Reply to Stanislavsky

Jerzy Grotowski, Kris Salata

TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 52, Number 2 (T 198) Summer 2008,
pp. 31-39 (Article)

Published by The MIT Press

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tdr/summary/v052/52.2.grotowski01.html

Access provided by University of Surrey (4 Feb 2014 16:23 GMT)

Reply to Stanislavsky
Jerzy Grotowski
translated by Kris Salata

1. Certain questions make no sense. “Is Stanislavsky important for the new theatre?” I don’t
know. There are new things like fashion magazines. And there are new things, but as old as the
sources of life. Why do you ask whether Stanislavsky is important for the new theatre? Give
your own REPLY TO STANISLAVSKY: a reply based on a practical knowledge of the matter
and not on inexperience. Open yourself as an existence. Either you are creative, or you aren’t.
If you are, you somehow go beyond him; if you aren’t, you are faithful, but barren.
One should not think in these categories: “Is Stanislavsky important today?” If he is impor-
tant for you, ask: “Why?” Do not ask whether he is important for others, or for theatre at large.
“Is An Actor Prepares still a valid book today?” This question makes no sense for the same
reason. What is work today? It then follows that work exists today that is therefore inevitably
different from the work yesterday. But is work today the same for all? There exists your own
work. You can then ask if that book is important for you, in your own work. But do not ask me
about it. No one should answer for another person.

2. One of the first misunderstandings concerning this problem comes from the fact that
many people have difficulties distinguishing technique from aesthetics. So then: I consider
Stanislavsky’s method one of the greatest stimuli for the European theatre, especially in actor
education; at the same time I feel distant from his aesthetics. Stanislavsky’s aesthetics were a
product of his times, his country, and his person. We are all a product of the meeting of our
tradition with our needs. These are things that one cannot transplant from one place to another
without falling into clichés, into stereotypes, into something that is already dead the moment
we call it into existence. It is the same for Stanislavsky as for us, and for anybody else.

3. In the professional sense, I grew up on Stanislavsky’s system. In some way, I believed in

professionalism. I don’t anymore. There are two types of cover, two kinds of escape: one can
escape into dilettantism and call it freedom. One can also escape into professionalism, into
technique. Both can serve as a pretext for absolution. I used to believe in the profession. There,
Stanislavsky was my model. When I was beginning my work, I started from his technique. But
for me also his attitude of discovering anew each phase of life was in a way a foundation.
Stanislavsky was always moving forward. In terms of the profession, he asked the fundamen-
tal questions. As far as the answers go, I rather see the differences between us. But I hold a huge
respect for him. And I think of him often, when I see what kind of confusion one can cause.
Disciples... I think it also happened to me.

Kris Salata teaches stage directing and performance at Stanford University. He has translated a number
of texts by Jerzy Grotowski and published several essays on the Workcenter. His full biographical note
appears in this issue of TDR with “Toward the Non-(Re)presentational Actor.”

TDR: The Drama Review 52:2 (T198) Summer 2008.

©2008 Mario Biagini and Thomas Richards 31
 True disciples are never disciples. Meyerhold was a true disciple of Stanislavsky. He did not
apply the “system” scholastically. He gave his own reply. He was a rival, and not some good soul
who only barks his disagreement. He had convictions; he was himself. And in fact he paid the
price. Vakhtangov was a true disciple of Stanislavsky. He did not oppose Stanislavsky. However,
when he applied the system in practice, he did it on such a personal level, so deeply informed by
his relationship with the actors (but also by the spirit of the epoch, by the changes that had taken
place, by the viewpoint of the new generation) that the results turned out entirely different from
Stanislavsky’s performances.
Stanislavsky was an old sage. Among his pupils, he most approved of Vakhtangov. When,
at the opening of Turandot, many thought that Stanislavsky could no longer agree with this
performance, so different and so alien to his own work, he took a position of full and absolute
approval. He knew that Vakhtangov did what he himself had done earlier—that Vakhtangov
gave his own reply to the questions asked by the vocation, the questions he had the courage to
ask, and simultaneously avoided stereotypes, even the stereotypes of Stanislavsky’s work.
For this reason, whenever I have a chance, I repeat that I don’t want disciples. I want
comrades-in-arms. I want brotherhood-in-arms. I want kinsmen, even those who are far away,
who perhaps receive impulses from me, but are stimulated by their own nature. Other relations
are barren. They only produce either the type of tamer who tames actors in my name, or the
dilettante who hides himself behind my name.

