Chapter 6 - On Not Knowing Polish

Summary

Robert Findlay notes that “Grotowski has been hailed by many of his contemporaries as the most significant twentieth-century theatrical figure since Stanislavsky.” Specifically, Findley points out Akropolis, “as a true ensemble work, […] set the style and tone for much of the avant-garde experimentation of the late 1960s and early 1970s, both in Europe and in North America.” Martin Gottfried adds that “Acropolis is an extraordinary kind of theatre utterly unlike anything that came before it.” Likewise, in his 1968 Paris review of the performance, Thomas Quinn Curtiss writes: “This Akropolis of Mr. Grotowski is an imposing achievement of the modern stage, a work that will have a wide and beneficial influence.” Considering the accolades that both the play and the director received throughout the years, how is it possible that Akropolis, a work of unquestionable international impact, escaped any serious dramaturgical inquiry in the countries that embraced it and gave it its reputation? The esteem in which Grotowski was held by American scholars and theatre practitioners – despite the fact that, as Findlay points out, “his performances have been in Polish, a minor European language spoken and understood outside Poland by almost no one except emigres”– raises pressing questions about how the meaning and context of theatrical works are formed and transformed cross-culturally. How do critics and theatre scholars tackle their lack of language or cultural context when assessing the value and impact of international theatre pieces?