The exhibition presents one of the most important innovators of 20th-century theatre Jerzy Grotowski and the fifty years of his legendary Teatr Laboratorium.

Jerzy Grotowski (1933, Rzeszów, Poland -1999, Pontedera, Italy) was a theatre director, theoretician, teacher and an inventor of new theatrical concepts. His Teatr Laboratorium belonged to the most important theatrical institutions of the 20th century. Under that label he made his controversial though widely admired plays Acropolis (1962), The Constant Prince (1965) and Apocalypsis cum figurist (1968). He published his manifest entitled The Poor Theatre in 1968 in the United States.  

Teatr Laboratorium was not a conventional theatre, the emotions between the artist and the spectator were of more importance than the actor or the text in the performances. In his last Polish period 1978-1983 Grotowski invented the Theatre of Sources. He traveled intensively through India and South America to identify elements of technique in the traditional practices of various cultures that could have a precise and discernible effect on participants.  

”I am not an academic. Am I an artist? I think so. I am a skilled worker” – said Grotowski about himself.

From 1986 Grotowski was working in Pontadera, Italy in a theatre center established by him, the University of California and the Peter Brook Center. He was solely focusing on his academic works. Though he was suspected of placing himself in the role of a shaman, a prophet or a guru, all those who knew him personally said he was a nice, warm-hearted man.

Supported by: Lengyel Intézet (Budapest), Grotowski Intézet (Wroclaw)