Cocteau, in 1959 Grotowski
approached the Orphic theme in
accord with a pro-cosmic and decidedly
Gnostic mood: “We thank you world,
for we have the awareness that allows us
to overcome death: to understand our
eternity in your eternity,” he writes in
the program for Orpheus (in Grotowski
2001a:35). The following year he staged
Lord Byron’s Cain, expressing the
explicitly Gnostic basis of the text
with a grotesque slant (the subtitle was
“grotesque, that is: mystery”) echoing
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (37).29
Or one could consider the strictly
internal document titled Farsa-
Misterium, where the grotesque appears
as a distinctive feature of a “rituality
of theatre as a counter-proposal to the Figure 3. Ryszard Cieślak and Rena Mirecka ( foreground) in The
ritual forms of religions” in opposition Constant Prince. The Laboratory Theatre, Wrocław, Poland, 1965.
to “bourgeois theatre” (41).30 There, a (Photo by Teatr Laboratorium; courtesy of the Instytut im. Jerzego
conception of Gnosis as a possible Grotowskiego, Wrocław)
mode of encounter between Western
and Eastern spirituality is already taking

28. Ed. note: Ewangelie was not publicly performed; it could be considered as an intermediary stage in the develop-
ment of what ultimately became Apocalypsis cum figuris.
29. The enigmatic protagonist Alfa-Omega was God and Lucifer together, according to the Gnostic idea revived by
Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy (author of Lucifer-Gnosis). For more on the Gnostic aspects of
Byron’s work, see Artioli (2001a), especially the passage on page 41 that demonstrates how, through the reap-
praisal of Lucifer versus a wicked God who created man to torture him and to “generate destruction,” Byron
can be regarded as one of the dramatists who initiated a line reaching to Pirandello and beyond. See also Randi
(2006:97–113).
30. It is enough to remember, among many possible examples, Meyerhold’s clear position: “What is for me the value
of mysticism? It is the last refuge for those who are on their way and refuse to bow to the power of the Church,
though without losing their faith as free men and in a free world. Mysticism is further proof that theatre can solve
religious questions; no matter how dark the tone of a theatre work might be, mysticism contains an irrepressible
Acta Gnosis

call to life […] I believe theatre must be able to wrest spectators away from the Church and make them enter its
own space, where illumination and catharsis will be produced. There the rebellious soul of man will find the path
that will lead him to the fight” (in Abensour 1998:105).

87
 shape, for instance in the statement that the “biological prototypes of rhythm are the heartbeat
and the breathing,” a road that clearly leads to Hesychia and certain yogic practices (in Flaszen
and Pollastrelli 2001:47).31 In the following years Jungian themes appeared, not to mention
the biblical interpretation of Akropolis and of the Christ archetype in The Constant Prince.32
However, the Polish director became more discreet over the years, and the references (especially
the heterodox ones) in his writings became ever more subterranean; he seemed to do so not out
of opportunism, but rather to avoid obscure or provocative references, and above all to directly
address an increasingly cosmopolitan audience of readers and spectators.
It is also necessary to remember that until the mid 1960s, the survival of the Teatr
Laboratorium was constantly in question in Communist and Catholic Poland, and that therefore
not only Grotowski but all of the company members had to be very careful how they expressed
themselves (see Kumiega 1987).33 In reflecting on those events today, it is necessary to consider
the historicity of lexical inventions. Even in this respect Grotowski was creative. For example,
as he explained, the expression “lay ritual” allowed him to “pass between Scylla and Charybdis,
between the atheist State and the Polish Church, which was and still remains rigid. I had to pass
between these two poles without them being simultaneously hostile to me.” Still, he clarifies,
“it corresponded also to something real” (in Thibaudat 1995:31). Words and discourses were a
mask that not only hid something, but also referred to a precise meaning. So the question always
remains, even in conditions of relative freedom, especially when words are not the ultimate
aim but rather signs deriving from practice:
That’s why I avoid the word “spiritual” and I speak of energy: it is something that
doesn’t belong to any church, to any sect, to any ideology. It is a phenomenon with which
everyone can experiment. “Lay ritual” was thus an expression simultaneously tactical
and true. (in Thibaudat 1995:32)

The heretical theme well-noted and stigmatized by Polish religious authorities was indeed
strong. Between the third way and the other two there has always been a battle; religious and
political authorities feel their power threatened by someone proposing an alternative, even if

31. Among the authors who free Gnosis from exclusive reference to Christianity, Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci expresses
the matter in these terms: “For many years I have been studying Tantric literature, but I think it would be more
precise to call it by another name more appropriate to its content and to the methods applied to reach the spiritual
aim that is its object. I call it ‘Indian or Tibetan Gnosis.’ This does not mean I claim a derivation of or interdepen-
dence with European, Greek, Egyptian, Christian, or Judaic Gnosis. Even if exchanges might have taken place,
there seems to be undeniable correspondence between this movement of thought and the modes of life common
at the beginning of the Christian era or soon after. Their different directions result from a cultural crisis troubling
various cultures: the uncertainty of the times due to war, invasions, or social disorder; the decline of many religious
creeds; dissatisfaction with the traditional values, and anti-conformity. These factors aroused unsatisfied aspirations
in many: the desire to search for new paths to come closer to God, the beginning of introspections that unveil the
light of a divine presence as a sign of the holy essence hidden within each of us, the revival of ancient archetypes
reinterpreted as symbols of new spiritual patterns, a prevailing sense of the inadequacy of traditional values, a wish
to overcome this life of relativity and existentialism, and an undefined and vague aspiration to evade space-time”
(1979:9). Tucci’s explanation also seems to refer to a conception of Gnosis as a phenomenon distinct from Gnosti-
cism, characteristic of a particular Christianity, as Grotowski underlined in the Roman lectures.
32. See also another of Grotowski’s texts from 1962, “La possibilità del teatro” (in Flaszen and Pollastrelli 2001:49–80)
in which Grotowski speaks about “archetypes,” analogies between actors and shamans, etc., and where the
explication of the Gnostic perspective is prudently entrusted to certain critics of that time, who perceived it as “a
Antonio Attisani

perverted and sarcastic theology (a-theology? anti-theology?) that confers on Lucifer the attributes of wisdom and
light and conversely represents Jehovah as the spirit of darkness” (57).
33. It was in this spirit that Grotowski asked his colleagues to join the Communist Party, so that the regime, which
was already threatening to close the theatre, would not be able to disband a part of itself.