4. Basically, I can only reveal my own myth of Stanislavsky, as others have done before, without
knowing to what extent these other myths were founded on reality. When I was beginning my
studies in the acting department of the theatre school, I founded the entire base of my theatrical
knowledge on the principles of Stanislavsky. As an actor, I was possessed by Stanislavsky. I was a
fanatic. I believed that it was the key opening all the doors of creativity. I wanted to understand
him better than others did. I worked a lot to know as much as possible about what he had said
or what was said about him. This led—according to the principles of psychoanalysis—from the
period of imitation to the period of rebellion, by which I mean the attempt to find my own
place. And to be able to play for others the same role in our profession as Stanislavsky did for
me... Later I understood that it was dangerous and false. I began to think that maybe it was only
a new mythology.
When I realized that the problem of building my own system was illusory, and that there is
no ideal system that could serve as the key to creativity, then the word “method” changed its
meaning for me.
There is a challenge to which everyone should give his own reply. Everyone should be
faithful to his own life. This did not aim at the exclusion of others, but rather the opposite, the
inclusion. Our life consists of relationships with others, and it’s exactly the others who are our
life’s domain. As well as the living world. There are in us different kinds of needs and different
kinds of experiences. We try to interpret these experiences as a message addressed to us by fate,
life, history, humankind, or transcendence (besides, all these names don’t really matter). In any
case, the experience of life is the question, and creation in truth is simply the reply. One begins
from the effort of not hiding and not lying. Then the method in terms of a system does not
exist. It cannot exist in any way but as a challenge or a call. And one can never tell precisely what
another person’s reply will be. It is very important to be ready for the fact that the reply of the
others will be different from ours. If the reply is the same, it is almost certain to be false. One
must understand this, it is a key point.
Also, the notion of professionalism is limited. Perhaps deep inside theatre there is room for
Jerzy Grotowski

some pure work. But this is not essential enough to give one’s whole life to it. Still, if one desires
to do it, one must do it with all one’s self. Only, is theatre so essential that one should give one’s
whole life to it? I think one should treat theatre as a house that has already been abandoned,

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as something unnecessary, as something not really indispensable. We still do not really believe
that what’s left of theatre are ruins. Therefore it can still somehow function. But already other
domains of human activity are taking theatre’s place. Not only film, television, and musicals.
What I am saying here is that the function of theatre that was evident in the past is disappearing.
What operates is more cultural automatism than need. Cultured people know they must go to
the theatre. So, generally they do not go because of theatre, but because of a cultural obligation.
Everywhere, the point is how to get spectators, how to invite them in the most effective way,
how to force them to come. In some places there is a system of subscription, in others pornogra-
phy. How to fill the house, no matter the price? Therefore, I think it is most reasonable to speak
of theatre as a ruined house, almost abandoned.
And so, in the beginning of our era, those who were seeking truth looked for abandoned
places to fulfill their life’s task. Or they went to the desert (I do not believe that this is a natural
solution, even if it happens that it’s necessary in some periods of life: one should go away to
come back later). Or they sought ruined houses, were perhaps condemned to not finding any,
perhaps mad by everyday standards.
For a long time the notion of professionalism has been moving away from me. In the first
period of my work as a theatre director, I understood that dilettantism is a cover behind which
the actor hides in order to avoid tangible and concrete sincerity. One does nothing, but has the
conviction of doing something. I did not change my opinion. But technique can also serve as a
cover. We can practice various systems of means and tricks, we can become great masters and
juggle with them to demonstrate technique, and not reveal ourselves. Paradoxically, one needs to
go beyond both dilettantism and technique. Dilettantism means lack of rigor. Rigor is an effort
to escape illusion. When we are not sincere, then persuading ourselves that we are accomplish-
ing the act, we only do something unarticulated, magmatic. One should take from technique
only that which unblocks human processes.

5. I have a great, deep, manifold respect for Stanislavsky. This respect is based on two things,
first his permanent self-reform, his constant questioning of the previous periods in his work. It
was not a tendency to remain modern. It was the consistent prolongation of what was essentially
the same search for truth. As a result, he questioned novelties. If his search stopped at the
method of physical actions, it wasn’t because he had found in it the highest truth of the profes-
sion, but because death interrupted his further exploration. The second reason I have a deep
respect for Stanislavsky is his effort to think on the basis of what is practical and concrete. How
to touch that which is untouchable? He wished to find concrete paths to secret, mysterious
processes. Not the means—against these he fought, he called them clichés—but the paths.

6. The method of physical actions: a new and at the same time the final phase, in which
Stanislavsky put in doubt many of his earlier discoveries. It is almost certain that without the
previous work he could not have found the method of physical actions. But it was only in that
period that he made the discovery I consider a sort of revelation: that emotions are not subject
to our will. In the previous phase, it wasn’t yet clear for him. He searched for that famous “emo-
tional recall.” He still thought that a return to memories of various emotions meant basically
the possibility of returning to the emotions themselves. He was mistaken here, in believing
that emotions are subject to the will. But in life one can verify that emotions are independent
from the will. We don’t want to love someone, but we do. Or the opposite: we truly want to
love someone, but can’t. Emotions are independent from our will, and exactly because of this
Reply to Stanislavsky

Stanislavsky in his last period of activity preferred to put the accent in the work on what is sub-
ject to our will. For example, in the first phase he asked about the emotions that the actor pur-
sued in various scenes. And about the so-called “I want.” But despite how much we might want
“to want,” that’s not the same as “to want.” In the second phase, he put the accent on what one
can do. Because what one does depends on the will.

