In Praise of a Polish Theater Master

 “Want to hear a Polish actor joke?” asked Mr. Arnoult, who first came here to see the legendary theater director and thinker Jerzy Grotowksi at work in 1975.

“Not here!” stage-whispered Mr. Schechner, whose theater magazine TDR: The Drama Review was the first and most prolific publisher of Grotowski’s writings in the United States.

“O.K.,” said Mr. Arnoult, undaunted.

“Two Polish actors drink a bottle of vodka. ‘Could you still play?’ says one to the other. ‘Sure,’ he says. They drink another. ‘Could you still play?’ ‘Sure.’ They drink a third bottle. The first actor asks the second, ‘Could you play now?’ ‘No,’ he says. ‘But I could direct.”’

Ideas about directing — including Mr. Schechner’s rebuttal that the joke should be the other way around, with three bottles of vodka and two directors — are in no short supply at the events marking the 10-year anniversary of Grotowski’s death. Grotowski developed the concept of the “poor theater” — theater that has been stripped down to its most essential parts — such that the actor does not act so much as reveal truth. As part of The Grotowski Year, performances, lectures, panel discussions, film screenings, book promotions, workshops, and exhibitions are taking place all year long around the world.

Here in the small city of Wroclaw, Poland, where Grotowski lived and worked from 1965 until he left Poland — then under martial law — in 1982, the highlight of The Grotowski Year was a festival that ran from June 14 to 30.

Called “The World as a Place of Truth,” the festival drew master directors like Roberto Bacci, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook and Mr. Schechner, among others. Pina Bausch was also invited, but she died suddenly on July 30. All were staging performances and giving workshops and talks as part of the extensive program.

While most, though not all, of the master directors here had some personal and professional connection to Grotowski, everyone is quick to say that the event is not about following the tradition of a man who eschewed imitators.

“He used to say, to imitate me is not to follow me,” said Mr. Schechner.

He pointed out that the festival was showing three versions of “Hamlet,” including his own, performed largely in Mandarin by Chinese actors from the Shanghai Theatre Academy and American actors from East Coast Artists.

Thus the festival took place in Grotowski’s honor, not footsteps (“Hamlet,” after all, is a play about the son of the dead king who cannot or will not take the throne.)

“We thought the best way to pay homage to a great master of world’s theater is to invite people who have been true to themselves,” said Joanna Klass, director of The Grotowski Year. “Who didn’t walk in his shoes, but excelled against all odds.”

“I was not influenced in the theater, but in a personal way,” said Roberto Bacci, after the performance of his “Hamlet,” in which all the actors sported fencing gear. In 1986 Mr. Bacci invited Grotowski to his theater center in Pontedera, Italy. There, Grotowski founded his own “work center,” where he remained until his death. „“In the past years we talked about other things, personal things, political things. But not about theater.”

For Mr. Bacci’s young actors, who were steeped in Grotowski’s work but did not work directly with him, Wroclaw was inspiring. „“Being here, you feel that this is the place, like traveling back to the origin,” said the actress Serena Gatti, who played Ophelia. „“It’s a big emotion, to go to the room where he worked. It’s in the air.”