88
the person doesn’t proselytize
and nurses no ambition of
dominating anyone other than
her- or himself.34
A turning point seems to
be constituted by The Constant
Prince, in which the protagonist
is a variation of the Christ figure.
Osiński defines this performance
as “a sum of the Gnostic atti-
tude,” a “limit experience” of
which Apocalypsis cum figuris
seems to be “solely a prolonga-
tion” (Osiński 2004:317–18).
This misrepresentation might
be attributed to sparse knowl-
edge (if not amnesia) on the part
of Polish and to a lesser extent
foreign scholars about the
activity Grotowski developed
in Italy. In fact, references to
Gnosis in his work were decisive
and almost explicit since the
early ’80s, with the passage from
Theatre of Sources to the final
15 years devoted to transmission
and to the new research, which
touched greater heights than
those indicated by Osiński.35 As
I have already stressed, the ideal
Figure 4. Ryszard Cieślak in the first performance of Apocalypsis
of the gift of self constitutes a
cum figuris. The Laboratory Theatre, Wrocław, Poland, 1969.
shared trait of Grotowski and
(Photo by CAF; courtesy of the Instytut im. Jerzego Grotowskiego,
Wojtyła, who had in his turn
Wrocław)
long been engaged in theatre
creation and theoretical
reflection. In certain writings from the ’50s, the future Pope outlined a view of theatre that
differs from Grotowski’s insofar as theatre is conceived as a public meditation on the message of
the Church, but which is in other ways surprisingly similar. The primacy of the word was to be
affirmed, according to Wojtyła, by an actor who was not merely an interpreter and by means of
an extremely elaborated physicality. His words: “The actor is a rhapsodist. This doesn’t mean
that he is limited to merely playing, but neither does it mean that he ‘represents’ tout court.
Rather he is the bearer of a problem” (Wojtyła 2001:970). The extraordinary actuality of this
anti-bourgeois option draws him even closer to the great Polish men of theatre in the second

34. Take for example the case of the Dalai Lama, perhaps the most laic interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism: “I deeply be-
lieve that we ought to find, all together, a new spirituality.” “It wouldn’t be ‘religious’?” responded his interviewer,
Jean-Claude Carrière. “Certainly not. This new concept should form itself alongside religions, in such a way that
all men of good will would be able to adhere to it.” / “Even without religion or completely counter to religion?” /
“Yes. A new concept, a laic spirituality” (Dalai Lama 1994:118). This is not to say that the figures of Tibetan Bud-
dhism commonly called “gods” or “deities” in reality signify different forms of energy, simple or composite.
Acta Gnosis

35. Osiński witnessed the Workcenter’s activities in the 1990s and gave a detailed account of it (see Osiński 1991:95–
112; 1997:385–400).

89
 half of the 20th century, in particular Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor, when one considers
what comprises the physicality of the rhapsodist problem-bearer: “the word, in order to be
alive, cannot be thought without movement,” and the actor’s acting “is not a re-creation
of life. All this happens in the rhythm of the word and thought, in their interior tensions.
Therefore the gestural integration best suited to the rhapsodist is dancing movement, stylized,
non-naturalistic” (Wojtyła 2001:970).36
A relevant distinction between the paths undertaken by the two greatest masters of Polish
theatre, Grotowski and Kantor, consists in their heterodox religiosity, which is to say that they
not only resisted the oversimplified sermonizing that typically characterizes expression of the
gift of oneself, but especially the projection of religious tensions onto a world depicted as an
allegory of a perverted creation, in which the work accomplished by the artist on himself is
possible only at the cost of an endless battle against the deceiving consolations that constitute
the beliefs of the majority. Such an inexhaustible battle concerns both the conception of the
actor-creator and that of the scenic composition, which can never be crystallized in a model,
as demonstrated by Grotowski’s and Kantor’s creations.37
Returning to Grotowski, it’s necessary to repeat that The Constant Prince represents a turn-
ing point, although on the level of content, no direct reference to Gnosis can be found in it.
The full joy of martyrdom that characterizes the protagonist is shaped by different subtexts
(the Song of Songs is among the strongest evocations), and in the complexity does not hesitate
—as Osiński himself recalls—to include mystical instances of Russian Orthodoxy such as that
represented by theologian Pavel Evdokimov.38 The same feeling can be found in Apocalypsis,
where the Grand Inquisitor definitively banishes the Christ-Simpleton from the world, thus
suggesting that the Church has become a sterile and sophisticated power system, extraneous
to any true spirituality.
The process of composition created with Ryszard Cieślak in The Constant Prince consisted
of interweaving memories of personal experience with a dramaturgic text—which might have
seemed to Grotowski like an artifice, displaying truth through a lie and therefore something
intolerable. The word lie is mine and is not used by Grotowski, who on the contrary described
Cieślak’s performance as a “true carnal prayer,” speaking of a remembered adolescence that put
the actor in a condition of taking flight with his own body, free from all heaviness (in Banu
1992:17). In what sense was the actor’s problem, that of “acting,” the paradigm of Grotowski’s
existential research, of his need for truth? At the moment I can only answer in this way: the
climax of intensity unanimously recognized by spectators and critics is finally a reflection on
resurrection, but on true resurrection, telling of a Christ who is not resurrected in the common
sense but instead suffers a corporal death after having won, through the acceptance of martyr-
dom, the prize of the true life, a resurrection in the Gnostic sense. Nevertheless, this still occurs
within the framework of a theatre where representation prevails over realization.
Grotowski’s torment was not that of a critic and thus could not have been resolved with
an intellectual judgment; his torment, at times desperation, called for answers in doing, in the
opus of transmutation. For this reason, Apocalypsis can be considered an attempt not to fall
into representation but to remain within theatre, where even “giving up pretending” entails a

36. The subject of rhythm in early 20th-century theatre of mystic-spiritual inspiration has been masterfully developed
in Artioli (2005).
37. Similarly, the work of Tadeusz Kantor also awaits full acknowledgment, and one of the scholars’ tasks will be
to capture the effective similarities and differences between him and Grotowski, beyond terminology. (Kantor
Antonio Attisani

would probably have abhorred the expression “work on oneself.”) Among the positive exceptions one can mention
Bartoli’s “Kantor: Bal Rond pour Tintangiles,” in Figure della melanconia e dell’ardore (1998:413–28).
38. See Evdokimov’s L’ortodossia (1981a). Osiński claims that Evdokimov’s work was “very well known by Grotowski:
it was familiar to him in the very period of work on Apocalypsis cum figuris” (2005:314).

