Description
Book SynopsisThis book opens a new interdisciplinary frontier between religion and theatre studies to illuminate what has been seen as the religious, or spiritual, nature of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski's work. It corrects the lacunae in both theatre studies and religious studies by examining the interaction between the two fields in his artistic output.
The central argument of the text is that through an embodied and materialist approach to religion, developed in the work of Michel Foucault and religious studies scholar Manuel Vasquez, as well as a critical reading of the concepts of the New Age, a new understanding of Grotowski and religion can be developed. It is possible to show how Grotowski's work articulated spiritual experience within the body; achieving a removal of spirituality from ecclesial authorities and relocating spiritual experience within the body of the performer.
This is a unique analysis of one of the 20th Century's most famou
Table of Contents
Introduction: Grotowski and interdisciplinary engagements
1 Rendering Grotowski’s spirituality: perspectives from performance and theatre studies
Part One: Foucault and Grotowski’s Theatre of Productions phase
2 Foucault, religion and Grotowski
3 A Foucaultian imperative in Grotowski’s theatre
Part Two: The New Age, the body and Grotowski
4 Critical thinking about the New Age
5 Grotowski, embodiment and the New Age
6 Yoga, shamanism and ritual in Grotowski’s work
7 Trance, channeling and the ancestors in Grotowski’s theatre
8 Grotowski and Gurdjieff: embodied resemblances
9 Grotowski as Guru: an interdisciplinary challenge
Conclusion
