Chapter 4 - Grotowski, the Messiah: Coming to America

Summary

In 1962, Eugene Barba, who was a student at Warsaw's Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna (PWST, the National School of Theatre), came to Opole as part of his internship. Eventually, he became one of Grotowski's closest collaborators and his most ardent foreign supporter. Shortly after meeting Barba, Grotowski participated in the Eighth World's Youth Festival in Helsinki, where he also met Raymonde Temkine. She visited Opole in 1963, watched a special performance of Akropolis, and was greatly impressed by Grotowski's theatre. Those two contacts augmented international perspectives of Grotowski, but to reach wider audiences, Grotowski needed a concrete theatrical piece that would appeal to international tastes. As Dariusz Kosiński notes:

Grotowski was becoming more ambitious and certain of his artistic direction. What he needed was a model spectacle which would showcase both his theory and methodology, but which would also be international in its character. The adaptation of Wyspiański's Akropolis became such a spectacle. If we assume that Grotowski consciously constructed a spectacle to show the full range of his theatre's possibilities, then we can also assume that he chose the play as well as its setting because they naturally interest both Polish and international audiences.

As a showcase spectacle for a broader international audience, Akropolis fulfilled its function, but in Poland, initial reviews were mixed, to say the least. Puzyna notes that the production “provoked extremely tempestuous discussions.”