Price of Artistic Freedom

Ketmanship in Opole: Jerzy Grotowski and the Price of Artistic
Freedom
Seth Baumrin
TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 53, Number 4, Winter 2009

(T 204), pp. 49-77 (Article)
Published by The MIT Press
For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tdr/summary/v053/53.4.baumrin.html
Access Provided by Hong Kong Baptist University at 11/03/10 9:50AM GMT

Ketmanship in Opole
Jerzy Grotowski and the Price of Artistic Freedom
Seth Baumrin
From March 1964 to February 1965, Jerzy Grotowski was a skilled political player who turned
local disfavor into national clout. This period, and what led up to it, demonstrate the extent to
which Communist Party officials, secret police, journalists, and professors all played roles that
strengthened Grotowski’s position in the face of adversity. What were the causes and effects of
Grotowski’s political prowess in his Opole years, 1959 to 1964? How and why was Grotowski
involved with Poland’s Communist Party, especially its authorities? It stands to reason that they
compromised him, but how?
English-language texts on Grotowski do not effectively address the impact Poland’s political
situation had on the Polish Laboratory Theatre. To get at what happened and why, I have
conducted interviews with more than 30 people, most of whom knew Grotowski well. I have
also commissioned translations of Polish texts addressing Grotowski’s political life, many of
them generously supplied by archivists at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.
Communist Party records on Grotowski are held by the Instytut Pamiȩci Narodowej
(IPN; Institute of National Remembrance) in Wrocław (see the Key to Acronyms). There
are no relevant records in Warsaw or Kraków, and only a few in Opole. All pertinent Polska
Seth Baumrin is Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY in New York. He has
published in Slavic and Eastern European Performance (Winter 2007:31–40), and his “Anarcho-
Radical Roots—Opole to Oslo to Holstebro 1959–69: Eugenio Barba’s Early Experimental Theatre as
Intervention” is included in Vectors of the Radical: Textual Exchange, Global Radicalism, and the 60s
(ed. Mike Sell, Indiana University Press, 2002). He has directed over 60 theatre and opera productions,
including Darius Milhaud’s Medée, for Vertical Player Repertory, Brooklyn (2006); Federico Garcia
Lorca’s As Five Years Pass, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey (2003); and Carson McCullers’s The
Member of the Wedding for Five Moon Theatre, Martha’s Vineyard (1983).
TDR: The Drama Review 53:4 (T204) Winter 2009. ©2009

New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 49
Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (PZPR; Polish United Party of Workers, also called the Polish
Communist Party) and Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB; Secret Police) documents are now presumed
by scholars to reside in Wrocław. Most official documents not collected by the Grotowski
Institute or held in private collections or by the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas
Richards in Pontedera, Italy, are held by the Wrocław branch of IPN archives. Some scholars
have gained access to these documents; others make no effort. One scholar theorizes that the
most sensitive documents were destroyed by those who remained from the old Polska
Rzeczpospolita Ludowa (PRL; People’s Republic of Poland) apparatus (confidential; 2008).1
Another scholar was forced to rummage through tens of thousands of documents for years
because there is no catalogue at IPN and the archive is a “horrible mess.” Access to IPN
archives is denied to curiosity seekers. Serious scholars are granted access as are those whom
IPN deems were themselves or had a now deceased family member “harmed” by PZPR
(confidential; 2008). Though some claim IPN is an institution afraid of scrutiny, many Poles
themselves resist knowing the truth. Oddly, Grotowski’s brother, nuclear physicist Kazimierz
Grotowski, has expressed no interest in gaining access to these documents:
I have never seen them. This institution has become controversial. Now we have a new
government, but the former government, the twin brothers Kaczyński, said that every-
thing that happened in Poland up to the end of Communist rule amounts to nothing, and
that most people should go to jail and so forth. And many people who work in IPN share
this view. Many of us have tried to persuade them that, during the Communist regime,
the Polish people did their best in a very bad situation. Of course in the last 15 or 18 years
Poland changed very much. But before the War it was completely different. In the villages
there was no electricity, no roads; so in the worst situation Polish people did their best.
But, Kaczyński’s people said, “No. We should forget about this time.” And I am sure
that Grotowski is not very popular in these circles because he created a theatre during
the Communist regime. So I’m not sure you will get much cooperation from IPN.
(K. Grotowski 2008)
Kazimierz Grotowski does not sufficiently address why he has not requested his brother’s
records. He says the IPN has become “controversial.” In Polish, “controversial” is kontrower-
syjny, a euphemism for deplorable (confidential; 2008). Kazimierz Grotowski’s assertions that
1. Where information has been provided by a confidential source, the parenthetical date indicates when the information
was provided.
I have four confidential sources. Two knew Grotowski well. Confidentiality of sources is an important scholarly value
in a context such as this. It demonstrates the sensitivity of information possessed by people who are generous enough
to share, but also cautious. The reasons for confidentiality range from professional and personal jealousies to promises
made to Grotowski when he was living, to concern over how his memory is honored, to the fear that lingers from the
Communist period.
Because I refer to events once veiled in secrecy and even now obscured, and rely on people’s memories of Grotowski in
Opole from 1959 to 1964—and Kraków even earlier—there are inconsistencies. How my sources remember the past
and view its meaning, and their ability and willingness to tell all, may be restricted by the limits of human memory or
the desire to protect themselves and others. People can still lose reputations and livelihoods when their activities dur-
ing the Communist period come under scrutiny. Even now, Poles perceived to have collaborated with or been mem-
bers of Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (PZPR; Polish United Party of Workers) or Służba Bezpieczeństwa
(SB; Secret Service) in the 1950s through the 1980s are at material risk. For example, on 7 January 2007, Archbishop
Stanisław Wielgus was forced out as Archbishop of Warsaw because journalists exposed his collaboration with the SB.
Despite confidentiality and secrecy, and due in equal parts to the generosity of the Grotowski Institute and local
Seth Baumrin
scholars, and to the open participation of many survivors from the Opole period, I can share here what I have learned.
Figure 1. (previous page) The Theatre of 13 Rows, Opole, Rynek 5, 1960. (Photograph by Michał Worobiec)
50
Kaczyński wanted former collaborators imprisoned, and that villages lacked roads and electric-
ity, are not supported by the facts. His commentary captures the complexity of contemporary
attitudes towards knowing the truth of what happened during the Communist period.
Ketmanship in Opole
In 1964, during the months preceding Grotowski’s 1965 move from Opole to Wrocław, his
company, the Laboratory Theatre of the 13 Rows,2 was working on Studium o Hamlecie (The
Hamlet Study). But Studium o Hamlecie was presented only 21 times and then removed from
the repertory. In the work, Hamlet is a Jew surrounded by goyim, which alludes to the Polish
peasantry’s conflict with the PZPR over collectivization. Regarded by the community as a
threat, Hamlet remains cautious while others act. Jennifer Kumiega says Studium o Hamlecie
was canceled because of lack of funding and public interest (1985:42), but her explanation is
insufficient. Grotowski had no objection to playing to an audience of one and had functioned in
poverty from the start in Opole. Józef Kelera, who saw the work, says that Studium o Hamlecie
wasn’t that good (2008). Others believe the work anticipated the upcoming outbreak of official
anti-Semitism in 1968, and Grotowski shut the project down to protect the theatre’s cofounder,
Ludwik Flaszen, who is Jewish (Kolankiewicz 2007; Degler 2006; Wójtowicz 2006; Molik in
Wójtowicz 2004:121). Most likely, the pressure on Grotowski to close the Laboratory of the
Theatre of 13 Rows made it impossible to continue. The coincidence of Studium o Hamlecie’s
discontinuation with the Theatre’s closing in Opole and reopening in Wrocław as the
Theatre Laboratorium elucidates what a skilled political player Grotowski was. In defeat,
Grotowski triumphed.
The move from Opole to Wrocław marked a great leap forward for the Theatre. Zbigniew
Osiński says of Grotowski’s final days in Opole:
The Hamlet Study was prepared in exceptionally difficult circumstances. The institute’s
future fate was unsure. [ . . . ] Only thanks to the heroic obduracy of Grotowski, who
infected his colleagues with his own attitude, did there emerge finally, after several
months of extraordinary feverish work, a public presentation of a “rehearsal” on 17
March. (in Kumiega 1985:6)
But, by merely citing Osiński’s passage on “extraordinary feverish work,” Kumiega elides per-
haps the most fascinating aspect of Grotowski’s professional biography: his mastery of Polish
cultural politics. For, by calling this presentation a “rehearsal” rather than a performance with-
out explaining why it was presented—on 7 April, not 17 March—to an audience appointed by
the Ministerstwo Kultury i Sztuki (MKiS; the Ministry of Culture and Art), and by omitting any
description of the theoretical work presented along with it and ignoring the performance’s polit-
ical implications, Kumiega’s citation minimizes the event’s seriousness and fails to recognize the
turning point the event represents in Polish theatre history. Theatre of 13 Rows actor Zygmunt
Molik states: “Hamlet was a Jew; the royal court was presented as a clear allusion to contempo-
rary authorities. It was a clear interpretation, which in no way could be defended from the cen-
sorship and the authorities” (in Wójtowicz 2004:119; trans. Amalia Wozna).
Wójtowicz proposes that the authors of the performance posed the question:
[I]s cooperation between Hamlet and the peasants possible? This question touched
very important and relevant problems. The Hamlet Study was the most “political” of
Ketmanship in Opole
2. The Theatre of the 13 Rows (1959–1964) was renamed the Laboratory Theatre of the 13 Rows in 1962 as a partial
response to pressure from regional authorities before Grotowski moved the company to Wrocław. Although it is
common practice to refer to Grotowski’s Opole theatre as the Theatre of 13 Rows, the aforementioned theatre was
there before Grotowski under the management of the Ławski theatre family as an annex of the adjoining Klub
Zwia¸zków Twórczych, Opole’s literary club.
51
Figure 2. The bath scene from Studium o Hamlecie (The Hamlet Study; 1964).
(Photograph by R. Cieślak, courtesy of the Grotowski Institute Archive)
Grotowski’s performances even though not completely successful. It was a performance

