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  • Hey there!

  • I'm Mike Rugnetta, this is Crash Course Theater, and today we're looking at two

  • very different models of radical, transformative theater.

  • First, we'll head to Poland for Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theater.

  • Then, we'll zoom over to Brazil for Augusto Boal's The Theater of the Oppressed.

  • These are pretty different movements: one is mostly concerned with personal discovery

  • and the other is about creating broader social change.

  • But both of them do away with theatrical conventions like costumes and scenery.

  • They are even kind of meh on props.

  • Eh, but you're kinda like more of a “co-star.”

  • And both try to break down barriers between actors and audiences, remaking the theater

  • as a space to create real and lasting change.

  • Let's rise up!

  • INTRO Poor Theater was started by this guy, Jerzy

  • Grotowski.

  • He was born in Poland in 1933 and later educated in Moscow at the Russian Academy of Theater

  • Arts.

  • In 1959, he settled in Opole in Poland and began to work with a group of artists who

  • would form the Polish Laboratory Theater.

  • In the early 1980s, he left Poland, moving first to America, where he taught at several

  • universities, and then to Italy.

  • Like Stanislavski, who was both a big influence and a big rival , Grotowski was a charismatic

  • figure who tried to create a new style of acting.

  • While Stanislavski's style is based in psychological realism, Grotowski moved away from realism

  • and toward something more ritualistic and elemental.

  • Grotowski's theater had two main phases.

  • Poor Theater was first.

  • The other, which he developed after 1970, is called the Theater of Sources.

  • We'll mostly focus on Poor Theater, because it was the more influential of the two and

  • because Grotowski compiled a very handy book about it, “Towards a Poor Theater,” published

  • in 1968, that was widely influential.

  • If you have any interest in avant-garde theater, it's definitely worth a read.

  • What is a poor theater?

  • Wellsurprise!—it's the opposite of a rich theater.

  • A rich theater doesn't have to be all that rich.

  • It includes everything from glitzy multimillion-dollar Broadway productions to amateur shows in church

  • basements.

  • What all rich theater has in common, though, is lights and make-up and costumes and sets.

  • It is deliberately illusionistic.

  • The poor theater has none of that!

  • Not a single rotating gobo.

  • Instead, it relies on the power of the actor to convey character and setting.

  • Grotowski writes: “One must ask oneself what is indispensable

  • to theatre.

  • Let's see.

  • Can the theatre exist without costumes and sets?

  • Yes, it can.

  • Can it exist without music to accompany the plot?

  • Yes.

  • Can it exist without lighting effects?

  • Of course.

  • And without a text?

  • Yes.”

  • Why exist without all this stuff?

  • A couple of reasons.

  • One of them is that Grotowski realized that theater was in competition with film and television.

  • And if illusionism was what you were after, then film and television were going to do

  • a way, way better job delivering it.

  • But what film and television can't do, Grotowski reasoned, is to tap back into theater's

  • origins in ritual and myth.

  • Maybe you're thinking, hey, that sounds like Artaud.

  • And you're not wrong, although, as you maybe remember from our earlier episode, Artaud

  • had no problem with big splashy effects.

  • Aaah!

  • So many frogs, scorpions and jets of blood!

  • Another reason for poor theater is that Grotowski wanted to eliminate the separation between

  • the actors and the audience.

  • If spectators don't get to have fancy wigs and spotlights, then neither should the actors!

  • In most of Grotowski's productions, the audience mingled with the actors or surrounded

  • the actors on all sides, so that they everyone occupied the playing space.

  • The performers were constantly exposed and unmiked.

  • Grotowski and his actors would spend years rehearsing productions, refining every movement,

  • every breath, every facial expression.

  • And yet actors still described a feeling of intense spontaneity and emotional connection

  • to the work.

  • Maja Komorowska, an actor in the company, said it was a “precise, meticulous composition,

  • but there wasn't the slightest sign of artificiality

  • This explosion, an eruption of emotion and truth—[it] was no longer merely theater."

