ZBIGNIEW OSIŃSKI
Jerzy Grotowski's Journeys to the East
Translated from Polish by Andrezej Wojtasik and Kris Salata.
Edited by Kris Salata. Polish text edited by Iga Rutkowska.
Published by Icarus Publishing Enterprise and Routledge, 2014, pp.
220.
Jerzy Grotowski's Journeys to the East is an unusual
collection of facts, quotations, and commentaries documenting the
real and metaphorical journeys of the Polish theatre director and
"teacher of performers" into a geographical and cultural dimension
which we used to and still call the Orient. Grotowski's contacts
and meetings with the East are placed here in the context of his
biography. Painstakingly researched by Grotowski's main
biographer Zbigniew Osiński, this book is necessary
reading for those interested in Grotowski's deep relationship with
the East and in the inspiration he drew from its various cultures.
The book will appeal to all readers who feel a need to have a
glimpse of the East from the perspective of one of the main theatre
reformers in the twentieth century.
Zbigniew Osiński
(born in Poznań, Poland, in 1939) is a theatre
scholar, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the
University of Warsaw, and Professor at the Theatre Studies
Department at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of
Dramatic Art in Warsaw. He was the originator, co-founder and first
director of the Centre of Studies on Jerzy Grotowski's Work and of
Cultural and Theatrical Research in Wrocław, Poland, where he also
served as Artistic and Research Director from 1990 to 2004. He has
published extensively on the history, theory and anthropology of
theatre.