The legacy of Jerzy Grotowski twenty years after his death still presents a powerful challenge for theatre-makers, not only in experimental theatre, and theoreticians – which is also how it was during his life. This retrospect by Juliusz Tyszka on the Grotowski seminar organized by Robert Findlay and Robert Taylor for the Program in Educational Theatre, at New York University in February 1993, is a testimony to his achievements, offering insights into the opinions and reflections of American artists, critics, and scholars on the importance of Grotowski, and the impact of his theatrical output both on world theatre, and specifically in the US. Tyszka sets their views within the Polish background he shares with Grotowski. The climax of the seminar in a meeting with Grotowski himself, following a film recording of The Constant Prince, is fully described. In 1992/93 Juliusz Tyszka was a Fulbright visiting scholar in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU. He is an advisory editor of NTQ and a regular contributor to the journal. Since 2008 he has been Head of the Unit of Performance Studies, Institute of Cultural Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University at Poznań, Poland.

Increasing evidence indicates that gut microbiota may influence colorectal cancer risk. Diet, particularly fibre intake, may modify gut microbiota composition, which may affect cancer risk. We investigated the relationship between dietary fibre intake and gut microbiota in adults. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we assessed gut microbiota in faecal samples from 151 adults in two independent study populations: National Cancer Institute (NCI), n 75, and New York University (NYU), n 76. We calculated energy-adjusted fibre intake based on FFQ. For each study population with adjustment for age, sex, race, BMI and smoking, we evaluated the relationship between fibre intake and gut microbiota community composition and taxon abundance. Total fibre intake was significantly associated with overall microbial community composition in NYU (P=0·008) but not in NCI (P=0·81). In a meta-analysis of both study populations, higher fibre intake tended to be associated with genera of class Clostridia, including higher abundance of SMB53 (fold change (FC)=1·04, P=0·04), Lachnospira (FC=1·03, P=0·05) and Faecalibacterium (FC=1·03, P=0·06), and lower abundance of Actinomyces (FC=0·95, P=0·002), Odoribacter (FC=0·95, P=0·03) and Oscillospira (FC=0·96, P=0·06). A species-level meta-analysis showed that higher fibre intake was marginally associated with greater abundance of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (FC=1·03, P=0·07) and lower abundance of Eubacterium dolichum (FC=0·96, P=0·04) and Bacteroides uniformis (FC=0·97, P=0·05). Thus, dietary fibre intake may impact gut microbiota composition, particularly class Clostridia, and may favour putatively beneficial bacteria such as F. prausnitzii. These findings warrant further understanding of diet–microbiota relationships for future development of colorectal cancer prevention strategies.