  • Grotowski believed that a role shouldpenetratethe actor.

  • That's his wordwell, except he said it in Polish.

  • Grotowski's method required that an actor open themselves to the role completely.

  • Ryszard Cieślak, for many years his lead actor, said of Grotowski's style, “It

  • is anyhow impossible to treat it in merely artistic terms.

  • It resulted in my fundamental transformation, not only as an actor, but also as a human

  • being.”

  • You might say this all sounds kindareligious.

  • And you're not wrong.

  • Director Peter Brook, who observed Grotowski at work, considered Grotowski an example of

  • holy or sacred theater.

  • Brook called this style of acting, anact of sacrifice, of sacrificing what most men

  • prefer to hidethis sacrifice is his gift to the spectator.”

  • Brook wrote that in Grotowski's poor theater, actors give up everything except for the power

  • of their own bodies and unlimited rehearsal time to bring those bodies to the role: “No

  • wonder they feel the richest theatre in the world.”

  • GET IT?

  • Richest Theater?

  • For a closer look at Grotowski's methods and style, let's explore one of his most

  • famous andfair warningmost disturbing works, “Akropolis.”

  • Akropolis,” first performed in 1962, was based on a long 1904 poetic drama by Stanisław

  • Wyspianski.

  • A shout-out to Western culture and a call for Polish national pride, it describes how

  • statues, tapestries, and carvings come to life in a Krakow cathedral on the night before

  • Easter.

  • But Grotowski transferred the setting to Auschwitz, not all that far away from his theater in

  • Opole, and created a piece asking if culture could matter at all after an event like the

  • Holocaust.

  • Help us out, ThoughtBubble: [[[Hi.

  • I know this will be disturbing to animate, but all of Poor Theater is disturbing.

  • You can watch clips of the Peter Brook documentation of Akropolis, if that helps.

  • And I know we can do this sensitively.]]]

  • The audience is seated on all four sides of the space.

  • In the middle is a junk heappipes, nails, a rusting bathtub.

  • Above the heap is a web of ropes, a little like barbed wire.

  • This is a concentration camp.

  • At the beginning of the play, an actor drags in a headless dummy and delivers a prologue.

  • Then the other actors, dressed identically in tunics, berets, and heavy wooden-soled

  • shoes, enter.

  • Their faces are frozen into grimaces.

  • Grotowski called these facial expressionslife masks.”

  • One observer wrote that their eyes actually look dead.

  • They speak like a Greek chorus: CHORUS:

  • Only once a year, They come only once a year

  • On the cemetery of the tribes.

  • A SINGLE VOICE: Our Acropolis.

  • CHORUS: They read the words of judgment

  • On the cemetery of the tribes.

  • They're gone and the smoke lingers on.

  • Two actors become angels, and they suspend the headless dummy from the ropes in a pose

  • like the crucified Christ.

  • A violin plays, and several of the actors begin to work with materials from the junk

  • heap.

  • They are building the crematorium where the prisoners will be burnt.

  • Three of the actors step out.

  • Two become guards, and the third is a prisoner whom they interrogate and torture.

  • There is more work on the junk pile, an unhappy sex scene between a man and a woman, and then

  • the retelling of the biblical story of Jacob.

  • The crematorium is completed; the action shifts to Troy.

  • There is a scene between Paris and Helen.

  • One prisoner steps out to become King David, and he addresses a speech to God that ends

  • in a wild song.

  • And the dummy is lifted overhead, an image of a dead, starved prisoner.

  • One by one, the actors throw themselves into a pit.

  • Thanks, ThoughtBubble.

  • That whole thing took fifty minutes, and at the end, the audience was usually too upset

  • to applaud..

  • By 1970, Grotowski figured he'd gone about as far as he could go in perfecting the work

  • of the actor.

  • So he turned to eliminating the divide between actor and audience, creating “a meeting,

  • not a confrontation; a communion where we can be totally ourselves.”

  • He also undertook an extensive study of ritual performance in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean:

  • the Theater of Sources.

