Grotowski

Grotowski


Background

• Born 1933- Died 1999
• Polish director
• Moved to Wroclaw and led a theatre company called Laboratorium under influence of Grotowski's personality.

Theatrical ideas

• He claims theatre should not, because it cannot, compete with film
• Should therefore focus on what hold theatre together: actors in front of spectators
• Theatre focuses on body and requires physical commitment
• Actor must use there own emotions, feelings (from personal experiences) and opinions.
• To do this, they must break through internal or physical blocks

In the body
           Learning to activate all of the body and move freely and fully

In the voice
Learning to breathe freely and open every resonator.

In the emotion
Letting pure emotion pour from the body and reacting with other actors


Exercise 1.
The class did a warm up session, walking around the room, walking through fog (that slowly thickens to water thickness).

Exercise 2
Changing the way their feet met the ground, allowing it the change the effect of the legs, and slowly effecting the whole of our body, creating individual characters for us. I found that walking on the edges of my feet, created a lazy natured character, that purposefully had no energy to lift his posture.

Exercise 3
We then went outside to the tennis courts and did some exercises that involved physical focus and focus. We had to run to one cone, then run backwards diagonally to another and so on, all running at the same time, haven't to concentrate on not colliding with fellow classmates. This exercise aloud us to work as a team (encouraging friends),  to warm up our bodies, and to focus fully on the exercise in order to complete it.

Exercise 4
This exercise was 'tug of war'. We began doing it in slow motion, in order to put all our energy into convincing our 'spectators' that we were effectively creating a scene that has instant more detail. We then did play tug of war, in full speed, which used skills of determination, physical strength and team encouragement.