THE RADICALS & AVANT-GARDE 1920–1970

Jerzy Grotowski begins where others end: an empty room, a handful of actors, and an audience about to become something more than passive viewers. In 1960s Poland, behind the Iron Curtain, Grotowski quietly revolutionized theatre by stripping it to the bone. He argued that theatre “should not, because it could not, compete” with the spectacular illusions of film; instead it must “focus on the very root of the act of theatre: actors cocreating the event with spectators.” . This became the manifesto of “Poor Theatre.” Poor not in talent or impact, but in material needs – poor by choice.

In Grotowski’s “poor” theatre, everything non-essential goes. No elaborate sets, no fancy costumes, no makeup, minimal lighting. All that remains is the live encounter: human bodies in space, actor and audience “intimately, visibly” confronting each other . That bareness was not a limitation but a pathway to something sacred. Grotowski saw the actor’s work as almost holy. He spoke of the “total act”, in which an actor “reveals the real substance” of their being, shedding all masks in an act of extreme truth . This raw vulnerability on stage invites the spectator to drop their defenses too. The aim is a kind of communion – a shared, honest exploration of what it means to be human, here and now.