  • He died in 1999.

  • Let's turn to another theatermaker interested in blurring boundaries between actor and audience.

  • That would be this guy, Augusto Boal, born in Brazil in 1931.

  • Initially he studied chemical engineering, but while he was a student at Columbia University,

  • he was introduced to the theories of Brecht and Stanislavski.

  • Later on, he was also profoundly influenced by the educator Paolo Freire, who pioneered

  • thePedagogy of the Oppressed,” a nonhierarchical educational method.

  • Returning to Brazil, Boal began to direct plays at the Arena Theater.

  • First classics and then plays written by Brazilian playwrights.

  • He toured his plays to poor neighborhoods.

  • These plays often ended with actors asking their audience to rise above oppression.

  • But Boal began to think that, instead of just talking to audiences, he should be listening

  • to them and empowering them.

  • As his practices evolved, he encouraged audiences to talk back to the actionyou can see the

  • influence of Brecht hereand to suggest new actions for the characters.

  • Legend has it that, during one performance, a female audience member couldn't make an

  • actor understand her suggestion.

  • So she stepped onstage and performed the action herself.

  • This birthed the idea of the spect-actor.

  • [[[Yorick flies in wearing spectacles.]]]

  • No, no, no.

  • The spect-actor is part spectator and part actor and all awesome.

  • Unlike those glasses.

  • Get out of here.

  • This method eventually became known as Forum Theater.

  • A Forum Theater exercise begins with a short scene centered on a social problemsexism,

  • say, or racial discrimination.

  • After the scene concludes, it starts again.

  • And this time, spect-actors are invited to interrupt the proceeding with their own actions.

  • A facilitator, usually called a “joker,” monitors the performance.

  • Thejokerdoesn't actually joke.

  • They make sure that each spect-actor is able to complete his or her action, and then asks

  • the audience to evaluate the usefulness of each proposed solution to the social problem.

  • If you are freaked out by participatory theaterif your idea of theater is hiding in the dark

  • and ruffling your Playbill, perhaps at most glaring carefully at someone unwrapping a

  • bit of candy in the darkTheater of the Oppressed is not for you!

  • Boal believed that encouraging audience members to step onstage was a way of empowering them.

  • This meant showing them that they could take action in their own lives if they felt that

  • they were experiencing injustice.

  • This didn't sit too well with Brazil's military regime.

  • And in 1971, after a performance of Brecht's “Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” Boal was

  • kidnapped, tortured, and eventually exiled.

  • Boal took his participatory show on the road, eventually settling in Paris and continuing

  • to teach.

  • In 1979, he published his first bookTheater of the Oppressed.”

  • He also pioneered another form of political theater, “Invisible Theater,” which is

  • a kind of theater that the audience doesn't even know is theater.

  • It could be happening anywhere, anytimeit could be right behind you right now!

  • But probably not.

  • He re-relocated to Brazil in 1986, became a city councilman, and pioneered a form known

  • as Legislative Theater.

  • In this form, citizens were encouraged to participate in scenes that helped to identify

  • the social problems they were facing and to brainstorm possible solutions.

  • Augusto Boal died in 2009.

  • Obviously, Grotowski and Boal were pretty different dudes.

  • Grotowski expected actors to rehearse for years.

  • Boal didn't need his spect-actors to rehearse at all.

  • But both believed in theater as a means to achieve something greater.

  • For Grotowski, that's a profound self-knowledge and exploration of the human condition.

  • For Boal, that's the hope of true social justice and solutions to endemic problems

  • discovered as a community.

  • CONCLUSION Thanks for watching.

  • Next time, we'll make our first visit to West Africa, studying intersections of theater

  • and ritual, and exploring Nigeria's influential postcolonial theater with a closer look at

  • playwright Wole Soyinka.

  • Until thencurtain!

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哀れな不幸劇場クラッシュコース劇場 #48 (Poor Unfortunate Theater: Crash Course Theater #48)

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    Pei-Yi Lin に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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