90
torment and a battle with a creative outcome. The stage that followed pointed toward the same
objective, working with the tools of performing in a frame that did not anticipate the production
of performances. Such feverish activity reveals a profound and avowed acceptance of Gnostic
philosophy (surely since the mid-1970s), or more precisely of the Gnostic texts Grotowski
considered fundamental.
Before analyzing Grotowski’s performative creations, it is perhaps useful to further clarify
certain chronological elements, even if on an essentially conjectural level. If the features of
Grotowski’s thought and work until the mid-1960s seem to refer to a Gnostic field encountered
through the Romantic authors and Nietzsche, the mystics, the texts of the Catholic canon,
and even the Patristic texts, along with an ever-growing knowledge of Hinduism and Tibetan
Buddhism often cited by Grotowski without revealing his sources (a subject that would require a
separate analysis), from that moment on he focused on the purest core of Gnostic literature, i.e.,
the body of texts found in Nag Hammadi at the end of WWII and gradually published begin-
ning in the late ’50s.39 The Gospel of Thomas, which proved to be the most important to
Grotowski, has been available to Western readers since 1959, while the entire corpus from Nag
Hammadi was translated and published in several languages, under diverse editorial initiatives,
from the mid-1970s on.40
Apocalypsis cum figuris is commonly understood as the final performance of the Teatr
Laboratorium after The Constant Prince, and that is certainly correct according to an essential
chronology, though it overlooks the fact that with The Constant Prince a new phase of work had
already begun for Grotowski and his actors, a phase that was intended to go beyond theatre,
even without yet knowing exactly how and toward what. This labor manifested itself in the
period ending with the premiere of Apocalypsis, a performance preceded by two attempts that
occupied most of the time between 1966 and 1968 (see “On the Genesis of Apocalypsis,”
this volume).
In December 1965 the company had begun a new project, foreseen by Grotowski since
1959, based on the final dramatic poem by Juliusz Słowacki, Samuel Zborowski [circa 1844]. In
February of the following year however, the company left for the first of its numerous foreign
tours with The Constant Prince, along with meetings and seminars, receiving warm and enthusi-
astic receptions, although Grotowski not uncommonly quarreled with the critics and even the
crowds of admirers-imitators. The rehearsals for Zborowski left the director unsatisfied; it
seemed evident to him that they were “merely extending a road we already knew” (Grotowski
[1969] 2008:43), and midway through 1966 he announced the umpteenth heretical creation:
“This is planned as a new, theatrical Life of Jesus, of the kind written by Renan” (in Kumiega
1987:89). Two names, Jesus and Renan, manifest a theme and an approach always fascinating to
Grotowski, being the cast of the distinctive religiosity cultivated by his mother when he was a
child, the mother who among other things introduced him to the text of the French author,

39. This elementary fact is still often neglected by scholars. Before that time nearly all references to Gnosis by
writers and artists came from different sources, i.e., from Catholic refutations and from the wide territory of the
alchemical-magic-esoteric tradition. On the transition from the 19th to the 20th century see Artioli, “Teatro e
esoterismo tra simbolismo e avanguardia” [Theatre and Esotericism between Symbolism and the Avantgarde]
(2001b:1301–34).
40. See Les paroles de Jésus (L’Evangile selon Thomas), translated by Doresse in 1959, the edition Grotowski might
have read in the following years since, as Flaszen remembers, the catalogue of religious and anthropological stud-
ies published by Plon was very well known; but also in 1959 Henri-Charles Puech published his own version,
later reprised in his monumental Sulle tracce della gnosi [On the Traces of Gnosis] (Puech 1985). According to
Acta Gnosis

Kolankiewicz a true and proper reading of the Gospel of Thomas by Grotowski dates back to the ’70s, during the
period of Theatre of Sources, perhaps departing from a suggestion by Ronald D. Laing whose The Bird of Paradise,
published in Poland in 1976, opens with logion 22 of the gospel (in Degler and Ziołkowski 2005:219, 275).

91
 banned by the Catholic Church.41 The announced title was Ewangelie (The Gospels, in plural).
One could hypothesize that this shift was also accelerated by Grotowski’s familiarity with and
growing aversion to the ever more frequent meetings with Western actors, meetings that
prompted bitter reflections:
[E]verybody is looking for easy and immediate success. Many people do it in my name
[…] and I don’t want to be involved in a ballet of whores. The whole world is looking for
a New Theatre. Traditional theatre is a dead frog that appears to be full of life, but the
so-called new theatre is the same frog galvanized. (in Sarraute 1969)

Ewangelie was thus born from the need to make a leap forward on the level of content as well as
on that of the language of the actor and the stage, a positive gesture even if an extreme one that
prefigured the abandonment of theatre.
Information on Ewangelie is very scarce in spite of its importance, or maybe precisely because
of that importance, insofar as it was an intense and secret work that did not directly result in an
actual performance. The archives of the Teatr Laboratorium in Wrocław have only the program,
not a single article, interview, or photograph. In critical literature it is acknowledged as a first
version of Apocalypsis, but that’s reductive since Ewangelie was an incredible melting pot of
tensions, experiences, thoughts, and new points of reference that subsequently led to the varied
life choices of all the people involved. The lack of information makes it impossible to under-
stand how, in Ewangelie, the impetus to go beyond theatre was struggling to take shape, while
(not so paradoxically) Apocalypsis can be regarded as the first step past its boundaries. Some
conversations I had in July 2004 in Wrocław with several witnesses from that period—including
Flaszen, Jana Pilatova, and especially the actor Mieczysław Janowski, enabled me to draw a
slightly clearer picture of that phase.42
Considering that The Constant Prince was presented about 250 times throughout the world
(the last time in Berlin in December 1970), alternating with presentations of Akropolis, not much
time was left to the company for its new production. This explains Grotowski’s decision at the
end of 1967 to suspend the tours abroad for one year. During that period many students from
different countries were involved in the work.
About the period following The Constant Prince, Grotowski speaks of it as “three years
of struggle” ([1969] 2008:50) beginning with Samuel Zborowski, continuing with Ewangelie
and finally accomplished with Apocalypsis. The labor pains were caused by a dissatisfaction
Grotowski shared with his colleagues for the high (if not “perfect”) scenic results, which they
nevertheless considered “lifeless” and repetitive in comparison with the earlier productions. The
outstanding success The Constant Prince attained abroad made everything even more difficult.
The temptation to repeat a formula and imitate the truth was strong, while the desire to go
further without knowing in which direction made the director feel “despair” (49). The perfor-
mance (Ewangelie) finally presented to the public was considered unsatisfactory, moreover “dead
from the beginning” (46)! Not because of the content (as Rilke would say), but as a question of

41. “The time I passed in the village was wartime. One day my mother set out to the city in order to find books,
because she was convinced that some books can be nourishment. Then she brought two: The Life of Jesus by
Renan and A Search in Secret India by Brunton. The book of Renan was forbidden by the Church, but my mother
considered it an extremely important story about Jesus, and often repeated that for her it was the ‘fifth Gospel’ ”
(Grotowski [1980] 1997:251).
42. Jana Pilatova was a young student of Professor Jan Kopecky from Prague when she first came to Wrocław in 1967
with 20 other students. The young people watched the training and the rehearsals of The Constant Prince and
Antonio Attisani

Ewangelie. Fascinated by the Grotowskian adventure and becoming one of its more attentive witnesses, Pilatova
studied Polish and went back to Teatr Laboratorium in 1968, where she was present at the premieres of Apocalypsis
as an usher/student, of the new version of The Constant Prince, and of Akropolis, and was then near Grotowski for a
long period.