that, after years, has become the story of Grotowski’s own generation, of an idea (the
necessity to fight for this idea) that mutilated both supporters and opponents because of
their inability to combine two worldviews, the curse of ideology and the inability to form
history. (Wójtowicz 2004:121; trans. Amalia Wozna)
Quoting Konstantin Puznya, Wójtowicz states, “It was probably here that Grotowski first ‘hit
some live nerve of the present’ and probably why the performance remained in the Theatre’s
repertoire only two months” (Wójtowicz 2004:121; trans. Amalia Wozna). Grotowski’s final
months in Opole consisted of a complex political intrigue with the aura of Hamlet’s subterfuge,
Seth Baumrin
except that where Hamlet failed to gain control, Grotowski mastered the situation.
Sifting through the considerable evidence now available shows how off the mark Kumiega is
when she writes of “the apolitical attitude of [Grotowski’s] mature years” (1985:6). By “mature
52
years,” Kumiega is contrasting Grotowski’s Kraków period (1956–1959), when, as a student, he
was overtly active in Communist Party politics, to his years in Opole (1959–1964) and Wrocław
(1965–1982). Perhaps Kumiega did not have access to documents now available after the end
of Communist rule; she should not be criticized for misrepresenting the political importance of
Grotowski’s theatre to Polish culture. During the Communist period, culture was Poland’s most
tangible indigenous asset in the otherwise Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc, and therefore a
decidedly political asset.
But Grotowski was doing more than inscribing Polish culture. The less glamorous side of
his politics was his struggle to preserve his theatre by outsmarting its opponents. Kumiega
implies that in 1959, Grotowski gave up politics to follow a more spiritual path. This is merely
her editorial premise for never mentioning Grotowski in a politic context again. To be fair, when
Kumiega was writing, Grotowski, Flaszen, and Ryszard Ciéslak were in political exile, and other
Theatre Laboratorium members remained in Poland under Martial Law. Meanwhile, Kazimierz
Grotowski was working at UC-Berkeley’s nuclear physics facility. Kumiega had to write judi-
ciously to insure both Grotowski’s and Theatre Laboratorium members’ safety. It was not the
moment to raise the issue of political trickery.
Yes, Grotowski’s politics in Kraków were more pronounced than in his Opole period, but
records of his activities are spotty.
There are a few reasons for the fact that we have such scarce archival materials from the
period of October, November and December 1956: the velocity of events; disregard for
collecting materials; and reluctance to take notes (since there was the threat that they
could be used in retaliation). The atmosphere of those times can be best described by a
joke by Jerzy Grotowski: 1. Don’t think. 2. If you think, don’t speak. 3. If you speak, don’t
write. 4. If you have written something, don’t sign. 5. If you have signed, take it all back
immediately (Kozłowski 2004:55; trans. Amalia Wozna).
In spite of this warning, Grotowski was a fiery orator and zealot when it came to exploiting the
new freedoms promised in 1956 by Władysław Gomułka, the First Secretary of the Polish
United Party of Workers, during the period known as Polish October. An example of
Grotowski’s Kraków activities are the concluding remarks from “Civilization and Freedom—
There Is No Other Socialism,” his intervention into the convention of Zwia¸zek Młodzieży
Socjalistycznej (ZMS; the Association of Socialist Youth) in Warsaw, 25–27 April 1957:
Comrades from the former apparatus! We are with you. In this game where the future
of Poland is at stake, your devotion, your ability to sacrifice is needed; also your bitter
experiences are needed [applause].
The time has come when it seems that socialism has a chance. One should not get
involved in dirty games; one should not allow anyone to make us bait our comrades
against freedom, civilization, and socialism.
The policy of the Party, which is the masses’ teacher, the policy of the ZMS, which is
the Party’s son, is that the entire society should be focused on the question of bringing up
the youth, on bringing up a generation which will enter the 21st century. We are respon-
sible for these questions and must create means to lead people along a difficult path. This
path, which runs throughout the country, is the path of greater effort, sacrifice, and sweat,
but also [gives] more verifiable results for everyone than mere fine words and demagogic
promises. (Grotowski [1957] 2000:27; trans. Adela Karznia)
Ketmanship in Opole
The speech’s tone differs only slightly from the tenor Grotowski ultimately took when he
expressed himself as a theatre reformer. Yet his speeches alone are insufficient to fully capture
Grotowski’s political profile. According to Kazimierz Grotowski, the period was marked by one
infamous incident. Jerzy Grotowski was part of a delegation to see Gomułka in Warsaw in 1957.
Gomułka became furious because the delegation was proposing “communism with democracy,
53
which for Gomułka was heresy. So Gomułka threw an ink well at Grotowski” (K. Grotowski
2008). Perhaps this incident (whether apocryphal or factual) is most responsible for Grotowski’s
reputation as an important Polish October activist.
For Poland and for Grotowski, 1956/57 was an auspicious year. In the summer of 1956,
Grotowski had just returned to Kraków from Moscow and his training as a director with Jurij
Zawadzki at GITIS (A.W. Łunczarski Gosudarstwiennyj Insititut Tieatrolnogo Iskusstwa, The
Russian Academy of Theatre Arts). Grotowski was allowed a two-month leave from GITIS to
a sanatorium in Turkmenistan. There he is described as having been “homo politicus,” consuming
newspaper reports of the XXth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of the
amnesty granted 40,000 Armia Krajowa (AK; Home Army) soldiers who were convicted in fake
trials, and Poland’s XIXth Session of the Council of Culture and Art, where Jan Kott openly
criticized the ideology and art of 1949 to 1955 as a “mythologization of reality” (Degler 2000;
trans. Adela Karznia). The de-Stalinization of the Eastern Bloc was precipitated in February by
Nikita Khrushchev’s speech to the XXth Congress delineating Stalin’s crimes against the Party
and the people. Khrushchev’s ensuing rise to power sparked riots in Poland, which were quelled
by a Polish, not Soviet, military, resulting in Gomułka’s resurgence to power. In 1956, due to
Khrushchev’s weakening grasp on Poland, Gomułka, a nationalist, emerged from house arrest,
which had been precipitated by his 1949 refusal to follow “Russian signposts” on what he called
the “Polish Road to Socialism,” that is to say Communism with Polish characteristics (Davies
[1982] 2005:411, 440). In 1949 Gomułka was denounced by his own associates and removed
Key to Acronyms
(Polish / English)
AK Armia Krajowa / Home Army (1942–1945)
GITIS A.W. Łunczarski Gosudarstwiennyj Insititut Tieatrolnogo Iskusstwa /
Russian Academy of Theatre Arts
IPN Instytut Pamiȩci Narodowej / Institute of National Remembrance
KW Komitet Wojewódzki / Regional Committee of the PZPR
MKiS Ministerstwo Kultury i Sztuki / Ministry of Culture and Art
NKVD Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del / People’s Commissariat for Internal
Affairs, the Soviet Union’s leading secret police organization, which
eventually became the KGB (Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty, or
Committee for State Security)
POP Podstawowa Organizacja Partyjna / Basic Party Cell
PPR Polska Partia Robotnicza / Polish Workers Party (1942–1948)
PPS Polska Partia Socjalistczyna / Polish Socialist Party (1892–1948)
PRL Polska Republika Ludowa / People’s Republic of Poland (1952–1990)
PZPR Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza / Polish United Party of Workers
(Ruling Party 1948–1990)
SB Służba Bezpieczeństwa / Secret Police under Polish Control (1956–1990)
UB Urza¸d Bezpieczeństwa / Secret Police under Soviet control (1945–1956)
WRN Wojewódzka Rada Narodowa / Regional State Council (Enforcer of KW’s
First Secretary)
Seth Baumrin
ZMS Zwia¸zek Młodzieży Socjalistycznej / Association of Socialist Youth

(1948–1957)
54
as General Secretary of Polska Partia Robotnicza (PPR; Polish Workers Party), which he had
led from 1942 to 1948 (Davies [1982] 2005:427–29). The PPR was forced by the pro-Soviet
general assembly to capitulate to the more Stalinist Polska Partia Socjalistczyna (PPS; Polish
Socialist Party [1892–1948]); thus in 1949 PPS devoured PPR to become PZPR, which was
controlled by Moscow. In 1956 Gomułka’s sudden return to power coincided with Khrushchev’s
aborted siege of Poland. Historian Norman Davies writes that in October 1956 Khrushchev’s
military backed down because “crack commando units of KBW [Korpus Bezpieczenstwa
Wewnetrznego, the Polish Internal Security Corps (1945–present)] blocked all the approaches
to Warsaw in full battle gear and in full public view” ([1982] 2005:439). However, confidential
sources claim Soviet troops never confronted Poland’s KBW, but rather the conflict became
moot when Gomułka and Khrushchev, each accompanied by his own party’s delegation but
neither by military, met personally on the Warsaw Airport tarmac. Either way—Khrushchev
avoided confrontation and Gomułka reemerged as First Secretary of PZPR to restructure
Poland along more nationalist, liberal lines. These circumstances gave Grotowski the opportu-
nity to play a double role as theatre artist and political activist after his return from his Moscow
studies with Zawadzki. Confidential sources claim that, upon graduation, Grotowski was
handpicked by the Kraków drama academy administration to complete his university theatre
studies in Moscow at GITIS, under Zawadski. Zawadski’s role is crucial to Grotowski’s con-
struction of this double role.
Zawadzki, “the grandson of a Polish aristocrat who had been deported to Siberia during
the Warsaw insurrection of 1863,” began his artistic career in 1922 as an actor under the
tutelage of Stanislavsky’s protégé, Evgeny Vakhtangov (Barba 1999:23). According to Jerzy
Jarocki, a classmate of Grotowski’s at GITIS, Zawadzki arrived in Moscow 18 months after
Stalin’s death. At that time Russians maliciously called GITIS “a political university with a
theatre deviation” (Jarocki 2000; trans. Adela Karznia). Zawadski was a powerful figure with
moderate independence because, like all artists, he had to take an examination in Marxism-
Leninism every two years. Jarocki remembers that during Zawadski’s examination in the
1950s he was asked, “ ‘[W]hat mistakes caused Bukharin’s expulsion from the Party?’ Silence.
Zawadski [ . . . ] answers with confidence, ‘I know this. What is the next question?’ ” Nobody
dared to question the reply. Zawadski passed without further questions (Jarocki 2000; trans.
Adela Karznia). Zawadzki possessed two chauffeured automobiles and a passport; he could
leave the USSR whenever he wished. In his luxury apartment Zawadzki had a statuette of
Feliks Dzierzyński, a Pole who fought in the October Revolution and, in December 1917,
founded Chrezvychayna Komissia (CEKA), the Soviet secret police, antecedent to Narodnyy
Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD; People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and the
Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty (KGB; Committee for State Security).3
Grotowski became Zawadski’s favorite student. “The master took him into his confidence”
(Jarocki 2000; trans. Adela Karznia). According to Kelera:
Zawadzki was important and respected. He survived Stalin’s 1930s terror because he knew
how to avoid danger. When Grotowski came to Moscow, Zawadzki treated him as a son.
But Grotowski told me Zawadzki was aware that, as an artist, he had lost his life, so he
3. In a 2007 interview, Ludwik Flaszen said:

