Review: grotowski.net

grotowski.net is a comprehensive research website about the life and work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999), maintained by the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw.

Today, Grotowski is regarded as one of the most influential figures of 20th century theatre. His intense actor training program is considered the most complete since Stanislavski’s, while his directing skills place him alongside theatre visionaries such as Bertolt Brecht, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Stanislavski once again.

grotowski.net is a rich and rewarding research portal about every aspect of Grotowski’s career in the theatre.

Encyclopedia

The encyclopedia at grotowski.net is a wonderful resource for those teaching and studying Grotowski. Fully sourced academic articles explain some of the key theories, concepts, productions, people and places that surrounded Grotowski in his forty years in the theatre. A sampling of articles include:

Productions: Orpheus (1959), Akropolis (1962), Kordion (1962), Dr Faustus (1963), The Constant Prince (1965), Apocalypsis cum figuris (1968).

Concepts: “paratheatre”, “art as vehicle”, “holiday”, “neo-theatre”, objective drama”, “poor theatre”, theatre of sources”.

Places: Theatre of 13 Rows, The Laboratory Theatre, Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski.

People: Cieślak Ryszard, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Eugenio Barba.

Media

The media section contains fascinating material on Grotowski and his work, consisting of image galleries, videos, audio recordings and several full texts.

Twenty-five image galleries contain nearly 500 photos, all but a handful are in black and white. This is the most complete set of images about Grotowski on the web covering all his major productions, actor training exercises, performers and collaborators. There is even an image gallery of production posters of works Grotowski directed and another gallery of set designs.

Over thirty videos on grotowski.net consist of rare archival footage from The Grotowski Institute, including production excerpts, rehearsals and actor training programs.

The audio section contains a number of podcasts. Some are interviews with Grotowski, others are recordings of Grotowski speaking at academic conferences around the world, while some are lectures. Most of these research objects are rare.

Performer

Performer is an online research journal published by the Grotowski Institute and shared with others on grotowski.net. It showcases academic papers about Grotowski and the ongoing work of the Institute. It is currently only available in Polish language, but I found the Google Translate browser plugin did the job for me nicely!

Toolkit

Toolkit is a section of grootwski.net set up for research aficionados. It presents a long list of known texts written about Grotowski. It also includes a detailed timeline of Grotowski and his work from 1933 to 1965.

Summary

In summary, grotowski.net presents the reader, viewer, listener, teacher, student and researcher with a wealth of factual information about one of the world’s foremost directors and theatre practitioners. Jerzy Grotowski and his work is studied in many countries in actor training programs, theatre courses, drama teacher institutes and theatre classes in high schools.

The Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw has crammed an extensive amount of valuable material about Grotowski onto a single website at grotowski.net. Highly recommended.