92
rhythm and voice (in Artioli’s terms), which means in regard to the substance of staging and
acting. Nevertheless, the resumption of work taking these elements as a point of departure
entailed a clear change of tone and content.
Grotowski’s recurrent temptation, “Why not do the Gospels?” meant that each actor worked
individually or with only one partner on texts generally chosen by them or more rarely assigned
by Grotowski. The aim was to rediscover the sacred texts—as Stanislaw Scierski recalls—“as
they were present in each of us, not in a literary or religious sense, but as they were alive in
essence in us” (in Kumiega 1987:67). Since the director did not want Flaszen or others not
active on the stage to be present, it’s useful to stick to the actors’ account. From Janowski’s vivid
memory several interesting details emerge: in the individual search for each one’s own gospel, he
began by proposing a few actions taking as a starting point “The Overcoat” by Gogol (1842),
and then different interpretations of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians. Each of the actors
rehearsed in the work spaces of Teatr Laboratorium at different hours, alone, even at night, but
with the possibility of calling the director at any moment to show him what they were doing.
Grotowski’s behavior was (or seemed) contradictory, since on the one hand he emphasized his
intention of “leaving theatre,” but on the other he was extremely demanding of the actors.
Janowski, for instance, recalls that once he had to rehearse a small sequence in front of his
colleagues for eight hours straight, while the director kept repeating only “I don’t believe,”
asking Janowski to change and showing his persistent dissatisfaction. Grotowski finally asked
Janowski, who was getting more and more frustrated and humiliated, to turn away and “cry with
his back.” The session ended with the actor running out of patience at the director’s repeated
and biting critique and moving threateningly toward him holding a chair aloft. At that point
Grotowski stopped him, saying “That’s fine! Thank you,” and left the room. This episode—one
of many that could be mentioned—reveals the uncertainty characteristic of this period, and at
the same time the will to refuse to settle for the solutions offered by professionalism, by that
point considered too obvious.
Flaszen was admitted to rehearsals only in the final phase, just before the performance was
shown to the public for a few days.43 The vision ex post facto of the “literary director” highlights
the aspect of crisis: to him Ewangelie “lapsed into a repetition of what we already knew. […] It
was a ‘void’ beneath the zero point. I think it gave birth to Apocalypsis. This terrible black hole
that had swallowed all our work was also the womb that contained the work” (in Kumiega
1987:65). So it was a failure as a performance, and yet a decisive step forward in the accomplish-
ment of a process. What’s most important is to recognize Ewangelie as the turning point away
from acting (and the consequent director’s montage)—the climax of which was The Constant
Prince—and a way of scenic doing that, while derived from tradition, had altogether different
functions and forms, a way of doing that had its final recognizably “theatrical” realization
in Apocalypsis.
The critics, who had become ever more impatient and hostile toward the director, were
not invited to the few public presentations of Ewangelie. Grotowski was accused of the usual
ideological unreliability, of creative exhaustion and opportunism, and, according to many
newspapers, he had by this time been reduced to a lecturer and peddler of a “pedagogical
method” abroad.
Pilatova, who was a student at the Teatr Laboratorium, clearly remembers certain details of
the period from Ewangelie to Apocalypsis, including the departure of many student actors for
various reasons: the inability to “surpass” the exercises (not simply to execute them), personal

43. The program for the performance: Ewangelie: Direction: Jerzy Grotowski; costumes Waldemar Krygier; literay
direction: Ludwik Flaszen. Actors: Antoni Jahołkowski (Peter), Zbigniew Cynkutis or Zygmunt Molik (Lazarus),
Stanisław Scierski (John), Maja Komorowska and Rena Mirecka (Mary Magdalene), Sylvie Belai and Elizabeth Al-
Acta Gnosis

bahaca (Maidens), Ryszard Cieślak (The Beloved), Ewa Benesz, Bernadette Landru, Mieczysław Janowski, Czesław
Wojtała, Andrzej Paluchiewicz, Henryk Klamecki. Wrocław, Teatr Laboratorium—Instytut Badania Metody
Aktorskiej. Open rehearsals from 20 March 1967.

93
 reasons, or at Grotowski’s express request. Conversely, Latin American Elizabeth Albahaca
remained in the company and later performed in Apocalypsis, which was realized in 1968 with
the work of the most reliable actors (though there were still some substitutions).
Of course the composition of Apocalypsis was built on the experience of Ewangelie, but with
very significant differences.44 The remaining actors reworked many of the fragments previously
realized, including those by others who had left the company, and only at the end were the texts
taken from the Gospel of John, T.S. Eliot, Simone Weil, Jeremiah, etc. inserted.45 Apocalypsis
was first presented to the public during a month of open rehearsals, allowing for progressive
simplification (for instance, cutting the character of the child and—to avoid the sense of “already
seen” produced by Ewangelie—the intense nonacting of the most experienced actors), com-
pletely overturning the approach used in earlier productions precisely by adopting a Gnostic
approach, though this remained hidden from the majority, mainly because the texts used were
of a different kind. Nevertheless, as always happens in art, the secrets were hidden in plain sight,
beginning with the title: from a Gospel that each actor grafted onto her or his own life, one
passes to the Apocalypse, which is to say from Good News to catastrophe. The director’s words:
“Ours was the apocalypse of life, of what is trivial” and “This arrangement of a miserable, little
apocalypse is pathetic, small” ([1969] 2008:51). The second coming of Christ-Innocent-
Simpleton ended with banishment by the Grand Inquisitor. The authentic Christ model,
according to Grotowski, is the yurodivy who, like Saint Francis, the Sufi mystics, and analogous
figures in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, symbolizes a nonmoralistic but instead liberating gift
of self that has always been refused by religious and political representatives, not to mention
misunderstood by exponents of the new countercultures, to whom it represented a tempting
but unattainable example.46
Analysis of the cycle of work from The Constant Prince to Apocalypsis cum figuris demonstrates
the emphasis on feeling and elaboration of thought that, always in line with Gnostic phenom-
enology, seemed to become ever more pessimistic regarding the possibilities of theatre as a
whole.47 It is a matter of pessimism about content and politics, as well as the possibilities of