Dzierżyński was a Pole—a revolutionary and a martyr; he was a prisoner of the Russians. There’s evidence that
Ketmanship in Opole
he saved Polish people. When they caught Polish counter-revolutionaries, they took them to Dzierżyński, and he
would start shouting: “You stupid Polish counter-revolutionary! I would kill you but I’ll just kick your ass, because
you’re not even worth being shot,” and later he explained to them how to escape. It’s a small positive aspect of a
terrible butcher. I don’t want to say he was a good person. The USSR was a world of murderers, but he was like
a Dostoyevsky character. The Grand Inquisitor—that was Dzierżyński’s position in Russia. But, he was a Polish
nobleman with romantic tendencies. (Flaszen 2007)
55
prepared Grotowski, not in terms of artistic skills, but life skills, to survive. He trained
him so well that, when Grotowski returned to Kraków, he came back to search for his own
path, as Zawadzki taught him. (Kelera 2008)
As Zawadski’s favorite student, Grotowski boasted of being among the first to see Meyerhold’s
purportedly secret writings prior to the previously unmentionable Russian director’s rehabilita-
tion. Grotowski feared persecution by GITIS administration for mentioning Meyerhold in a
lecture (date not given), and on Zawadski’s advice hid out for two months (Jarocki 2000; trans.
Adela Karznia).
Standard reading at GTIS in 1955/56 was Станіславський У Репетиція (Stanislavsky in
Rehearsal; 1946) by Vasily Osipovich Toporkov (Smeliansky 1997). Grotowski never completed
his coursework at GITIS. After his stay in a health sanatorium in Turkmenistan to treat his
kidney disease during the summer of 1956 (because a hot dry climate was then thought to cure
kidney disease), he did not return to Moscow. In October, carrying with him expertise in both
the approved and condemned versions of Russian theatre, Grotowski returned to a Soviet-
controlled homeland, whose new interests lay in its own, non-Russian national heritage. This
paradox is more than aesthetically significant; resignation to Russian domination and rebellion
against it are foundations for Poland’s complex national identity, which after 1956 formed the
basis of its modernity.
Once home in Kraków, Grotowski became active in theatre and Party politics. Zawadski
prepared him well: he quickly became impervious to the system’s stings. Alina Obidniak, then
Grotowski’s closest friend, remembers:
During his master’s defense [ . . . ] nobody from the commission asked questions. When he
came back to the Directing Faculty in Kraków after the unfinished studies in Moscow, the
professors went into a panic. His studies were shortened and diploma discreetly awarded.
(Obidniak 2008; trans. Amalia Wozna)
Something strengthened him in Moscow, but it remains a mystery why he was selected to go
there in the first place.
With regard to the deeper interplay between Grotowski’s unique Polish identity, political
skills, and theatre management, the Opole years from 1959 to 1964 are more important. In
Opole, Grotowski used his good standing in PZPR on behalf of his theatre. He successfully
deployed counter-activism against his adversaries, showing himself to be a sophisticated player,
carefully accumulating the cultural power that ultimately put him in as strong a position as
any Polish artist of the time. This is because of the decidedly Polish context and character of
his quest.
How fundamentally Polish Grotowski and his Opole work was can best be understood in
the context of Poland’s cultural and geopolitical history from 1795 through 1956, especially
the November Uprising (1830–1831), which inspired the Romantic poets Adam Mickiewicz
(1798–1855), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849), and Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859); the works of
Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907) during Młoda Polska (the Young Poland literary movement)
prior to WWI; Nazi and Soviet occupation during and after WWII; and Gomułka’s regime
(1956–1970). Each war and postwar period impacted the Polish national character. Though
Grotowski is important internationally as a theatre reformer, the relationship between
Poland’s literary culture and the Poles’ struggle for national identity serve as the context for
his local identity.
Grotowski’s role in the growth of Polish theatre and culture in the late 20th century is
too grand a topic to address fully here. But if one explores his membership in PZPR and
Seth Baumrin
relationship with the SB, some surprises await those who see Grotowski as a strictly apolitical
theatre reformer who magically liberated his profession from the stagnation renounced by
56
Antonin Artaud and E. Gordon Craig, even while surrounded by Iron Curtain totalitarian
controllers. People who knew him well, such as his brother Kazimierz and his friend, the
American critic Margaret Croyden, say Grotowski was pursuing something beyond theatrical
reform. Kazimierz Grotowski described his brother’s search for God as his most ardent modus
vivendi (2008), and Croyden likened Grotowski’s work to the Armenian-Russian mystic Georgij
Ivanovitsj Gurdjieff’s work with his followers on self-realization during Russia’s revolutionary
period and while in exile in France (Croyden 2007). Yet Grotowski was also something more
than an international theatre reformer, master of “poor theatre,” and quasi-mystic. These views
of Grotowski obscure his local identity and expertise in exploiting Poland’s political system and
public administration.
Fortunately, Grotowski was schooled in two powerful geo-cultural forces: Soviet educa-
tion and Gomułka’s nationalism. Because Gomułka’s Polish Communism diverged from the
Khrushchev’s Soviet version, and the older generation of Polish power brokers was ensconced
in the status quo, young Poles were the idealistic pioneers on this new road to what was referred
to as “socialism with a human face” (Davies [1982] 2005:443). For the brief period of the Polish
October under Gomułka in 1956, Poles were allowed cultural and intellectual flexibility. The
younger peasant- and working-class generation of the late 1950s and 1960s was the first of
its kind in decades to receive a formal education. During the war the Nazis forbade Poles
anything higher than elementary education, but the Grotowskis were fortunate. Kazimierz
Grotowski says:
Polish people were not allowed to learn then; all middle and high schools were closed.
I am three and a half years older than Jerzy, so I started to learn material at home, which
covered the first and second year of gymnasium. In May 1944 I passed the examination;
it was an underground commission [in Polish, a komisja], in Sokołów, twenty kilometers
north of Rzeszów. Our village, Nienadówka, was only four kilometers from Sokołów. Just
after that examination the whole commission was arrested by Germans, and some of them
were executed. (2008)
And since Eastern Poland (Galicia) quickly came under Soviet control before the war ended,
Soviet occupiers murdered as many Polish intellectuals as possible. Criminology professor
Ryszard Jaworski explains:
In PZPR Poland, until 1956, there were many people without any education, almost
no one with a higher education. During the war the intellectuals were murdered by the
Germans and the Russians, so after the war there were not too many educated people left.
Most survivors were the uneducated poor. They worked or farmed before the war. After
the war they joined the Party because they saw it as an opportunity to achieve something.
They were strong supporters of the Communist system in Poland. Later, the number of
people with a higher education increased; the same was true in the SB, and these people
had a completely different attitude towards culture than the previous generation.
(Jaworski 2008)
Thus power struggles, pitting more educated, less erudite, post-1956 liberalizers against less
educated, more aloof, pre-Gomułka conservatives, were carried out between Party-sanctioned
youth activists and the state administration.
Grotowski’s Opole performances may appear outwardly apolitical, but they expressed
the cultural aspirations of a young generation of artist-intellectuals, in some ways anti-Soviet,
but nonetheless harmonious with the officially sanctioned Polish October patriotic spirit.
Ketmanship in Opole
This is apparent in the Theatre of 13 Rows’ work with the texts of Mickiewicz, Słowacki,
and Wyspiański. The Polish Romantic movement, born from the legacy of Polish uprisings
against Russia, in particular was etched deeply into Grotowski’s cultural and aesthetic makeup.
Mickiewicz’s Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve; 1829), a messianic Polish patriotic drama, as produced
57
by the Theatre of 13 Rows and in the
repertoire from 1960 to 1963, was
Grotowski’s first significant experimental
work.
By 1795 Poland had disappeared from
the world map. Ten years later Napoleon
defeated the Prussians and the Russians.
For strategic and economic purposes
Napoleon created the small satellite
country, the Duchy of Warsaw, which
lasted until 1815. After the European
coalition defeated Napoleon, the Congress
of Vienna met to divide Europe, resulting
in the fourth partition of Poland. Only
then were the Kingdom of Poland’s
borders set. It was similar but smaller than
the People’s Republic of Poland. It had its
own constitution, house of representa-
tives, and army. Poland’s king was Tsar
Alexander I; his brother Konstantin
commanded the small 30,000-man army.
But these troops were talented because
their officers had transferred from
Napoleon’s Polish units to Konstantin’s.
This army fought Polish patriots in the
November Uprising of 1830/31; then
the “Poles did not run in the forests
Figure 3. Zygmunt Molik (Gustaw) and Urszula Bielska in a but fought regular battles. Konstantin’s
midnight Mass scene from Dziady (1962). (Photograph by R. well-trained army fought a strong enemy.
Okoń ski, courtesy of the Grotowski Institute Archive) The uprisings were very different—
not always in the forest” (Kelera 2008).
In spite of their heroism, the patriots
were overcome by Konstantin’s Polish units, and subjugated by the Tsar. This led to the Great
Emigration, when vast numbers of Poles—educated people, artists, and intellectuals—left for
Western Europe and America. “Then Poland collapsed internally, and its neighbors took
advantage of the situation, eliminating it piece by piece from the European map” (Kelera 2008).
Heroism, defeat, and emigration after the November Uprising were the essential themes that
fueled Polish Romanticism. I asked Kelera whether these historical events contributed to
Grotowski’s obsession with looking for source texts among the works of the Romantic poets,
and also to his lifelong self-examination and search for place and identity as a Pole on a map
that kept changing. “Partly yes—it refers to any great artist born in this country, Grotowski is
not an exception. Goethe says: ‘Who wants to understand a poet must go to the poet’s land’ ”
(Kelera 2008). Grotowski’s earliest education was administered by his mother, who taught him
by rote to say: “What is Poland? It is my motherland. How do I know this? By my blood and
by my singing” (Grotowski in Gregory and Godmillow 1980).
Ludwik Flaszen gives similar insight:
There was this idea of the suffering nation—Poland: Christ of nations, a country
divided, like Christ on the cross. The Constant Prince is connected with it. The great
Seth Baumrin
master of mysticism, [Andrzej] Towiański, who thought he was a prophet, and some
considered a messiah, came from Lithuania to Paris on a small cart [in 1841]. He
58
enchanted Mickiewicz and Słowacki. His disciples had a strict moral code. They believed
in suffering, and that Polish salvation and independence depended on individual salvation
and independence. There was an aura of despair to it because Polish liberation was
hopeless. Mickiewicz was so close to Towiański that when we say “Towiański” we think
“Mickiewicz.” Mickiewicz also thought of himself as a messiah. It was nothing unusual.
Nineteenth-century Paris was full of sects that believed in reincarnation and work on
