Tadeusz Kantor – Jerzy Grotowski – Jerzy Gurawski

• Authors: Osiński Zbigniew

Title variants

EN

Tadeusz Kantor – Jerzy Grotowski – Jerzy Gurawski

Abstracts

EN

Contrary to widespread opinion (including enunciations of the artists themselves) I believe that one of the greatest artistic partners of Jerzy Grotowski’s was his great rival and opponent, Tadeusz Kantor. It may be said that Kantor was in a way obsessed with having an idea in art. At the same time, the relations of the two artists were marked with strong ambivalence. At the opening of the exhibition Witkacy a Teatr Cricot 2 (“Witkacy and the Cricot 2 Theatre”) that took place at the Cricot 2 Theatre Centre on 2 Kanoniczna Street in Cracow on 26 February 1985 Kantor publicly admitted that, among artists known to him at the time, only Grotowski had his own idea of theatre. Jerzy Gurawski was born in Lwów on 4 September 1935. He is twenty years younger than Tadeusz Kantor and two years younger than Grotowski, with whom he co-created the Laboratorium Theatre in Opole since the production of Siakuntala (“Śākuntalā”) based on Kalidasa’s play in 1960. What testifies to the import of Gurawski, an architecture graduate of the Cracow University of Technology whom Grotowski called “the doctor of theatre space”, are mostly his work at the Laboratorium Theatre in the 1960s, his correspondence with Grotowski and a number of comments, scattered here and there, made by himself and by other artists. Eugenio Barba was right in what he wrote in his autobiographical book, translated into many languages, Land of Ashes and Diamonds. My Apprenticeship in Poland. Followed by 26 Letters from Jerzy Grotowski to Eugenio Barba (Aberystwyth, Wales: Black Mountain Press, Centre for Performance Research, 1999), pp. 28-29: “The creator of the scenic space was Jerzy Gurawski, an architect (not a scenographer) of the same age as Grotowski. Their encounter belongs to the category of events that can well be described as historical. Neither one of them would have been capable of arriving at such extraordinary solutions without the other. Gurawski’s contribution to Kordian, Doctor Faustus and The Constant Prince was exceptional. When his collaboration was lacking, Grotowski’s scenic space was reduced to an empty room with the spectators seated at the sides, thus involuntarily becoming a theatre in the round. Gurawski was a modest man who was seldom to be seen at the theatre and who worked by himself while remaining in constant contact with Grotowski. In the case of Doctor Faustus too, where I was assistant director, he neither attended rehearsals nor intervened in the realisation of the designs. He was an unforgettable personality who, through his encounter with Grotowski, changed the conception of scenic space for generations to come. Theatre history has not given him the prominence he deserves, whereas Grotowski himself always underlined his importance. It is often the case that the creativity of a group, their collective tension and effective symbiosis, are associated with a single name.” This year Gurawski turns eighty. As it turns out, Tadeusz Kantor’s art has been one of the most important sources of his inspiration for many years. He has been interested in Tadeusz Kantor’s personality and art throughout his career as can be attested by his works from the cycle titled In memoriam Tadeuszowi Kantorowi – Jerzy Gurawski. Rysunki architekta z Teatru Laboratorium (“Jerzy Gurawski – In Memory of Tadeusz Kantor. Drawings by an Architect from the Laboratorium Theatre”) exhibited publicly for the first time at Wielopole Skrzyńskie in September 2014.

Keywords

EN

theatre studies; theatre history; Polish theatre; Tadeusz Kantor; Jerzy Grotowski

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 2(254)
• Pages: 122-149

Contributors

author

Osiński Zbigniew

• Akademia Teatralna im. Aleksandra Zelwerowicza w Warszawie

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