Grotowski in Opole. A Case Study

Abstract

Jerzy Grotowski’s theatre, especially in the period of his work in Opole (1959–1964), has most often been interpreted through the prism of aesthetics, actor training, and the evolution of the so-called ‘poor theatre’. Much less attention has been paid to its political dimension, frequently obscured both by contemporaneous critical discourse and by deliberate strategies of camouflage employed by Grotowski and his collaborators. This article argues that Studium o Hamlecie (1964; The Hamlet Study) constitutes Grotowski’s most explicit and radical political intervention, in which theatrical form became a vehicle for diagnosing the deepest tensions within Polish society under state socialism. The performance not only reflected but also critically reworked the ideological conflicts, social divisions, and latent violence characteristic of the Polish People’s Republic in the early 1960s.