the self—a bit like Gurdjieff. Towiański’s followers were an authoritarian cult of the
master. Paris émigré intellectuals were a sect; some thought it was a failure of Polish
intellectuals. But Słowacki created wonderful mystic things, such as The Spirit King.
There was revolutionary ideology in this poem. Słowacki believed in a spirit of history.
The Spirit King would incarnate itself in different people. The spirit is transmitted
through the entire history of Poland, via violence, rape, and suffering—the spirit.
Słowacki called it an eternal revolutionary. It was a Biblical, messianic idea among
Polish poets. (Flaszen 2007)
Thus the Polish Romantic movement, with its problematic attitude towards Russia and
messianism, is a key to Polish modernism and mid-20th-century politics. Like Mickiewicz
and Słowacki, Grotowski and Flaszen shared a sense of respect and contempt for their
imposing Russian neighbor that made some Poles patriots and others prophets.
Theatre productions after 1956 that derived from texts by controversial 19th-century
Polish Romantic poet/prophets were political acts by virtue of the authors’ patriotic and
spiritual motivations. Like the earlier Romantics, many modern Polish theatre artists
searched for identity and the limits of their newfound, albeit illusory, freedom from
Russian control. Grotowski and Flaszen worked within this frame. Even their work that
focused on salvation and martyrdom came from this Polish context and was therefore
political. Both Grotowski and Flaszen, from early on in their professional artistic careers,
showed an interest in and respect for Polish literary traditions initiated by émigrés yearning
for their motherland.
Flaszen spent his adolescence from 1942 to 1946 (ages 12 to 16) in forced Soviet exile
along with his family, first in Siberia and then in Kazakhstan, because they were Jews. He was
repatriated in 1946 (Kolankiewicz 2007; I. Flaszen 2008c). Grotowski was born in 1933 near
Rzeszów, in southeast Poland (Galicia). His father, Marion, was the forest inspector on local
estates. But in 1939 the Grotowskis and all of Poland were pulled into the vortex of war and
foreign occupation. Kazimierz Grotowski remembers the boys were six and nine when the
Nazis invaded Poland. They moved east of Rzeszów to Przemyśl, a small city roughly 75
kilometers west of Lviv—all Polish territory. By then, Marion was serving in the AK in the
west. Later in 1939, Grotowski, his brother, and his mother Emilia were evacuated again by
freight train from east of Przemyśl (which had become unsafe) to Lviv. From the train they
saw Lviv’s oil refineries on fire. Nazis bombed the train and shot machine guns at the fleeing
passengers. “We were running through the fields” (K. Grotowski 2000:2; trans. Adela Karznia).
They were hiding in a forest outside Lviv, along with other passengers, when Marion and some
soldiers arrived via motorcycle to check on the family. This was the last time Grotowski saw his
father, who is believed to have served in the War Ministry of the Polish Government in London
and ultimately moved to Uruguay. Emilia Grotowski and her two sons waited out the war in
Nienadówka, a village between Rzeszów and Lviv.
In Nienadówka, the boys were homeschooled by their mother until secondary school,
which was administered by a secret commission because of the previously mentioned Nazi
Ketmanship in Opole
injunctions against Poles receiving advanced education. In the minds of many like Emilia
Grotowski, self-education was a necessary patriotic act. At home, both boys read Mickiewicz,
Słowacki, and Krasiński (the trinity of Polish Romantic poet/prophets), along with translations
of such authors as Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Defoe, Jack London, and most significantly for
59
Jerzy, Paul Brunton, whose A Search in Secret India (1934), which his mother, a Hinduist, made
him read, had a great impact (K. Grotowski 2000:2; trans. Adela Karznia). “The chapters on the
life of Ramana Maharishi had made a particular impression on him” (Barba 1999:54). Grotowski
also hid in an alcove above a pigsty to read the Gospels, despite a priest’s admonitions against
reading the actual texts (Gregory and Godmillow 1980). Educating Polish children was risky
business. Kazimierz Grotowski says:
In Nienadówka, AK carried out many resistance operations. In retaliation the Ger-
mans attempted a pacification of Nienadówka. They simply killed every tenth man.
In Rzeszów in 1944, after the Russians came, there was terror all the time, people
killing people. At secondary school one of our teachers was in AK. He was ordered
to kill a communist living in the village. Our teacher wasn’t very aggressive; he tried
to do it, but only wounded him. Afterwards, this communist was taken to the hospital
where professionals finished him off. Our teacher ran away. We never saw him again.
(K. Grotowski 2008)
Kazimierz tells another story from early in the Soviet occupation. In 1947, after the family
had returned to Rzeszów, a neighbor woman was thrown naked from her window by
Urza¸d Bezpieczeństwa (UB; Secret Police under Soviet control) officers and left dead
in the street. Incensed, the 14-year-old Jerzy Grotowski decided to start his own anti-
Communist underground:
He had no members, but first he had to get a stamp [emblem]. He went to a workshop
that produced stamps and asked the proprietor to make such a stamp. But clearly this
would be an illegal organization. Terrified, the stamp-maker went to the UB. Our mother
was immediately summoned and interrogated. She said, you know, “This boy is a stupid
boy.” I don’t know why, but nothing happened. (K. Grotowski 2008)
Even early in life, Grotowski operated as if within his own enclave, awaiting the day when he
could champion the Polish struggle for dignity, meanwhile growing increasingly impervious to
deadly Soviet forces.
In 1948, Grotowski came down with scarlet fever, which caused serious kidney damage.
The doctor told his mother that Jerzy would not live past 30 (K. Grotowski 2000:2; trans. Adela
Karznia). Because of his health, the family moved to Kraków in 1950. Kazimierz Grotowski had
already graduated in physics from Kraków’s Jagiellonian University. In 1951, Jerzy, then at high
school, passed his exams and got into the drama academy “with difficulties. [ . . . ] His appear-
ance, elocution, and expressiveness were judged as bad.” But he wrote an excellent composition.
However, he received no scholarship, so his brother’s salary as assistant professor helped pay the
tuition (K. Grotowski 2000:3; trans. Adela Karznia).
Grotowski graduated from the drama academy in 1955. His thesis was deemed excellent and
he was sent to study at GITIS in Moscow for one year (confidential; 2008). There, his kidney
disease flared up. In the USSR, a hot dry climate was believed to help kidney disease so, instead
of dialysis, Jerzy spent two months in an exclusive sanatorium in Turkmenistan. His return to
Kraków and university studies in 1956 coincided with Polish October.
Prior to 1956, living in fear, struggling for an education, and enduring other day-to-day
postwar conditions were common denominators for most Poles. Gomułka’s reform movement
led to a brief period of hope and, after returning from Moscow, Grotowski shared that opti-
mism. But soon after, his Opole experiences transformed hope into cynicism regarding any
symbiosis between Communism and his own deeply rooted Polish identity. Ewa Lubowiecka
(Theatre of 13 Rows actress from 1960 to 1962) recalls, “After 1956 we thought that changes
would be made. That began to affect the intellectual and creative environment. Those dreams
Seth Baumrin
were only a short-term pack of lies” (in Wójtowicz 2004:205; trans. Daniela Lewinska). Davies
holds that enthusiasm for Gomułka’s reforms faded by 1961 because of resurgent censorship,
60
inefficient economic policies, and “conflicting values ranging from Polish patriotism to the
obligation to adhere to Soviet domination” ([1982] 2005:467, 470). Some say Polish October
ended in November 1956.
In Soviet-controlled Communist-occupied Poland, Grotowski’s theatre work required
diplomacy, trickery, and courage. Kelera calls these strengths “ketmanship,”4 a term borrowed
from Czesław Miłosz’s book, Zniewolony umysł (The Captive Mind; 1951). Kelera defines
ketmanship as the ability of artists and scientists to deceive the authorities (2008). Miłosz
describes ketmanship as the art of “acting in daily life” in Muslim medieval society to assure
political and professional survival ([1951] 1981:55).
The people of Mussulman East believe that, “He who is in possession of truth must not
expose his person, his relatives, or his reputation to the blindness, the folly, the perversity
of those who it has pleased God to place and maintain in error.” One must therefore keep
silent about one’s true convictions if possible. (57)
Grotowski’s ketmanship explains his aura of secrecy, closed-door policy in rehearsal, limitations
on audience numbers, and the difficulty scholars now have uncovering his modus operandi.
Although Grotowski’s political skills were already apparent during his early years as an
activist, his ketmanship was refined in Opole while, from 1959 to 1964, he focused on the
Theatre of 13 Rows’ survival. His ability to remain active in Opole until his subsequent
removal—or well-orchestrated escape—to Wrocław in 1965 demonstrates his political savvy
in relation to PZPR authorities, non-Party organizations, the so-called secret police (SB), and
the Milicja Obywatelska (MO; the Citizen’s Militia), PZPR’s official police force (1944–1990).
I say “so-called” because the term “secret” is misleading. SB officers and informers were easily
identified. As a rule, each organization was assigned one SB officer as a caretaker (Degler 2006).
Often informers served the SB by working as administrators: in such a weak economy people
took whatever the employment office was offering and there were many jobs within PZPR
apparatus (Piech 2008). SB agents usually revealed themselves to organization members or were
quickly exposed. Polish urban legend holds that, in every group, one in three was an SB agent
(Raczak 2008).
Since the PZPR was empowered by the Soviet authorities, and Khrushchev gave Gomułka’s
government only limited autonomy, PZPR and local agencies overlapped, sharing constituencies
and enforcing conflicting imperatives ranging from Soviet submission to Polish nationalism.
The ideologies of both camps were within striking distance of local culture. In Gomułka’s
Poland, cultural institutions were essential to international propaganda and local indoctrination.
By fostering and nurturing youth culture, Gomułka tried to build national unity while adhering
to Soviet guidelines. On the international stage, Poland appeared to follow Khrushchev’s lead,
yet within the nation, Gomułka was comparatively open. To accomplish its contradictory
program of limited freedom, the PZPR used artists and intellectuals to display Poland’s new
openness, while simultaneously adhering to Soviet ideology. PZPR enforced cultural directives
via SB officers integrated throughout the state, regional, and municipal chains of command.
The main reason for the SB’s formation was that each “environment” of social and economic
life had its own “caretaker,” an SB officer usually at the rank of major, who took care of a factory
for example. The director of the factory was aware of the situation because the SB officer would
officially explain his duties. Only the director and the PZPR secretary knew (Degler 2006).
Janusz Degler, Wrocław University professor of cultural studies and Grotowski Institute board
member, clarifies:
Ketmanship in Opole
4. “Ketman,” from the Arabic kitman, means self-protective concealment—paying lip service to the powerful while
covertly opposed to them (see Gobineau 1865).
61
Figure 4. Misterium Buffo (1960). From left: Tadeusz Bartkowiak, Antoni Jahołkowski, Andrzej Bielski,
Zygmunt Molik. (Photograph by Leonard Olejnik, courtesy of the Archive of Agnieszka Wójtowicz)
BAUMRIN: Was the caretaker undercover?