44. From the official program for Apocalypsis cum figuris: Quotations from the Bible, Fedor Dostoevskij, T.S. Eliot,
Simone Weil. First version: Adaptation and direction: Jerzy Grotowski; codirection: Ryszard Cieślak; costumes:
Waldemar Krygier; literary direction: Ludwik Flaszen. Actors: Antoni Jahołkowski (Simon Peter), Zygmunt Molik
(Judas), Zbigniew Cynkutis (Lazarus), Rena Mirecka or Elizabeth Albahaca (Mary Magdalene), Stanisław Scierski
(John), Ryszard Cieślak (The Simpleton). Wrocław, Teatr Laboratorium—Instytut Badania Metody Aktorskiej: 19
July 1968 (preview by invitation), 11 February 1969 (official premiere). From the second version’s program (June
1971): Animator: Jerzy Grotowski. The third and last version had its premiere in Wrocław on 23 October 1973.
45. Annamaria Cascetta proposes an extremely accurate examination of the dramaturgical score of Apocalypsis cum
figuris from the edition shot in 1979 by Ermanno Olmi, dwelling in particular on the transcription and attribution
of all the texts used in the performance. The scholar doesn’t mention the preceding Ewangelie and doesn’t take into
consideration either the text written by Grotowski (“On the Genesis of Apocalypsis,” this volume), or the Gnostic
echoes that inform several passages of action, or even the hostile reactions by Cardinal Wyszynski and the majority
of the Polish Church, but points out what she interprets as a lack of reception on Grotowski’s part of the news
introduced by the Second Vatican Council in order to explain the critical radicalism of some passages, such as the
contrast between Simon Peter and the Simpleton-Christ (see Cascetta 2005:145–73).
46. Grotowski recollects his early encounters with yurodivy: “In the same book by Brunton is a description of a
meeting with some solitary Sufi hermit living in total isolation. He explained to the visitor that the normal
stream of thoughts related to the ‘I’-feeling can be compared with a cart pulled by oxen into a long dark tunnel.
He suggested: ‘Turn the cart back and you will find a light and the space.’ The event with the report of Brunton
happened when I was maybe 10 years old. Much later, I met the tradition of some other yurodivy, also living in
India, who was transcending any limitations of exclusive religion and who was at the same time behaving often in
Antonio Attisani

a totally crazy way. His craziness was full of meaning” (Grotowski [1980] 1997:253).
47. Grotowski borrowed the title from Thomas Mann, who in Doctor Faustus attributes to the protagonist of his
novel—a 35-year-old man, as Grotowski was in July 1968—the composition of a great work titled Apocalypsis cum
figuris, composed on the eve and threshold of a substantial change that promised nothing positive.

94
Figure 5. Group scene from Apocalypsis cum figuris, rehearsal in Palazzo Reale, Milano, Italy, 1979.
(Photo by Maurizio Buscarino; courtesy of the Maurizio Buscarino Archives and of the Instytut im. Jerzego
Grotowskiego, Wrocław)

theatre spectacle, yet a pessimism neither absolute nor nihilistic since it allowed for the possibil-
ity of redemption on a social level, if only for very few (think of Grotowski’s definition of the
Performer). On the level of method and work, it prioritized the concept of via negativa, the
obligation to “take away,” to free oneself from automatisms, conditioning, and stereotypes.48
This via negativa was also central to the following phase, Theatre of Sources, a decade of
diaspora and research at the end of which Grotowski, after fundamental reassessment, freed
himself from the residue of what some considered a fun fair of the soul, shifting in his last 15
years in Italy to a focus on transmission, which was accompanied by a new textual framework
at the center of which seemed to be the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. In each of the three
periods, a different conception of the experience of transcendence in Gnostic philosophy appears,
obviously interlaced with knowledge and techniques drawn from other cultures.49
Those were paradoxical years for Grotowski and those following him. The most resounding
paradox for Grotowski was to have achieved worldwide success as theorist and creator of poor
theatre, to have been imitated and interpellated as a guru, then having chosen to abandon the
production of performances. The need to go beyond theatre and to impede the formation of
an army of “Grotowski-ites” began to express itself while his company was still touring with
Apocalypsis (until 1975). The audiences he encountered, especially in the public meetings, were
composed primarily of neophytes. Towards a Poor Theatre and books about his work were

48. The short text Performer, drawn from Grotowski’s oral presentations from 1987 and then elaborated by Grotowski
and subsequently published, is to be considered a fundamental document of the final period of the Polish master’s
activity (see Schechner and Wolford [1997] 2001:376–80).
49. Mario Biagini is not convinced regarding the specific terminology “techniques drawn from other cultures.”
Acta Gnosis

According to him, Grotowski turned his interest to other, more exotic worlds, sometimes considered miraculous,
as if turning to a mirror to see not his image reflected, but the native landscape at his back. I think in fact his
choice of terms is more correct; the “native landscape at his back” is something prior to difference.

95
 translated and published all over the world, but in meetings crowded with those who wanted
to espouse the new creed, Grotowski already seemed to be elsewhere, already a step forward.
Texts from the conferences, such as “Exercises” and “The Voice,” both written in May 1969,
show how Grotowski, while illustrating the fundamentals of the actor’s work at the Teatr
Laboratorium, distanced himself from the procedures he had used up to that point, denying
that a phase of training or preparation could predispose one to the act of creation, concluding
with the affirmation that “Technique emerges from accomplishment” (Grotowski 2001b:203).50
Such a concept can be understood as an unbiased paraphrase of logion 113 of the Gospel of
Thomas, in which the Living replies to the disciples asking when the Reign will come: “It will
not come by waiting for it […] Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth,
and men do not see it” (in Moraldi 2001:20).
Flaszen asserts that “Exercises” and “The Voice” should be read in light of their meaningful
proximity to Grotowski’s travels to India and as evidence of the “passage to Gnostic interests”;
it would perhaps be more accurate to say that the Gnostic interests became more explicit and
central, manifesting as a fundamental pronouncement (text, or more precisely, palimpsest) of
the phase that followed. I do not mean that Grotowski’s intention to cut the umbilical cord with
theatre in order to practice work on oneself, free from aesthetic slavery, was the result of a
conversion to Gnosis; on the contrary, his antidogmatic attitude was consistent with his open
mind and a complete absence of doctrinary Gnosticism. Neither doctrinaire nor syncretistic,
Grotowski’s research on what precedes the differences is extracted from the techniques of
extremely diverse cultures that concretely enable the experience of verticality and transparency,
which is to say an extension and intensification of consciousness.
When Grotowski returned from India at the end of summer 1970, he was no longer clean-
shaven and plump (previously he had weighed more than 100 kilos), but bearded, slim, and
long-haired; dressed not in black (with clothes designed by the architect/set designer Jerzy
Gurawski, which functioned as uniform and armor) but in white; and he called his colleagues
“brothers” and seemed to have left behind the extremely formal relations of the past, when they
had all addressed each other politely and the director had felt old and did his best to prove it.
Grotowski, who had gone on a severe diet to combat a serious medical condition, felt young
at this point, or at least wanted to believe so. These exterior signs marked a shift of phase and
language—not merely the effects of diet and initiation into new knowledge—but they did not
signify a disavowal of his theatrical past.
In his exploration of “Grotowski’s Gnosis,” Osiński goes back and forth among texts without
proposing a substantiated chronology of the director’s relation with the sources. However, the
jumble of times and notions is combined with a profound knowledge of some themes present in
Grotowski from the very beginning. In order to account for the importance of certain cultural
events, Osiński speaks about himself and his country, noting the importance of a collection of
Jungian texts published in Poland in 1976, readings that sired his “temptation” to explain
Grotowski through mystical Gnostic thought of the sort developed in antiquity but which, as
Jung says, had “continued to develop—for the most part covertly—throughout the Middle Ages
and in modern times, until the present day,” finally becoming, as he observes, a fashionable
phenomenon (Osiński 2004:303).
Osiński then reminds the reader that Grotowski “spoke publicly about Gnosis only once,” in
1981 at the University of Gdańsk (2004:304). As participants’ notes confirm, Grotowski’s speech
on that occasion was just a taste of what he would explain at length the following year in the
Rome lectures: he was not interested in Gnosis as a system. Osiński recalls the influence of
Jung’s conception of Gnosis in Poland, and proposes the distinction made by Raymond Abellio,
Antonio Attisani

