Grotowski's aim was not to preach or school people with his work, his main
aim was finding meaning within his works. He always started using a
pre-written text by someone else usually; this was his stimulus that he
would use to work with his actors. Grotowski's basic principles of acting
were
1. Archetypes: Grotowski felt it was necessary to look at and tackle the
archetypes in the texts he chose to use. He would use this to help choose
the themes that he wanted to focus on, he tended to look our side of the
box with his ideas and themes.
2. Improvisation: Firstly Grotowski did not like the word improvisation.
This is because it has connotations of unplanned uncoordinated work. It
appears from reading about his works that he liked to have a structure to
his process and chaos was not acceptable for him. Despite this his work
on improvisation involved him reading some kind of text to his actors who
would take some time to absorb this and find costumes to fit the
improvisation. They would then spend time working with the text, not
necessarily literally. Grotowski would sometimes watch, making
adjustments and giving words of advice along with occasionally joining in
physically. He also liked to mould the actors himself while they continue
to work seamlessly. After this the actors would note down all they have
found and they would keep work that was good and get rid of the useless.
3. Montage: This process is ongoing throughout rehearsals, Grotowski
worked through the texts with his actors editing and reworking the texts
to suit his piece, getting rid of useless ideas and keeping the ones that
worked well, this could go on for a very long period of time with the text
and work changing all the time.
The Space: Grotowski felt that any space could be usable as a workspace to
develop work, and that it was not an excuse to delay because an
appropriate space has not been found. It was also imperative that the
space be clean and completely devoid of clutter. This was so important
that actors would often spend considerable time cleaning, mopping and
sorting the space before any work was started; this became something of a
ritual.
The Silence: The idea of the silence was to make sure that actors were
completely involved in the exercises taking place. It was forbidden to
bring any social talking or similar activities into the space even during
break times, which were usually spent silently. This was to remove any
interaction from outside the performance area so that the work could be
the primary focus. It was also important that there was no question
asking or commenting during the class, if an actor wasn't sure If they
were doing the exercise or task correctly they should either try to work
it out or wait for instruction from the person taking the class. The idea
was to keep the workspace not only physically clean but also clean from
unrelated thoughts and intrusions.
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