DEGLER: He would come and demand information.
BAUMRIN: In Grotowski’s theatre was there . . . ?
DEGLER: No, the major was never undercover to the director, who knew perfectly
well, for example, the identity of let us say “Major Kowalski.” The director even had his
phone number. The company, however, didn’t have to know. Industrial plants functioned
like that, since they were state-owned. The SB had control over everything. Of course,
such an officer could be in charge of five factories in the same industry. The situation,
however, was different in different environments. The Party didn’t make much of an
effort to have a special officer for, let’s say, Grotowski’s theatre.5 We’re talking about the
theatrical environment in general. Theatres were controlled. The Party was trying to
penetrate the milieu, of course. There were cases when an SB officer would come to a
director, identify himself as an SB officer and say: “You’re going abroad and these are the
rules. You are not allowed to bring back any books published abroad; you cannot contact
the Radio Free Europe.” He might also say that this or that actor would not get a passport
because he was untrustworthy. All the passports were kept by the SB, which had a special
passport department. Whenever SB had any suspicions, they did not issue a passport.
Upon return, you were required to return it immediately; it was forbidden to keep
passports at home. (Degler 2006)
Seth Baumrin
5. Degler may be being disingenuous here, because as shall be seen, there was at least one informer under SB supervi-
sion in the Theatre of the 13 Rows.
62
Sometimes an SB adminis-
trator might supervise two
disparate environments.
Degler tells of when he
was vice rector of the
Wrocław Branch of the
Ludwik Solski State Drama
School, and also breeding
pedigreed dogs. The SB
caretaker of his school
also turned out to be the
administrator of the dog
breeders association. Even
small hobbyists’ groups
were not left unsupervised.
Degler’s friend, a stamp
collector, discovered that
the vice-president of
his philatelic associa-
tion was an SB officer
(Degler 2006).
If dog breeders and
stamp collectors were
under surveillance, it stands
to reason the Theatre of Figure 5. Theatre of 13 Rows actors against the background of the scenery for
13 Rows was monitored. It Misterium Buffo (1960). Top row: Jerzy Grotowski, Jerzy Filinger, Ludwik
also becomes increasingly Flaszen; middle: Tadeusz Bartkowiak, Jadwiga Denczenko, Rena Mirecka, Antoni
clear that SB officers were Jahołkowski, Adam Kurczyna; bottom: Wincenty Maszkowski, Andrzej Bielski.
not so secret. Degler tells (Photograph by L. Olejnik, courtesy of M. Olejnik-Filipowicz’s Archive)
of his major’s weakness for
drinking. At the grand finale of the Festival of Contemporary Plays in Wrocław, the major
consumed drink after drink for over an hour. When the jury was about to announce its verdict,
everyone formed a circle. Suddenly Degler’s major started vomiting. Among the guests were two
undercover SB officers. All present saw them carry out their vomiting major, thereby exposing
themselves and blowing their cover. The major was replaced immediately (Degler 2006).
All Poles worked at the Party’s pleasure, including Grotowski. Low-level cultural institutions
were answerable to four different mid-level agencies: regional government, local government,
regional censors, and the SB. If the Theatre of 13 Rows could not get approval at this level, they
could appeal via the SB or individual connections in regional government to higher levels such
as the Ministry of the Interior, the Central Committee, or the Office of Censorship who, on the
Theatre’s behalf, could overrule mid-level decisions. Additionally, Grotowski curried favor with
high officials to whom he could not officially make a direct appeal. The overall situation was
complex, even bizarre. One agency could be circumvented and two or more parallel agencies
could be played against each other. Since each agency received power from a higher authority,
approval at an upper level could overrule disapproval at a lower. At mid- and upper levels there
was less local oversight but greater concern for maintaining power granted by the highest
powers. Thus mid-level agencies supervising cultural organizations could ill afford enemies at
Ketmanship in Opole
the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Central Committee. Such is the context for Grotowski’s
victories and defeats in Opole.
Eugenio Barba, Grotowski’s assistant in Opole from 1961 to 1963, described Poland as “a
prison. [ . . . ] The secret police were omnipresent, and the friendliness of a girl could conceal the
interest of an informer” (1999:25). Barba correctly distinguishes between secret police and
63
informers. But the term “secret police” remains unclear. Popular understanding of Soviet-era
Polish espionage may be based more on cinema than fact. Andrzej Wajda’s 1958 film Popiół i
diament (Ashes and Diamonds) depicts the conflict immediately after Soviet occupation between
the patriotic assassins of the AK and Soviet controlled UB officers—a much bloodier battle than
Grotowski’s struggle to save his theatre. For artists like Grotowski, assassination, physical intim-
idation, or imprisonment were out of the question. The censors who passed on artistic work
could be duped into approving almost anything. So why was Barba concerned with the secret
police? What was the threat?
The threat is re-affirmed in the 1989 memoirs of Bohdan Korzeniewski, the influential
professor of directing at Warsaw School of Drama. “They wanted to get rid of Grotowski; I am
not sure anymore whether it was in general or from Opole only” (Korzeniewski and Szejnert
1992:201; trans. Amalia Wozna). Taken together, Barba’s and Korzeniewski’s statements imply
that Grotowski waged a deadly battle with the authorities. Barba even reports that Grotowski
approached him for poison in case he was ever arrested and subject to physical violence, but this
was later, during Mieczysław Moczar’s 1968 anti-Zionist campaign (1999:171, 171n). During the
Opole period there was no actual physical threat—the situation was political and professional.
Barba advocated for Grotowski, disseminating his reputation internationally via publications
and word of mouth. Korzeniewski’s role has direct bearing on the “extraordinary feverish work”
of that period. Korzeniewski remembers:
[Grotowski] rang the editorial team of Pamiȩtnik Teatralny who already appreciated him.6
[ . . . ] He said a ministerial commission was coming to Opole, and he was expecting the
worst. [ . . . ] So I took the car with [Zbigniew] Raszewski, [Jerzy] Timoszewicz, and
[Andrzej] Wysiński, and we came in time for this trial. Konstanty Puzyna also came.
[ . . . ] The ministerial commission was presided over by the Director of the Depart-
ment of Theatre of the Ministry of Culture, Jerzy Jasieński. Grotowski defended him-
self awkwardly. I asked for a break and looked for the Regional Party representative.
I told him that in this room very important things were going on; that Opole, under the
Germans, was absolutely unimportant, a place without its own culture. And now Opole
had its own internationally known theatre. The loss of this theatre, a Polish influence,
visible to the world, would be a great political mistake. This bought some time for
Grotowski, and later the very judicious and independent mayor of Wrocław [Professor
Bolesław Iwaszkiewicz] invited him with the whole group. (Korzeniewski and Szejnert
1992:201–02; trans. Amalia Wozna)
Tomasz Korzeniewski, Bohdan’s son, spoke of his father and Grotowski’s strategy sessions:
For a couple of months Grotowski was almost a daily guest in our house. [ . . . ] Grotowski
was in danger of the dissolution of his theatre, so they did not discuss artistic matters.
They talked about how to prevent the closing of the Theatre in Opole, and later how to
defend it against attacks in Wrocław. They tried somehow to mobilize opinion—in the
theatre community rather than in the public because there was no public opinion in
Poland in those days. They wondered who to write to—to which secretary of the Party
or official in the Ministry of Culture and Art responsible for the theatres. My father
offered to write official letters in defense of the Theatre of 13 Rows since Grotowski
was absolutely helpless. He sat there so poor and completely terrified that they would
close his theatre and destroy what he had been doing for so many years. Grotowski,
6. Pamiȩtnik Teatralny (Theatre Memoirs), a quarterly devoted to theatre history and criticism, has been Poland’s
leading theatre journal since 1945. The journal was founded in the first postwar years in an effort to reactivate
Seth Baumrin
the work of Sceny Polskiej (Scenes of Poland), a quarterly edited by Timon Terleckiego before the War. Pamiȩtnik
Teatralny’s first editors were Bohdan Korzeniewski (1945), Leon Schiller (1946), and Mieczysław Rulikowski
(1948). From 1993 to present, the editor-in-chief has been Edward Krasinski.
64
by the way, behaved like most people who visited my father. He listened rather than
proposed. [ . . . ] The most important thing was to find an influential secretary of PZPR
who dealt with culture and make him look with a favorable eye on Grotowski’s theatre.
[ . . . ] So my father wrote the official letters. (in Kuligowska-Korzeniewska 2001:305–06;
trans. Amalia Wozna)
Korzeniewski’s suggestion that PZPR wanted to get rid of Grotowski “in general” is an over-
statement suggesting something more nefarious than is now remembered. According to Irena
Flaszen (Ludwik’s wife):
They could close the theatre, it’s practically the only thing they could do. The company
members would have problems finding new jobs, that’s true. But arrests, violence, things
like that—no, not at all. We were closely watched; we were a small group so they called
us an order, a convent, but physical danger did not exist. (I. Flaszen 2006)
But, if the threat was so benign, then what must be answered is who exactly were the Polish
“secret police” and how did they work. If the definition of secret police is expanded beyond
the SB, Milicja, and paid informers to include a Party-controlled press and professoriate
who used their influence to construct and control culture, then Barba is right: Grotowski was
surrounded by secret police. Irena Flaszen explains the Party-controlled press’s relationship to
Grotowski’s theatre:
Let’s make it clear. The authorities from Warsaw did interfere during the Opole period
because they simply could not tolerate the existence of such a free and independent
phenomenon. Trybuna Ludu, at that time Poland’s main newspaper, had this flagship critic.
I will not mention his name [Jan Alfred Szczepański] since he is not worth remembering.
It is enough that he wrote what he wrote. He was so stupid and malleable that, to main-
tain his status, he ridiculed the performances and fought everything new; nevertheless he
had to be invited, because after all it was about getting a review in the leading newspaper
in Poland. (I. Flaszen 2006)
Trybuna Ludu was the PZPR Central Committee-controlled newspaper and as such had the
power to “sentence” people (confidential; 2008). But whether they troubled him is another issue.
In fact, Grotowski transformed some in both the Party and the press into allies and disarmed
others. Irena Flaszen clarifies:
The Party was everywhere and everything. There were different ministers, some more
open-minded, some less. During the Wrocław period there was a minister, Józef Tejchma,
who was Grotowski’s brother-in-arms from Kraków and ZMS. Later they replaced him
because he was too liberal, so if he did something useful it was only for a short time.
The local officials had no real power; Opole’s mayor, Karol Musioł, was like a benevolent
father of the city. Musioł came to the Laboratory Theatre’s 25th anniversary to say he
hadn’t wanted the Theatre to transfer to Wrocław, and that he wrote this down and
buried it in a jar so in the future somebody could find it and know he did all he could to
keep the Theatre in Opole. (I. Flaszen 2008b)
Do Barba and Korzeniewski express Grotowski’s genuine fear or merely their own? Ultimately
what emerges is Grotowski’s expertise in political ketmanship. Even when he appeared weak
and ineffectual, he won the game. Most assuredly, Grotowski’s Kraków and Opole connections
made his move to Wrocław both the nadir and the apex of a situation born out of his ability to
exploit Poland’s complex administrative network. Leaving Kraków to set up in Opole, resisting
Ketmanship in Opole
censure by local and national authorities, and getting Grotowski’s theatre invited to Wrocław
required allies.
One such ally was Edward Pochroń, manager of Dom Zwiazków Twórczych (House of
Creativity) in Opole. According to Pochroń, the conflict between the Ławski theatre family
65
(the previous inhabitants of the Theatre of 13 Rows) and the Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej (Theatre
of the Opole Region) over primacy of place in Opole induced Pochroń to seek out his friend,
Flaszen, then a powerful and well-known critic in Kraków (Pochroń in Wójtowicz 2004:183;
trans. Daniela Lewinska).
The charge leveled at Eugeniusz Ławski by Opole’s Regional Financial Department, whose
members were friendly with Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej, was that Ławski was operating the Theatre
of 13 Rows at a deficit, under the umbrella of Klub Zwia¸zków Twórczych, the local literary club.
The literary club had two adjacent buildings in Opole’s rynek (the center of the old city), one
housing the theatre and the other the club. Without proper bookkeeping, Ławski sank the
Theatre of 13 Rows into insolvency, auctioned its material goods, and used his own money to
pay the bills. Subsequently, because Pochroń didn’t want the Theatre of 13 Rows to fold, he
searched for a new theatre company in Kraków. Pochroń remembers:
In the spring of 1959, the manager of Lalka Teatr Groteska in Kraków, Józef Hałas [ . . . ]
gave me the idea to bring Grotowski to Opole. [ . . . ] I did not know Grotowski; however
[ . . . ] I knew Ludwik Flaszen. Both of us attended the Koło Naukowe Polonistów [Polish
Language Club]. [ . . . ] It was easy. First I had to find Flaszen, and then from Flaszen to