50. Both “Exercises” and “The Voice” have been translated by James Slowiak and will be included in the collection I
am coediting with Mario Biagini and Lisa Wolford Wylam, Doorways: Performing as a Vehicle at the Workcenter of
Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards (Seagull Press).

96
citing Mircea Eliade, between enstasis (centripetal, i.e., Gnostic motion) and estasis (centrifugal,
i.e., mystic motion) (see Abellio 1981). Like Abellio, Husserl defined “the Gnostic’s reason”
as “transcendent reason” (in Osiński 2004:307). This would have been an opportune point to
observe how Grotowski, into the 1960s, used a language not altogether coherent with his own
practice, something that confused his critical interpreters. Regarding mysticism, yoga, and
shamanism, for instance, the young director often used the word “trance” to indicate a way in
the actor’s work to move beyond Stanislavsky’s identification,51 but he was fully aware that trance
implies a loss of control and a forgetfulness that the actor is not allowed to experience, totally
immersed in her actions. In practical experience as well as in his writings, Grotowski used
“trance” in a different sense, to mean a state of the non-acting-actor fully diving into his or her
actions. An analogous process occurred with mantra as well as with the yoga exercises leading
to catatonia, which were instead done at the Teatr Laboratorium in a “dynamic” way, etc.52
According to Osiński, one of Grotowski’s first and most substantial references to Gnosis is
the text “Tu es le fils de quelqu’un,” in which Grotowski conveys, without precisely quoting,
the Gospel image of the encounter of Jesus and his two apostles on the way to Emmaus. “That’s
the real question: are you a man?” writes Grotowski ([1982] 1987:40), and in so doing translates
the canonical text (“He was a man...,” Luke 24:19) in an unusual way, with frank open-minded-
ness. The very same question is posed in “Performer,” once again through the image of the I-I,
the I who does and the I who looks—like the two birds that appear in the Veda. Finally Osiński
quotes “Performer,” yet without recognizing the connection between Pierre de Combas and
Abellio, or more precisely without noticing how Grotowski refers to the former—of whose
work little or nothing remains—by mentioning the concepts of the latter, De Combas’s disciple
(except that with this eccentric character, one should also allow for the importance of a period
of study with Husserl) and himself a prolific author.53 Grotowski’s systematic concealment of
his sources was not prompted by a sly intent to cultivate mystery or to disregard copyright
regulations regarding other people’s ideas, but rather by a wish to avoid diverting readers to the
libraries from which many of his concepts were derived, and to focus instead on the concepts
themselves, which attained an original synthesis in his work.
Osiński’s contribution has many merits, including his correct observation that Grotowski’s
definitions of such terms as “man of knowledge,” “inner man,” and “transparent man” express
the very same concept in different ways at different times.54 Already in 1965 in Towards a Poor
Theatre, one finds the expression “total man,” possibly derived from Mickiewicz, or more
precisely from the instinctive or “ignorant” Gnosis of the Romantics, in which ambit the
preferred expression is “complete man.” Osiński also notes that Grotowski was already using
this language by the late ’60s, for instance in “Theatre and Ritual.”55
After a sketchy reference to Action (the ongoing opus that originated in 1994), Osiński
discusses the phase of Art as vehicle primarily as an “effort of self-development and work on

51. In one of his first conversations with foreign interlocutors, Grotowski said: “He [the actor] must not illustrate
Hamlet, he must meet Hamlet” (see Schechner and Hoffman 1968:44).
52. This last point merits further development. Many misunderstandings have accumulated around the notion of
trance as a performative ideal, due to certain related terminologies used by Grotowski in the 1960s. On this and
other questions, the positions expressed here diverge radically from those of certain influential scholars in the
field of Grotowskian hermeneutics. See for instance Ruffini (1999), to which Biagini responds (although without
directly citing) in “Meeting at La Sapienza: or, On the Cultivation of Onions” (2008:150).
53. On the totality of Abellio’s work see Favre and de Foucauld (2004). The collection also includes essays on his rela-
tions with Husserl (by Camus, “Abellio et la phénoménologie transcendentale de Husserl,” 199–207), and with De
Combas (by Renard, “Pierre de Combas,” 325–36).
54. Ed. note: In each case, Grotowski is using “man” in the sense of człowiek, mankind.
Acta Gnosis

55. Previously unpublished in English, this essay is forthcoming in a new translation by Kris Salata as part of
Doorways: Performing as a Vehicle at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards (forthcoming).

