The year 2020 marked the centenary of Karol Wojtyła’s birth, Pope John Paul II, a theologian and philosopher, politician and patriot, and last but not least, at the dawn of his spiritual development, an artist.

It was good moment to acknowledge in the artist-priest a symptom and symbol of an important phenomenon for Polish culture – the broadly understood relations of modern Polish theatre with religion, with Christianity and Catholicism, and with other religions but also with post-secularism and post-religiousness, and with various spiritual practices. In this context, it was inevitable to think of another person, equally symbolic and symptomatic, standing both next to and opposite Wojtyła as a dramatist, performer, and theoretician, namely Jerzy Grotowski – an outstanding reformer of world theatre, whose creative imagination derives, after all, predominantly from the same, essentially local, romantic and Christian inspirations. However, the spiritual space that stretches between Wojtyła and Grotowski is not closed within the boundaries set by these two names – neither historically, nor ideologically, nor personally – but opens up to heritage, continuities, and confrontations as well. Thus: Wojtyła-Grotowski & – a starting point and a place on a road that is endless in both directions.

Contents

Introduction

Artur Grabowski
Man on Stage, a Person in Theatre. On the Art of Acting and Its Relationship to the Religion of Jerzy Grotowski and Karol Wojtyła

Wojtyła/Grotowski – philosophy and politics

Anna Kawalec
Wojtyła and Grotowski in the Arena of Contemporary Culture

Anna Karoń Ostrowska
Karol Wojtyła’s theology of theatre and Józef Tischner’s philosophy of drama

Daniel Roland Sobota
Performer as a Person and Act. The Philosophy of Jerzy Grotowski’s Work in the Light of Karol Wojtyła’s Person and Act

Yanna Popova
The Body and the Word: on the Sources of Self-knowledge in the Theatrical Practices of Grotowski and Wojtyła

Dariusz Piotr Klimczak
“Sacred universe.” Allegory and allegoresis in the interpretation of plays by Karol Wojtyła and the theater of Jerzy Grotowski

Ewa Hoffmann-Piotrowska
The Lord Christ by Jerzy Grotowski

Rafał Węgrzyniak
The Accursed Prince. Manipulations around Jerzy Grotowski’s Staging of Calderon/Słowacki’s The Constant Prince at the Laboratory Theatre

Józefa Zając-Jamróz
Theatre of the Word, Theatre of the Body. Techniques of the Actor’s Work According to Mieczysław Kotlarczyk and Zygmunt Molik

Grotowski – religion, religions, spirituality

Anna Caixach
Jerzy Grotowski’s essential search for the original wholeness: a path to the primordial non-dual truthbased on Ramana Maharshi’s teachings

Călin Ciobotari
Grotowski and the Dramatic Text. Interpretation, Profanation, and Sacralisation

Dominika Laster
The Tree of Life and the Ladder of Transformation: A Short Discourse on Grotowski and Kabbalah

Marco de Marinis
Grotowski. Theatre as Gnosis

Tamara Trojanowska
Grotowski and the Demonic (the Demonic Grotowski?)

Ilaria Salonna
On Grotowski’s Expression “Carnal Prayer” (and Prayeras a Discipline of the “Athlete of God”)

Religious inspirations in the theatre contemporary

Tadeusz Kornaś
Masses in Theatre and Church. Between Osterwa, John Paul II, and Grotowski

Paweł Stangret
Breaking Down through Repetition – Religion as Quotation

Trausti Ólafsson
Ibsen’s Use of Holy Days: An Amalgam of Philosophy, Poetry, and Religion

Avra Sidiropoulou
The Irreverent Spirituality of Romeo Castellucci

Alina Epingeac
Experiment, Intimacy, Emotion – a Religion for the Art Theatre

George Shalutashvili
Metaphysical Training and Its Importance in the Process of Teaching Actors. Mirror Neurons and Acting (Metaphysical Training)

Tyrone Grima
Performance through Nothingness

Witold Wołowski
Jean-François-Farid Boukraba: Schizophrenia, Violence, Forgiveness

Magdalena Hasiuk
Practising “Re-ligare” in the Activities of the Węgajty Theatre

Katarzyna Biela
Wojtyła–Grotowski & Fajfer. The Sacred, Identity, and Feedback Loop

Jacek Kopciński
Dogs, People, and God: Ecotheology in the Plays of Mariusz Bieliński and Jarosław Jakubowski

Tomasz Man
It was winter

Theatre, literature – religion

Iwona E. Rusek
Creating a Role in the Actor’s Consciousness. Berent–Grotowski

Kazimierz Kowalewicz
Grotowski and Miłosz. The Briefest Remarks with Religion in the Background

Zbigniew Władysław Solski
Trinitarian Meditation by St. John Paul II

Hubert Okonowicz
Baczyński’s Theatre

Anna Opolska
Merton. Non-existent Correspondence