Grotowski. In Kraków, during the meeting, we talked briefly about their moving to
Opole. (in Wójtowicz 2004:183; trans. Daniela Lewinska)
Upon his arrival in Opole, Grotowski took over the theatre’s management from Ławski, and
immediately thereafter the new theatre company was attacked harshly in local newspapers,
probably because of Grotowski’s reputation as a professional from Kraków and Teatr Ziemi
Opolskiej’s control of the local press.
The power of the local press denotes their role in the ascent of regionally appointed offi-
cials (a Gomułka innovation after Soviet withdrawal from the national administration). Local
officials exploited the press to their own advantage by appealing to the Party. If an official was
offended by Grotowski’s work, the offended official could easily persuade a journalist to write
that Grotowski offended workers. Davies explains: “Indirect Party control by supervision from
above was supplemented by direct control from within, through disciplined cells of Party
activists operating in every government ministry and enterprise” ([1982] 2005:458). But
authorities could be circumvented. For example, when Łucja Smandzik, president of Wydział
Kultury Wojewódzkiej Rady Narodowej (Department of Culture of the Regional Council)
was approached by Pochroń about Grotowski’s installation as director of the Theatre of 13
Rows, Smandzik expressed doubt that Najwyższa Izba Kontroli (Supreme Chamber of Con-
trol) would approve Pochroń’s proposal. So Pochroń went around her department and asked
Stanisław Pogan of Komitet Wojewódzki (KW; Regional Committee) responsible to the
Central Committee of the PZPR to approve Grotowski, and Pogan gave the go-ahead
(Pochroń in Wójtowicz 2004:183; trans. Daniela Lewinska). This demonstrates how two
local agencies were used so that the power of one overrode the other.
Grotowski had commanded enough respect in Kraków in 1956 that in 1959, at 26, he was
not to be refused in Opole. His Kraków cache endowed him with the confidence to stand up to
Opole’s KW and tell them not to expect big box office receipts. Grotowski was also supported
by Józef Buziński, chairman of Wojewódzka Rada Narodowa (WRN; Regional State Council),
enforcer of the decisions of the KW. So, according to Pochroń, the decision to bring Grotowski
to Opole was made at the PZPR Central Committee’s executive level rather than by the regional
government; it trickled down to Grotowski from Pogan to Buziński and went around Smandzik
via Pochroń.
Another influential member of the old apparatus was Buziński’s WRN colleague Paweł
Seth Baumrin
Wojas, a survivor of the prewar purges of Komunistyczna Partia Polski (Communist Party of
Poland [1926–1938]) and the Gwardia Ludowa (People’s Guard [1943–1944]), and a patriotic
66
hero who appreciated Grotowski’s and Flaszen’s experimentation with Polish Romantic poets.
Wojas supported the rehabilitation of Polish Romantic authors who were quickly gaining an
avid following among patriots and the younger generation, in modern emulation of two earlier
generations of Polish artists and intellectuals.
This phenomenon of provocative modernism would have continued in Opole, but the
WRN administration changed. Stanisław Kosicki had replaced Buziński as WRN chief by
mid-1962, and by year’s end Grotowski had come under serious attack. Kosicki was pressured
by Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej, the principal theatre company in Opole, whose director wanted
Grotowski dismissed. Although Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej had a higher status as a larger, more
entrenched theatre company, the Theatre of 13 Rows was its competition. Poland’s principal
press published significantly more about the Theatre of 13 Rows than Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej.
The jealousy of the theatre’s leadership was amplified because, early in 1962, Musioł’s municipal
government wanted to make Grotowski Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej’s artistic director (Wójtowicz
2008a). Suddenly the tone of the local press changed and the critics stopped praising Grotowski
and began to condemn him.
At first only the Trybuna Opolska critic, Romana Konieczna, consistently wrote positively
about Grotowski. Konieczna began writing about him after the initial attacks by Władysław
Lubecki in 1959. Lubecki didn’t appreciate Grotowski’s productions and was removed from
Trybuna, and his removal is attributed to Grotowski’s early influence (Wójtowicz 2008a).
However, in 1962, Trybuna critic Ciotka Agnieszka (pen name for Zofia Sentowa, a poet)
attacked Grotowski, preaching the injustice of supporting Grotowski’s theatre when there
was no money to feed the poor. Of course members of the Theatre of 13 Rows, affectionately
known as trzynastorzȩdowcy (thirteenrowers), lived in poverty. Their letters to Smandzik’s State
Department of Culture of the Regional Council complain of poor living conditions. Theatre
of 13 Rows founding member Rena Mirecka described the Hotel Milicyjcy (Police Hotel),
where the group was quartered because Pochroń was thwarted in his effort to find them
adequate housing, as an unhygienic dormitory with bunk beds, six people to a room, and rats
scampering across the floor (Mirecka in Wójtowicz 2004:173–81; trans. Daniela Lewinska;
Mirecka 2008).
In 1962 Grotowski insulated himself from Agnieszka’s and other attacks by insisting that
thirteenrowers join the PZPR. Grotowski created a Podstawowa Organizacja Partyjna, or
Basic Party Cell (POP), within the Lab Theatre. The POP gave Grotowski the advantage that,
when confronted by any authority wanting to close the Theatre, he could say, “OK, close the
Theatre, but how do you propose to close a Communist Party cell?” (Wójtowicz 2006; Gurawski
2008; I. Flaszen 2008a). Because Party cell members were required to inform on other cell
mem-bers and because Grotowski forbade discussion of his work outside the Theatre, the
POP effectively protected the group from both inside and outside. This bipolar relationship
between artistic circles and the PZPR apparatus is at the core of so-called secret police
involvement in theatre throughout Communist Poland (confidential, 2008; Wojciak and
Madon-Mitzner 2008).
Although aspects of Pochroń’s report are questionable, each version of the Opole story
demonstrates Grotowski’s connections to the higher powers and his mastery of the maddening
political maze. Irena Flaszen remembers the period differently:
Somebody else, not Pochroń, contacted Ludwik. Pochroń was an important person in
Opole, so immediately after Flaszen and Grotowski got there, Pochroń appeared, but he
did not invite them personally. I do not remember who did, but his name starts with B
Ketmanship in Opole
[Józef Buziński]. Pochroń certainly was connected to them in Opole, but he did not come
to Kraków and take Flaszen and Grotowski to Opole. I remember the idea that the big
cities would take care of smaller cities’ cultural events. Since Opole was connected to
Kraków, they suggested somebody from Kraków take over the theatre. The offer was
67
made to Flaszen, and he invited Grotowski; it was all official. Flaszen got the key to the
Theatre and gave it to Grotowski. In Kraków, Ludwik saw a performance by Grotowski.
About a dozen people came to see it since Grotowski was not famous yet. But Ludwik
was a renowned critic; he was the literary director of all theatres in Kraków. Flaszen saw
Grotowski’s potential and wanted to collaborate with him. When Flaszen received the
offer to take over the management of the Theatre of 13 Rows, he did not want to become
managing director himself because he would have to stop writing about theatre. So he
suggested Grotowski become the theatre’s director, and Flaszen would be the literary
director. (I. Flaszen 2008b)
Pochroń’s version of the story differs markedly from Irena Flaszen’s. Further, his assertion that
Grotowski was an important Polish October figure is at odds with Irena Flaszen’s statement
that he was not yet famous and Kumiega’s implication that he played a minor role in politics
(Kumiega 1985:6). But many others assert that his Kraków notoriety made him a powerful
figure. Professor Ireneusz Guszpit, a paratheatre participant during the 1970s, is among those
who remember Grotowski’s political savvy:
It’s undisputable that Grotowski’s origin was political; he was an important figure in the
changes going on in 1956. I think some of these player’s tactics remained strongly
embedded in Grotowski. His friends from the political period in Kraków supported him
later. And he used their help. One of the important politicians in Warsaw was a great
friend of Grotowski. (Guszpit 2007)
Guszpit is referring to Lucjan Motyka, a PZPR secretary in Kraków, later Minister of Culture
in Warsaw in 1965. Barba reports:
[Motyka knew] Grotowski many years before when the latter had organized political
protests among students and workers, between ’56 and ’57. Grotowski, who had met
Motyka on a train, told me how he had been invited into his compartment where Motyka
had shown him production figures that were declining due to the strikes. “Is this what you
want?” he had asked Grotowski, and added “and the arrival of Russian tanks?” Once
elected, Motyka lifted the ban on travel and himself wrote on the Teatr-Laboratorium’s
file: “can travel abroad.” (Barba 1999:136n)
Guszpit claims Grotowski’s “Theatre was better-organized than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”
(2007). Guszpit views Grotowski as a skillful political player whose connections functioned as
a protective shield, virtually guaranteeing him a free hand by the time he moved from Opole
to Wrocław.
In spite of Polish October, censorship played an important role in Communist Poland.
But Grotowski was adept at dodging this bullet. Trouble with censors was virtually a non-issue.
The Theatre of 13 Rows either worked around them or above their heads; Flaszen was quite
influential in literary circles. Pochroń says, “There were some claims [of indecency], but the
powers took into consideration that this group was from Kraków” (in Wójtowicz 2004:186;
trans. Daniela Lewinska).
It is strange that the censors’ political sensitivity was only selectively acute. Whereas, they
forced groups like Theatre of the Eighth Day to change their work significantly (often forbid-
ding performances), Grotowski’s work generally survived. Yet Akropolis (1962) metaphorically
portrayed Poland as Auschwitz, and Kordian (1962) suggested that all Poland was a mental
hospital, depicting negative traits of Polish national character such as “indecisiveness, skepti-
cism, and pessimism” (Kumiega 1985:55). Perhaps these works should have put Grotowski’s
patriotism under greater scrutiny. Why they had the opposite effect remains a salient question,
Seth Baumrin
although Grotowski did have a friend in Minister of Art and Culture Józef Tejchma. On 22 July
1961 Grotowski received an award from Tejchma “for the social and propagation achievements
68
of the Theatre.” However, in 1963, Tejchma was replaced by Party plenum member Tadeusz
Galiński (Wójtowicz 2004:160–65; trans. Amalia Wozna).
Galiński took exception to Kordian in a speech to the Central Committee in Warsaw. As
a follow up, he convened a commission in Opole to assess Grotowski; both Galiński and
Grotowski attended the meeting. As Pochroń remembers it, Grotowski “asked Galiński:
‘Was the comrade at the performance?’ Galiński said, ‘no; someone paraphrased it for me.’
Soon the Regional Department of Culture dropped charges” (in Wójtowicz 2004:186; trans.
Amalia Wozna). While some PZPR authorities supported Grotowski, after 1962 many wanted
him censured. Galiński’s momentary powerlessness in the face of Grotowski’s resistance set a
precedent for ensuing confrontations with the Party. How Grotowski exploited SB informers to
learn his adversaries’ plans and exploited Party favorites to thwart those plans were important
aspects of his strategy to defend his theatre.
Despite Irena Flaszen’s and Degler’s rejection of Barba’s and Korzeniewski’s assertion that
Grotowski was always on SB radar, Kazimierz Grotowski confirms the latter assessment. “It is
clear that Jerzy was followed all the time in Poland and abroad. I learned from him—but I don’t
wish to give any names—one or two people in his team were SB people, and when he went
abroad they followed him” (2008).
Regarding Jerzy Grotowski’s contacts with SB, because of issues of confidentiality, one
example will have to suffice: the Urszula Bielska episode.
Bielska was a Milicja officer in training who became both an SB informer and unofficial
advocate for the Theatre of 13 Rows. Bielska was the sister of the prominent Catholic cleric
Michał Czajkowski, who was also an SB officer (Wójtowicz 2008b). She married an SB officer
who transferred from Zabrze to Opole to work alongside the Milicja in the Department of
Property and Economic Crime. She followed him, but their marriage failed. Alone at first, she
was housed in the Hotel Milicyjcy where Grotowski’s team lived. There Bielska took up with
another resident, Bogdan Loebl, a poet whose aspiration to write a detective novel compelled
him to enlist in the SB’s Political Department. He suggested Bielska join the Milicja and work
in his unit. She remembers: “It was a strange period. After 1956, when the revival started, 80
percent of the old UB were fired. So they hired young, educated people, like a poet; so they
could also hire me” (Bielska 2007).
Loebl, a friend of the actor Antoni (Antek) Jahołkowski from university days in Kraków,
was fascinated by the Theatre of 13 Rows. Before joining Grotowski’s theatre, Jahołkowski
worked on Paweł Komorowski’s film Ściana czarownic (premiered 1967), shot in Zapokane.
While there, he purchased some photos of nude women. Irena Flaszen remembers: “It was
not real pornography; more like postcards from the ’20s. It had nothing to do with porno
graphy” (I. Flaszen 2008b). Jahołkowski had the photos in the room he rented with another
Theatre of 13 Rows actor, Andrzej Bielski, Bielska’s future husband. Jahołkowski entertained
many friends, and, according to Bielska, boasted of his pictures. As she tells it, somebody stole