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 Figure 6. Action at the Church of John the Baptist, Cappadocia, Turkey, 2005. Thomas Richards
(foreground), (background from left) Pere Sais Martinez, Jørn Riegels Wimpel, Francesc Torrent Gironella,
Marie De Cleark, and Mario Biagini. (Photo by Frits Meyst; courtesy of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski
and Thomas Richards)

oneself,” impossible without a “fight,” and in this regard he cites the Apostle Thomas, identified
as a “fighter and athlete” (see Robinson [1978] 1990:199–207). In his last meeting with his
compatriots in 1997, Grotowski seemed to be “satisfied with his victory over history” (Osiński
2004:319). Osiński grasps the positive and pro-cosmic sense of Grotowski’s “contemporary
Gnosis,” and underlines its function as a link rather than an irreversible fracture between
material and spiritual worlds. Ultimately, he therefore considers Grotowski’s Gnosis as an effort
toward knowledge—regarding which he writes, “Self-knowledge is the most important task for
a man” (315)—and not reelaborating on a sense of despair. Osiński refers back to the Gospel
of Thomas for the definition of the divine nature that must be won: the accomplished human
being is the one who becomes light (lux in Medieval mysticism) rather than merely reflecting it
(lumen). Nevertheless, Osiński ignores Grotowski’s own statements on this subject and limits
himself to commenting on several texts from the 1970s and ’80s, as well as reproducing the
guarded language of Grotowski’s Paratheatrical phase: “The Theatre of Sources is the equiva-
lent of ecological consciousness in the field of dramatic techniques, in the sense of drama as
action” (2004:321).56
Since I have repeatedly emphasized the decisive importance of the Roman lectures, an
introduction to Grotowski and Gnosis could hardly conclude without some consideration of
them. The complete transcription of the lectures given by Grotowski at the University of Rome
between 1975 and 1988 totals a thousand pages. About one-fifth of this material has been
published in the form of lecture notes and has had broad circulation, at least in Italy (see
Grotowski 1987 [1982]; Guglielmi 2000). The available lecture notes constitute a text that
Antonio Attisani

56. Grotowski’s caution in this regard was dictated by various contingencies, not least that of the authoritarian Polish
regime. Only since 1990, after obtaining French citizenship, was Grotowski totally free to express himself.

98
illuminates many aspects of Grotowski’s work and life, but more importantly in this context,
they enunciate all the dominant themes of the 15 years to come, specifically the time he would
share with his “elective twin” Thomas Richards, and with Mario Biagini, a personality different
from and complementary to the young American. Not only was Grotowski finally able to speak
without codes or taking precautions of any kind, but he also was able to do so in a less official
environment than what he found later at the Collège de France, and finally because he was
going through a critical period: after abandoning theatre, he had also taken his leave of the
Paratheatrical phase and the program of Theatre of Sources was interrupted because he had
to leave Poland. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do with what would be the final
years of his life (the doctor’s predictions were pessimistic; in fact he lived longer than expected,
though at the cost of great suffering).57 Moreover, a principle he had followed up to that point,
specifically to speak after and not before having experienced something, does not seem to
apply here: in this circumstance, although without ever sinking to a banal statement of inten-
tions, Grotowski wonders what to do. Thus he is thinking aloud, thoroughly confronting
the unknown, and even questioning himself about the purpose and the way of talking about
something that cannot be preconceived, but only apprehended through practice (see
Guglielmi 2000).
This key Grotowskian text provides a frame of reference lacking for many scholars, among
them Schechner, whose “Exoduction” is sketchy and filled with lacunae not only because it
disregards this fundamental passage but also for various other reasons. For example Schechner
overestimates American influences on Grotowski ranging from the beatnik movement to New
Age, and he outlines a misleading critique of Grotowski based, most significantly, on a misun-
derstanding. A brief reference is needed. When the American scholar explains his dissatisfaction
with the “deficiencies” in Grotowski’s work in these terms, “I cannot recognize wisdom that
exists before or behind cultures and genres, in the ‘original’ times, in the ‘old practices’”
(1997:490), he shows that he is not able to grasp the internal dynamis of a circumstantial lexicon.
“That which precedes the differences,” which constitutes one of Grotowski’s later fields of
investigation, is not in fact a metaphysical assumption, but rather the adherence to a principle
derived from practice in opposition to the exasperating relativism that then seemed to domi-
nate social sciences.58 The original that Grotowski sought is a level of reality, and precisely the
universality of mental structures preceding their incarnation in/as bodies, their individual
declensions; thus it is not a matter of some phantasmic foundation (or Tradition), but rather
of something that cultural anthropology, especially in the United States between the 1930s
and the ’60s, undervalued or censored in the name of the cultural dimension and its variables.
Regarding this point, anthropologist Francesco Remotti asserts that:
at the root of cultural relativism is a profound diffidence in confronting the universality
of psychic or mental structures—from the natural order—that all human beings have in
common. Relativism does not negate the existence of such structures, though it deems
them minor constituents of human nature. The cultural dimension, with its unavoidable
variability, is reputed to be much more relevant, and precisely this variability, rather than
the uniformity of laws or natural structures, appears as the distinctive feature of humanity
in its true essence. (1997)

57. Grotowski left Poland in 1982 after martial law was declared, interrupting the Theatre of Sources. After the time
he spent in Rome, he moved to the US seeking asylum. Teatr Laboratorium survived for some time under General
Jaruzelski’s regime, but then in 1984 the members decided to dissolve it. After a fruitful time in the United States,
where nevertheless he could not find the means to work as he wished, Grotowski accepted the invitation by
Roberto Bacci and Carla Pollastrelli and settled in Pontedera in 1986.
Acta Gnosis

58. Giovanni Jervis is critical of the excesses of relativism and of the mass culture using them with manipulative aims
(see Jervis 2005).

99
 What then can one say of Osiński, who fails to acknowledge the Gnostic sources evident in
the partial transcript of the Roman lectures, sources that completely invalidate suspicions of a
Grotowskian Platonism? For Grotowski, the origin is the point of arrival of a successful cultural
process. The final phase of his work focused on a specific aspect of this origin that he called the
“Western cradle,” within which field the above-mentioned Gospels and Judaic sources hold an
important place. The quotidian level of physical work privileges physical actions in the sense
derived from Stanislavsky (see Richards 1995) and a selection of songs belonging mainly, though
not exclusively, to Afro-Caribbean tradition—the vibratory songs. Among the textual references,
some of the Apocrypha play a crucial role, primarily those by the apostle Thomas.
In theatre work, unlike mystic practice, the individual deals not with her or his own solitude,
but rather with something that “happens with others and is witnessed by others,” which is to say,
Grotowski adds, “the ritual aspect” ([1982] 1987:23). Grotowski’s last phase does not negate
what came before; on the contrary, it treasures it: he wants to avoid a sort of “dilettantism” or
“animation” in which “the predominance of the vital element blocks on an ‘horizontal’ level, not
allowing the action to pass to a higher level” (23). He wants to intensify the impact on individual
and collective perception.59 The deconditioning processes central to the phase of the “tech-
niques of sources” later become the precondition for attaining “verticality” or the expansion
of consciousness, a verticality that is shared and differently experienced by the doer and the
witness. In the lexicon of Mircea Eliade, Grotowski insists on the need to create a balance
between ecstatic techniques, those that project outward, and enstatic ones, with the attention
being directed inward. To clarify this he uses the image of a door, which allows circulation in
two directions.
In this situation, Grotowski already clearly understood that it would be necessary to focus
on different levels, on organic movement but also on the gaze, the dream, the breathing, etc.,
using work with the vibratory songs as a foundation. And the dictionary, the topography of this
“heart consciousness,” as it is called, is established mainly though not exclusively by a certain
Gnostic literature. Anyone who takes into account the fundamental document comprised by
the Roman lectures must agree with the conclusions of Chiara Guglielmi, according to whom
the Apocryphon of Thomas “seems to be the keystone for the entire last phase of Grotowski’s
work” (2000:76).
This is an opportune point to recall some passages of this text discussed in the Roman
lectures. The lecture of 15 May 1982 and the discussion of the following day are fundamental
on this matter (Grotowski [1982] 1987:244–68). After having affirmed that “Western traditions”
exist beyond churches and folklore, after having cited several authors who wrote in full aware-
ness of this fact, and having explained how the cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean
countries had circulated widely, in different ways, over the years, reaching India and even
beyond, Grotowski began to speak about the Gospel of Thomas, the text that most interested
him, even though it remained for him “mysterious.”60 Grotowski understood Gnosis as an
approach and a method of researching how to achieve a greater level of awareness by means of
experience, an approach that contains the trace of an ancient, “organic” knowledge preserved
within certain texts. Among the concepts Grotowski deemed fundamental in the Gospel of
Thomas is the movement that is repose, where “to repose” means to be alert, active in watching,
to be centered, the bearer of a direct and nonverbal consciousness, as opposed to being “drunk”
or immersed in daydreams—a concept that recurs repeatedly until “Performer” and after. Then

