Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Ulster
Grotowski: Theatre and Beyond
A multi-media touring exhibition aimed at recovering and contextualising the creative impulse which animated the masterpieces of Jerzy Grotowski’s company from its beginnings in the 1950s up until the 1980s. Particular emphasis was laid on the ‘Theatre of Sources’ and on connections with Indian culture.
The exhibition presented items never seen before outside the original productions, and remains the most comprehensive collection of Grotowski-related material ever shown in public.
As well as a repository of research materials, the exhibition was carefully designed to function both as a means of disseminating documentary insights, as it were, and as a performance in its own right. The driving research question was how to construct a methodology to combine object-oriented and concept-oriented presentations, displays and exhibits (cf Verhaar and Meeter 1989). It was conceived as dynamically setting forth Grotowski’s work in the way he himself described it: as a chain starting with the ‘Theatre of Production’ and ending with the ‘Art as Vehicle’ period; this conception is detailed in the curator’s programme text. A multimedia reconstruction of “The Constant Prince” was the centre-piece, featuring Ryszard Cieslak’s iconic red blanket from the original production. As a part of the exhibition, a series of new pictures of the places and protagonists of the ‘Theatre of Sources’ was commissioned from photographer Francesco Galli.
This was the culmination of a sequence of exhibitions curated by Campo, all part of the same larger research project. The first (2006) focused on “The Constant Prince” and accompanied Paul Allain’s presentation, at the University of Kent, of the digitally re-mastered film. The second (“Dust”, by Maurizio Buscarino, 2009) was shown at the National Theatre’s Olivier Foyer.
“Grotowski: Theatre and Beyond” was part of the 2009 UNESCO Year of Grotowski celebrations. It was inaugurated during the International Conference hosted by the British Grotowski Project at the University of Kent, the culmination of a three-year AHRC project directed by Allain.
(See portfolio for further details.)