the photos, got drunk at a restaurant, got into trouble, and the Milicja arrested him with the
photos. He told them the photos were Jahołkowski’s. Jahołkowski was accused of disseminating
pornography and a case was brought against him. Bielska remembers:
It was a serious crime. You could get 12 years for that. The Theatre of 13 Rows called
Bogdan [Loebl], who called me because I knew a lot of people through my husband.
I asked the Milicja commandant to help Jahołkowski. He contacted his SB boss to ask
if they could resolve the case. The boss asked who was asking; my friend said it was me.
Ketmanship in Opole
The boss asked me why I wanted to help. I told him these were my friends from
Grotowski, and he said: “Oh, if this is Grotowski it’s no problem.” Why? “Because
he is our man; he shares our views, he’s on our side; he studied in Moscow.” And also,
in Kraków, Grotowski was in ZMS, so he always accepted the political situation. In
69
addition, Grotowski was interested in Stanislavsky and the Russian theatre. So the
Party treated him like one of their own. The SB promised the Milicja comman-
dant a promotion, and closed the case. Antek invited me out to say thank you. The
whole Theatre of 13 Rows was there. Grotowski approached me, shook my hand
for three minutes, and said that the Polish People’s Republic would not forget it.
(Bielska 2007)
After this incident, Grotowski was a frequent dinner guest at Bielska’s flat. “Of course he was
very interested in what was going on inside the SB. I told him stories. He was fascinated and said
I had to work for him” (2007). The SB reassigned her from political to artistic work. Ultimately
Bielska played an active role in the Theatre of 13 Rows. Even though from her supervisor’s
viewpoint she was there to watch Grotowski, he surely benefited from the arrangement. Her
administrative duties included procuring basic but scarce office supplies; supervising the
Theatre’s touring cabaret entertainments; negotiating with authorities for performance spaces,
transportation, and permission to tour within Poland.
It should be remembered that standard procedure was that the SB would appoint an offi-
cer to observe a particular organization and plant informers within the organization, but in
Bielska’s case Grotowski was able to select his own informer. Though she kept her eyes on him,
he used her to selectively transmit and receive information. Both were mindful of the arrange-
ment. With his hand-picked informer, Grotowski maintained a general secrecy regarding his
theatre administration.
Grotowski’s relationship with Bielska demonstrates his ability to turn a potential threat into
an ally and to exploit rather than be overwhelmed by the complex cultural and political land-
scape. Bielska describes her role in Grotowski’s theatre:
Grotowski [ . . . ] made people tell him everything. He knew how to elicit very personal
information from each person with whom he spoke. He provoked. He knew how to listen
and look. He did it wonderfully. Grotowski invited me to rehearsals, asking me to look
at some scene or part of a scene.7 He asked later, how I took it, what I understood. He
wanted the spectacle to be communicative and understandable to the average viewer.
(in Wójtowicz 2004:232; trans. Daniela Lewinska)
Grotowski rarely invited administrators to rehearsals. But he had a particular use for Bielska
—a kind of double agency. He sent the message, via his informer, to regional authorities that
he had local interests at heart. In exchange, Bielska was able to protect him from regional
authorities. He catered to Bielska’s ego, cementing her loyalty by putting her onstage. In
Mickiewicz’s Dziady, Grotowski decided the Dziewczyna character would come from the
audience. Zygmunt Molik was supposed to pick a young woman from the audience and
then place her on a grave. The woman would become the actor’s partner. The experiment
did not work, so Bielska usually played this part (Bielska in Wójtowicz 2004:232; trans.
Daniela Lewinska).
Bielska describes Grotowski as an enemy of marriage, who provoked arguments, turning
wives against husbands, friends against friends, and married women against single girls. “Right
before a premiere or an important spectacle he gathered the whole team and said, ‘You are a
national cadre. I do not allow any physical contact. Enough!’ ” (Bielska in Wójtowicz 2004:232;
trans. Daniela Lewinska). Bielska believes the Theatre survived its adversaries by creating the
POP, that Grotowski was sincerely committed to the PZPR, and that this commitment and
concomitant strict discipline were foundational to his managerial practice (Bielska 2007).
Seth Baumrin
7. Most probably Bielska only attended Dziady rehearsals.
70
Did Grotowski’s outward commitment to Communism express a desire to put a human face
on Gomułka’s Polish socialism or to perpetuate a façade to assure his theatre’s survival? Bielska
suggests the former, but others, such as Kazimierz Grotowski, insist on the latter:
When Gomułka came, we thought it would be completely different. And Jerzy,
belonging to ZMS, with obvious leftist orientations, tried to introduce democracy
into the organization. He even went to Gomułka. But, although the Gomułka regime
was never as oppressive as the previous regime, it was still oppressive. Jerzy learned
quickly that nothing could be done, that the system would always be oppressive.
He left his political activities completely and went to Opole to start a new life.
(K. Grotowski 2008)
However the Theatre’s participation in PZPR is viewed, it most assuredly was a response to
threats by KW’s WRN to liquidate the Theatre of 13 Rows beginning in 1962.
Initially, from 1959 to 1961, Grotowski was impervious to local intimidation. Bielska
remembers:
The so-called Head of the Culture Department at the regional level was a tram driver
from Warsaw. I came to him when [the Theatre] needed something—a permission or
money. He would take me to the window and show me a church tower, and say: “Urszula,
I am here, and Grotowski is on this tower.” Then I would say, “If I don’t get it done, I’ll
lose my job,” and he’d say, “Ok, my child, write down my decision here.” So I wrote it,
and he signed it. (Bielska 2007)
Bielska and Grotowski felt assured that their requests to the KW would meet no resistance
until, in 1962, Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej initiated the rebellion against Grotowski. Teatr Ziemi
Opolskiej didn’t want to close the Theatre of 13 Rows, they just wanted to get rid of Grotow-
ski, so they persuaded the KW to request a commission from Warsaw’s MKiS to investigate
Grotowski. According to Bielska, Grotowski heard about the requests through his contacts
and counteracted preemptively in 1962 by starting the POP. “The actors were not very happy,
but the theatre was the most important thing. Antek Jahołkowski was the First Secretary”
(Bielska 2007).
This demonstrates how the SB worked. Initially the SB rescued Jahołkowski from the
pornography charge. Now his role as First Secretary—was it punishment or reward?—
required him to attend all Party meetings related to theatre in Opole and to report all mal
feasance within the POP. Even if his Party membership was a façade, Grotowski insisted his
theatre function as a POP. All actors except Maja Komorowska complied. Because she was a
descendant of Polish nobility, her compliance was impossible: she would not be allowed to
join the Party. Oddly enough she was a cousin to Grotowski (Barba 1999:31). Some accounts
hold that Zbigniew Cynkutis complied reluctantly because his father was an officer among
the 4,321 Polish soldiers killed by Russians in the Katyń Forest massacre (M. Cynkutis 2007).
Others claim that Flaszen did not comply. Designer Jerzy Gurawski claims he didn’t have to
comply because as an architect he was an independent (Gurawski 2008). As time goes by,
survivors from the Opole days remember events differently, but all agree Grotowski insisted
on Party membership.
Regarding the commission to investigate Grotowski, Bielska remembers, “There was tension
at the beginning, but Grotowski knew how to reduce it. So the assessment was that there was no
need to close down the Theatre, but maybe it should not get too much money” (Bielska 2007).
Ketmanship in Opole
However, Bielska in this response does not fully convey the significance of the commission’s
findings. Ultimately, Grotowski’s funding was cut by 50 percent, effectively making the 1964/65
season impossible and forcing liquidation of Grotowski’s Laboratory of the Theatre of 13 Rows
in spite of the outward appearance of having survived the inquest (Osiński 1997:131–67). When
71
Figure 6. A read-through for Siakuntala (1960). From left: Antoni Jahołkowski, Rena Mirecka, Jerzy Grotowski,
Andrzej Bielski, Zygmunt Molik, Ewa Lubowiecka, Barbara Barska, Adam Kurczyna. (Photograph by L. Olejnik,
courtesy of M. Olejnik-Filipowicz’s Archive)
the Theatre moved to Wrocław, Grotowski ceased to employ Bielska; though an asset in Opole,
she could not help him in Wrocław, where she had no connections.
Another ongoing effort by Grotowski to assure regional authorities that the Theatre of
13 Rows was relevant to local people was to organize touring topical cabaret performances
called Estrada Publicystyczna, which translates as Feature Stage (Osiński 1997:134). Bielska
managed these. The Estradas were a response to what actress Ewa Lubowiecka calls a “hot
period” that began in 1960 after the Theatre’s production of Kalidasa’s Sanskrit classic,
Siakuntala (Lubowiecka in Wójtowicz 2004:207; trans. Daniela Lewinska). The local author-
ities, offended by the performance’s eroticism, had proclaimed through the press that
Siakuntala (1960) was politically and morally inappropriate. The Estradas, however, did
nothing to counter this characterization nor did they win over the local audience.
After Siakuntala, two Estradas were created: Gliniane gołȩbie (Clay Pigeon) and Turyści
(Tourists) both performed 1 April 1961. In Turyści only men performed; in Gliniane gołȩbie
only women. Both were based on texts by Goering, Himmler, and Hitler. The title Gliniane
gołȩbie came from the practice of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess who “smashed babies to
pieces by throwing them against a wall; [Grotowski] called it a ‘clay pigeon play’ ” (Lubowiecka
in Wójtowicz 2004:207; trans. Daniela Lewinska). Gurawski designed chic evening gowns for
Seth Baumrin
the women. In those elegant dresses Lubowiecka, Komorowska, and Mirecka spoke the Nazi
texts. “It was an amazing and electrifying event. Behind us, a film of Auschwitz was projected.
72
[ . . . ] On the whole, it created a shocking impression” (Lubowiecka in Wójtowicz 2004:207;
trans. Daniela Lewinska). At one performance of Gliniane gołȩbie in Głogów, also known as mały
Berlin [little Berlin], when the spectators saw elegantly dressed young women, they wrongly
assumed they were in for some risqué fun. Lubowiecka remembers:
I spoke Hitler’s text about his assault on the East: Poland has to be stopped; Polish
people are slaves. [ . . . ] The moment I began I got applause, but not for my great
acting. It was very difficult not to react to this, but we were so well trained by Grotowski
that we continued speaking with stony faces. [ . . . ] When people realized what kind of
costumes we were wearing, they began to throw things at us. We were booed. In spite
of audience reaction we finished our performance. [ . . . ] The atmosphere in the audience
was very tense. The organizers and Grotowski realized the danger. We waited awhile
and then secretly snuck out back into the car and drove to Opole. This was shocking
and deepened our emptiness. We were strangers. After this event we began to think
that maybe we really were strangers who irritated locals. (in Wójtowicz 2004:207; trans.
Daniela Lewinska)
Not merely because of their strangeness, but mainly due to Kordian’s political implications and
mounting pressure from Teatr Ziemi Opolskiej, in 1963 Kosicki’s KW requested the MKiS
commission. But when the commission convened in 1964, Grotowski and his colleagues
transformed it into a theatre conference rather than the hoped-for inquest. Irena Flaszen
remembers the planning sessions:
The strategy was prepared. The correspondence was between the people involved in
the Theatre’s defense, rather than the authorities. Yes you had to send official letters,
and Grotowski and Flaszen always tried to insert some meaningful sentence, but officially
it was conceived as a conference for theatre specialists. If there was a Party official who
was a theatre specialist he could come, but there were none. During this conference, I
prepared a script, a description of exercises, and the actors presented these exercises; it
was like a theoretical-practical session on the Theatre. (I. Flaszen 2006)
Ostensibly it ceased to be a commission. However, Opole was in for a surprise. Soon after the
MKiS verdict issued by the vice-director of the Team for Theatre Matters, Henryk Bieniewski
—dated “Warsaw, 21 April 1964”—that the theatre would remain in Opole but be granted only
50 percent of its previous annual funding, Opole’s Laboratory Theatre of 13 Rows became
Wrocław’s Laboratory Theatre (Osiński 1997:140; trans. Amalia Wozna).
By pitting state, regional, and local agencies against cultural authorities, Grotowski played
the Party’s game better than its officials. Although the Party controlled everything, Grotowski
exploited what Davies describes as Polish governance’s tendency to recognize intelligence over
conformism even in Soviet times. He writes:
Unlike their counterparts elsewhere in the Soviet bloc, Polish writers succeeded in
blurring the distinction between approved and unapproved literature; and it would
be quite incorrect to suggest that [ . . . ] eccentric views could only find expression
in the dissident underworld. [ . . . ] Prominent and favoured figures, such as Jarosław
Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980) [ . . . ] have contrived to steer an independent course.
([1982] 2005:456–57)
This is why the Opole authorities erred when calling upon the MKiS to assign an independent
Ketmanship in Opole
commission to assess Grotowski. As the highest level of cultural control, MKiS could have