59. A few passages on this subject can be found in the introductions by Schechner and Wolford respectively to the
second and third parts of The Grotowski Sourcebook.
Antonio Attisani

60. On the very same occasion Grotowski declared that he was interested in Gnosis rather than in Gnosticism (the first
being for him “a knowledge attained by […] direct personal experience,” and the latter connected with “obligatory
categories of faith,” a distinction not in accord with those generally proposed by scholars) and more interested in
the text credited to Thomas than any other.

100
the fact that instead of “God,” the text speaks of “the Living one,” which signifies that the divine
condition is that of the one who learns to be alive. Grotowski is also struck by the presence
within the text of an idea of “emptiness” in the same positive sense as it is used in Hinduism and
Buddhism. And on the insistence on “being passersby” and transients, on the human condition
as based on doing rather than a presumed immutability of being, a concept antithetical to both
classical and modern theologies. Not to mention the “beginning,” the arché, which is also the
end; the one who finds it will not die, or more precisely: “he will know the end and will not
experience death.” Grotowski’s hermeneutical contribution is as discreet as it is relevant, and
even goes so far as to resolve some ambiguities that remain in many accredited translations.
Among the exemplars of Gnosis proposed by Grotowski are Francis of Assisi, John of the
Cross, and Meister Eckhart. This line is juxtaposed to that of “Gnosticism,” seen as an intellec-
tual, speculative deviation, one that privileges the way of dreams and visions, a Gnosticism that
has deeply penetrated European culture through the channel of imagination.61 The Gnostic
phenomenon appears in its dual nature in every religious context; in Catholicism, for instance,
one finds the Gnosis of Thomas Merton and the Gnosticism of Teilhard de Chardin.
Numerous topics cannot be further analyzed here, but in addition to repeating that Gnosis
operates on the plexus of body-perception instead of writing-thinking, it is also necessary to
specify that for Grotowski this is the key not of a discourse addressed to an elite, but rather a
reference to a paradigm (knowing through the senses in order to transcend them) and to a
complex of examples and concepts concerned with the efficacy of a poetic composition for its
author and for the witnesses. The old figure of the elect disappears: in modernity, this can be
everyone and no one.
If one were to retain the epochal contradistinction between relativism and realism proposed
by Jervis (2005:19 passim) to define Grotowksi’s identity and that of the Workcenter, it would be
necessary to fall back on strange oxymorons, using terms like scientific magic (magic in the sense
of work on consciousness), but it makes more sense to refer to a practical philosophy (or biosophy)
like that called for by both humanistic and scientific research: a praxis of philosophy realized
according to scientific protocol, proceeding from hypotheses (contained in the materials), to
experiments and examinations (individual and collective performances that are at the same time
analyses), then to theoretical syntheses and new hypotheses (eventually comparing them with
other materials). In this regard Biagini has clarified the fundamental distinction between the
“repetition” that characterizes the Workcenter’s activity (the opus) and the “reproduction of
forms.” Every repetition is a research delving deeper and laying the foundation for the next
phase, each version entailing work on precise and ever-changing themes.
While Jervis “tragically” counterposes an objective text to a necessarily subjective lived
experience, Grotowski’s “Gnostic performance,” on the contrary (if I may be allowed a hint of
irony in my lexical proposition), creates a sort of leaf of paper that supports both elements
together, keeping them simultaneously distinct yet united, as I believe is demonstrated by The
Edge-Point of Performance (Richards 1997; and Richards 2008). That text narrates an actor’s
experience within the frame of a cultural anthropology in which contemporary conditions are
brought into contact with extremely ancient layers of body-memory. This “Gnostic perfor-
mance” is not a doing that follows the story-interpretation of a different author, but rather an
experience-event, both individual and collective, with many actors and many “narrators.” The
movement of memory that comes to be activated in this way is not something inert that must
inevitably be confronted, i.e., tradition, authority, and revelation (see Jervis 2005:19). On the

61. Incidentally, I should clarify that Artioli dealt more with Gnosticism than with Gnosis—at least in relation to
authors such as Pirandello and with the partial exception of Artaud—which is to say writings that can be palimp-
Acta Gnosis

sestically traced back to different Gnostic doctrines and that support construction of an imaginary world. This
is due to the fact that other systems were important for Artioli, such as numerology, in which Grotowski was
altogether disinterested.

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 contrary, it signifies assessment and incarnation. Of course, the objectivity one attempts to
conquer with such an effort has nothing whatsoever to do with what can be learned through a
table of values, but rather expresses a methodological rigor, an existential coherence, that does
not impose its commandments on each knowing subject that holds it in esteem. In the line of
Grotowski, it is a question of a work on the Self, understood as an entity that simultaneously
contains the I and transcends it. Something happens that unavoidably manifests itself in a
personal and contingent terminology, creating a text that asks the reader not to be tied to words
(as happened to Grotowski with the word “trance,” later corrected with “healthy trance,” etc.,
in a vain effort not to be misunderstood).
Only after freeing Grotowski from the distortions of Grotowski-isms will we finally be able
to confront the actual importance of the research carried on by the Workcenter.

This essay was originally published as “Acta Gnosis” in Un teatro apocrifo: il potenziale dell’arte
teatrale nel Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, published by Medusa in 2006.
This English translation has been edited by Lisa Wolford Wylam with the author’s approval.

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