called upon anyone to assess Grotowski. It might easily have chosen only critics and professors
opposed to him; instead MKiS chose only supporters: Bohdan Korzeniewski (head of directing
at Warsaw’s theatre school), Zbigniew Raszewski (theatre historian), Jerzy Timoszewicz (theatre
73
critic from Pamiȩtnik Teatralny), and Konstanty Puzyna (literary critic for Dialog and Flaszen’s
friend) (Kelera 2008).
The correspondence between the MKiS and the Theatre before and after the commission
demonstrates that Grotowski and Flaszen manipulated the MKiS toward accepting the Theatre
as an indispensable cultural institution, rather than as a local nuisance. In their 30 January 1964
letter, the MKiS asks “the Citizen Director to prepare in writing before 29 February this year
[1964] a summary of the five years’ work of the Theatre of 13 Rows” and that 10 through 25
March would be convenient to see “four to six performances (possibly two in one day)” (Osiński
1997:135; trans. Amalia Wozna).
On 20 February Grotowski replies, describing the commission as a “theoretical conference
on our theatre method proposed by the Ministry.” Grotowski explains that the Studium o Hamlecie
rehearsals were hampered by staff problems, the group’s limited size, and the “fact that one actor
broke his arm,” which forced postponement of the 20 February premiere (Osiński 1997:135;
trans. Amalia Wozna). This allowed Grotowski to declare: “[I]t is impossible to prepare the
materials for the aforementioned conference at the same time (these materials are after all vast
and serious).” Grotowski also expresses surprise at the Ministry’s request to move up its visit to
March, since it was his understanding that MKiS planned “the conference for around May.” He
also reminds MKiS that he intends to present the Estradas as well, ultimately proposing three
possible solutions: First, a shortened program on 25 March, which would force the suspension
of work on Hamlet. “During the conference we would be able to present only Doctor Faustus
[1964] and actors’ exercises, and this seems insufficient”; second, to paraphrase lengthy pseudo-
official language, show Studium o Hamlecie on 2 May, after its premiere, without the Estradas,
but include Doctor Faustus and actor training; third, show the intended program of Doctor
Faustus, Studium o Hamlecie, and Estradas as well as actor training (Grotowski in Osiński
1997:135; trans. Amalia Wozna).
On 7 March Grotowski reminded the MKiS that the Theatre was informed about the
“decision to organize the conference” on 25 March, a delay of more than two weeks after
Grotowski’s 20 February letter (135). But since the Theatre was in the middle of Studium o
Hamlecie rehearsals, the MKiS could only expect the theoretical materials. Grotowski insisted
that, if the participants were to see Doctor Faustus and Studium o Hamlecie, the conference
would have to be two days. “Due to fitness conditions, two shows cannot be presented on one
day, especially if we are to present exercises as well” and so he requested “a reasonable date”
so that the theoretical materials could be prepared; he proposed 1 May. The assertive tone of
Grotowski’s letters effectively changed an investigation into a conference, but he did not get
his dates (135).
Ultimately, on 7 and 8 April the MKiS representatives witnessed “a presentation of actors’
exercises [ . . . ] along with a performance of Doctor Faustus; and on the second day the Studium
o Hamlecie was performed” (Osiński 1997:140; trans. Amalia Wozna). In his 21 April memo,
Galiński (who initially renounced Kordian) characterized the work of the Theatre of 13 Rows
as “interesting and undoubtedly necessary for the theatre culture of our nation” but sees no
possibility to subsidize their activity “fully” from Opole’s own resources. As Osiński reports,
Galiński therefore proposed that MKiS take over KW’s responsibility for 50 percent of the
theatre’s operating budget to the end of 1964, with no mention of the source for the subsequent
season’s budget (140). Osiński also cites Czesława Mykita-Glensk’s 1964 essay, “Opole Theatre
Life,” which asserts, “Opole is not the right environment for such shocking research, and the
supporters of the thirteenrowers repeatedly speak about the possibility of moving the Theatre
of 13 Rows to Wrocław” (in Osiński 1997:140; trans. Amalia Wozna).
Soon after, in spite and perhaps because of the commission’s deceptively optimistic verdict,
Seth Baumrin
the Theatre was invited by Wrocław’s mayor, Professor Bolesław Iwaszkiewicz (mathematics),
along with journalist and theatre critic Józef Kelera (an influential PZPR party member), to do
74
for Wrocław exactly what Korzeniewski explained the Theatre of 13 Rows was doing for Opole:
enhancing the cultural life of a previously German city on Poland’s western border. It appears
from Tomasz Korzeniewski’s memoir that this was actually what Grotowski and Bohdan
Korzeniewski planned from the outset.
In this way Wrocław would become an exemplary open city in a Soviet world. Opole and
Wrocław are part of Lower Silesia, which though once Polish had been primarily German since
the 13th century. After Poland’s borders were redrawn at Yalta, the de-Germanification of
western Poland resulted in ideal circumstances for Grotowski. Re-Polonizing Wrocław was
a chief regional concern. Though Opole, from 1959 to 1964, wasn’t ready for Grotowski,
Wrocław was. Wrocław was a bigger city and the people in charge were not putty in the Party’s
hands. Wrocław’s citizens had to be more Polish than other Poles (and thus more overtly
patriotic). Furthermore, municipal government could not afford to be silenced by the Party.
Mayor Iwaszkiewicz was not even a Party member. On the whole, Wrocław’s Poles were not
Communists (confidential; 2007). They were mostly Poles forced after Yalta to repatriate west
from Lviv, Galicia, and Lithuania.
It is unclear exactly whose idea it was that Grotowski come to Wrocław. It would appear that
Grotowski and his supporters made it happen. But there were most assuredly other players such
as Minister of Culture Lucjan Motyka; head bookkeeper of the Theatre of 13 Rows Wacław
Iwaszkiewicz; and perhaps his uncle, the famous poet, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz—none of whom
have told their stories (Wojtowicz 2008a; Bielska 2007; Barba 1999).
When WWII ended, less than 20 years prior to the Theatre of 13 Rows’ founding, political
conditions in postwar Poland were inhuman, characterized by institutional dysfunction and
numerous anti- and pro-Soviet organizations battling for control. Gomułka’s eventual takeover,
Polonization efforts, and the campaign to put a human face on socialism were little more than
a click of the second hand on history’s clock. The period is characterized by a rapid upsurge of
hope, and its equally rapid dissipation. But some consequences of the 1956 Polish October
lasted beyond November. Grotowski’s career testifies to that.
Grotowski’s political acuity demonstrates that the price of his artistic freedom was calculated
according to his ability to outmaneuver a Soviet-imposed, multilayered, opaque bureaucratic
apparatus whose agents changed policy unpredictably and intrigued nefariously. This apparatus,
the result of postwar Soviet domination, longstanding mutual Russo-Polish antagonism, infight-
ing among Poles, and neglect in the West, necessitated Grotowski’s skillful, cunning game with
secret police of all stripes. Ketmanship.
References
Barba, Eugenio. 1999. The Land of Ashes and Diamonds: My Apprenticeship in Poland. Trans. Judy
Barba. Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press.
Bielska, Urszula. 2007. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław,
February.
Brunton, Paul. 1934. A Search in Secret India. London: Rider and Company.
Croyden, Margaret. 2007. Personal interview with author. New York City, November.
Cynkutis, Malina. 2007. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław,
January.
Davies, Norman. [1982] 2005. God’s Playground: A History of Poland. Vol. II. Revised 2nd ed.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Ketmanship in Opole
Degler, Janusz. 2000. “Pierwsza podróż Jerzego Grotowskiego na Wschód” [Jerzy Grotowski’s
First Journey to the East]. Unpublished manuscript. Abridged version of paper presented at
the symposium “Reception of Jerzy Grotowski’s work in Russia,” Centre for Study of Jerzy
75
Grotowski’s Work and for Cultural and Theatrical Research, 21 May. Grotowski Institute
Archives.
Degler, Janusz. 2006. Personal interview with author. Trans. Tomas Spiewak. Wrocław, July.
Flaszen, Irena. 2006. Personal interview with author. Trans. Tomas Spiewak. Wrocław, July.
Flaszen, Irena. 2008a. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław, April.
Flaszen, Irena. 2008b. Telephone interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna, July.
Flaszen, Irena. 2008c. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław,
November.
Flaszen, Ludwik. 2007. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław,
January.
Gobineau, Arthur. 1865. Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale [Religions and Philosophies of
Central Asia]. Paris: Didier.
Gregory, Mercedes, and Jill Godmillow, prod. 1980. Nienadówka. Videotape. Manhattan Project/Atlas
Theatre Co.
Grotowski, Jerzy. 1957. “Cywilizacja I Wolnośćlub Nie Ma Innego Socjalizmu” [Civilization and Freedom
or There Is No Other Socialism]. Walka Młodych 6. Republished in Notatnik Teatralny 20–21
(2000):59–61.
Grotowski, Kazimierz. 2000. “Portret Rodzinny” [Family Portrait]. Pamiȩtnik Teatralny (Warsaw). Special
issue, ed. Leszek Kolankiewicz, XLIV:1–4.
Grotowski, Kazimierz. 2008. Personal interview with author. Kraków, April.
Gurawski, Jerzy. 2008. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Poznań, April.
Guszpit, Ireneusz. 2007. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław, February.
Jarocki, Jerzy. 2000. “Stacja Moskwa” [Station Moscow]. Unpublished manuscript. Transcript of speech
given during the symposium, “Reception of Jerzy Grotowski’s work in Russia.” Centre for Study of Jerzy
Grotowski’s Work and for Cultural and Theatrical Research, Wrocław, 19 May. Grotowski Institute
Archives.
Jaworski, Ryszard. 2008. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław, April.
Kelera, Jusef. 2008. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław, April.
Kolankiewicz, Leszek. 2007. Personal interview with author. Trans. Bartosz Mroz. Wrocław,
January.
Korzeniewski, Bogdan, and Malgorzata Szejnert. 1992. Slawa i infamia [Fame and Infamy]. Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Kozłowski, Jan. 2004. “Studencki Komitet Rewolucyjny—Kraków 1956 (fakty i refleksje)” [Students
Revolutionary Committee—Krakow 1956 (Facts and Reflections)].” In Polski Październik 1956 na
Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim [The Polish October 1956 at the Jagiellonian University], ed. Rudolf Klimek,
45–58. Krakow: Jagellonian University Press.
Kuligowska-Korzeniewska, Ana, ed. 2001. “Letters by Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen to Bohdan
Korzeniewski.” In Pamiȩtnik Teatralny 1–2:305–18.
Kumiega, Jennifer. 1985. The Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski. London: Methuen.
Miłosz, Czesław. [1951] 1981. Zniewolony umysł [The Captive Mind]. Trans. Jane Zielonko. New York:
Vintage International.
Mirecka, Rena. 2008. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław, April.
Seth Baumrin
Obidniak, Alina. 2008. “Pola energii. Wspomnienia i rozmowy” [Fields of Energy: Memories and
Conversations]. Unpublished manuscript. Wrocław, Grotowski Institute Archives.
76
Osiński, Zbigniew. 1997. “Teatr 13 Rzedow. Opole 1959–1964” [The Theatre of the 13 Rows. Opole 1959–
1964]. Opole: Opole University Press.
Piech, Olga. 2008. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Wrocław, April.
Raczak, Lech. 2008. Personal interview with author. Trans. Amalia Wozna. Poznań, April.
Smeliansky, Anatoly. 1997. Telephone interview with author, August.
Wojciak, Ewa, and Katarzyna Madon-Mitzner. 2008. The Files. Docu-drama by the Theatre of the Eighth
Day, presented as part of the 2008 “Made in Poland: New Plays from Poland” festival produced by the
Polish Cultural Institute, New York.
Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2004. Od Orfeusza do Studium Hamlecie: Teatr 13 Rzȩdów w Opolu (1959–1964) [From
Orpheus to the Hamlet Study: Theatre of the 13 Rows (1959–1964)]. Wrocław: University of Wrocław
Press.
Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2006. Personal interview with author. Opole, July.
Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2008a. Personal interview with author. Opole, April.
Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2008b. Personal interview with author. Opole, November.
Ketmanship in Opole
77

Price of Artistic Freedom

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Исходное описание:

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Price of Artistic Freedom

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Ketmanship in Opole: Jerzy Grotowski and the Price of Artistic

TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 53, Number 4, Winter 2009

Published by The MIT Press

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Hong Kong Baptist University at 11/03/10 9:50AM GMT

TDR: The Drama Review 53:4 (T204) Winter 2009. ©2009

Grotowski’s performances even though not completely successful. It was a performance

ZMS Zwia¸zek Młodzieży Socjalistycznej / Association of Socialist Youth

3. In a 2007 interview, Ludwik Flaszen said:

BAUMRIN: Was the caretaker undercover?

7. Most probably Bielska only attended Dziady rehearsals.

Grotowski, Kazimierz. 2008. Personal interview with author. Kraków, April.

Kumiega, Jennifer. 1985. The Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski. London: Methuen.

Smeliansky, Anatoly. 1997. Telephone interview with author, August.

Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2006. Personal interview with author. Opole, July.

Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2008a. Personal interview with author. Opole, April.

Wójtowicz, Agnieszka. 2008b. Personal interview with author. Opole, November.

Вам также может понравиться