33
 But what is it that one does, what is an action? Those who barely touched on the terminology
of physical actions think, for example, that it is walking, smoking a cigarette, and so on. It means
that for them physical actions are elementary activities of everyday life. This is very naïve.
Others, who preferred the Stanislavsky of the previous period, always repeated his pronounce-
ments about physical actions in terms of emotions. For example, “Now he doesn’t like him, so
he wants to be against him, he tenses up: what needs to be done,” and so on. These are not
physical actions. Yet others confuse physical actions with acting.
According to Stanislavsky, physical actions are elements of behavior, elementary actions,
truly physical, but connected to reacting to others. “I am looking; I am looking into his eyes,
trying to dominate. I observe who is for, who is against. I am not looking, because I can’t find
the arguments in myself.” All the elementary forces in the body, oriented toward someone or
toward oneself: to listen, to look, to work with an object, to find points of support—all this is
physical action. One looks and one sees, and not: one looks and doesn’t see, like a bad actor in
a bad production. He is blind and deaf to others, to his partners; he has only tricks to hide it.
Thanks to the efficacy of the method, he can be led from simulated sincerity to partly truthful
sincerity. From the point of view of the performance’s conception, this is a lot. If the director
is a master of efficacy, he can help the actor in this. But I want to say that, leaving the cult of
professionalism, I also changed my notion of efficacy.

7. Through his whole life in art, Stanislavsky gave us the example that one must be prepared
for work. It was he who formulated the necessity of laboratory work and rehearsals as crea-
tive processes without spectators. And also the obligation for the actor to train. These are
huge merits.
In actor training, in exercises, one can, however, find a false satisfaction that allows one to
avoid the act of personal sincerity. One can torture oneself for years and years. One can believe
that exercises have a great value in themselves. One can treat the exercises as an absolution for
the fact that in doing we do not go all the way. Instead, in other cultural contexts, the accent has
often been put simply on taming.
In our epoch, we seek a somewhat perverse pleasure in exercises. I don’t want to say that
exercises must be unpleasant. But there is a clear difference between a narcissistic search for a
pleasure that is extremely subjective and solitary even if it is achieved in a group, and something
else that is not unpleasant because it rests on the true, reckless vocation of our nature. Anyway,
in that case, talking about what is pleasant and what is unpleasant makes no sense. Perhaps the
misfortune of contemporary man lies in the fact that he abandoned the search for happiness in
favor of the search for pleasure.
Exercises as spiritual comfort... You get a wonderful feeling of time not wasted. You are
deeply convinced that you are approaching new horizons. You talk a lot about the spirit, the
soul, and the psyche. Phariseeism.
Stanislavsky believed that a positive and indispensable training for the actor should consist
of separated, relatively varied types of distinct exercises connected only by a common goal. I
consider it true and exact from the perspective of his experience and his notion of efficacy.
However, from the perspective of going beyond professionalism, there exists the act embracing
the totality of man [człowiek].
If we base ourselves on going beyond professionalism, on human wholeness, I have to admit
that we cannot avoid here a similar contradiction. Because often it seems to us that we do
something while in reality we do something else. A precise analysis of this kind of action began
with Freud, but already in Dostoyevsky’s Idiot we have the story of the man looking at a shop
Jerzy Grotowski

window display and, in it, at a knife. He is doing something completely different than what he
thinks he is doing. Unconsciously, his nature is getting ready for something different than
what his consciousness is analyzing. So then, to be conscious of what one is doing is not all,

34
because it does not embrace the wholeness. By definition, what is unconscious is not conscious.
Stanislavsky, as a matter of fact, understood that such a dilemma exists and sought, in his own
way, how to touch the unconscious indirectly.

8. One should seek a way to free one’s own existence that turns toward someone else. Then this
functions also in the so-called technical domain, in the voice for example. It is not possible to
say briefly how it happens. In this way one would only create misunderstandings. It’s hard and
long work. Hard not so much in the sense of the necessary effort, but in the sense of courage or
determination.
All exercises we kept were aimed without exception at the annihilation of resistances, blocks,
and individual or professional stereotypes. They were exercises-obstacles. In order to go beyond
the exercises, which are like a trap, you have to discover your own blockages. As a matter of fact,
all these exercises had a negative character, meaning that they were used in order to discover
what one should not do. And never: what and how to do it. And always in relation to our own
path. If the exercises were already overly mastered, we changed them or dropped them. To con-
tinue with them would have meant the beginning of technique for the sake of technique, the
knowing how. When we felt that the sources did not work in us, or on us, that the resistances
blocked us, closed us up, that “the creative process moved on” but was barren, then we returned
to the exercises. And we found the causes. Not the solutions, but the causes.
There were periods when daily exercises were necessary. There were also periods when we
needed to focus solely on the processes. And not because the opening was coming soon. The
opening will happen when it happens. As a matter of fact, it will never happen. The way we
work is that we present the same performance 500 times, and yet we still work on it. Often, the
rehearsals after hundreds of performances were the most fascinating, the most essential. So, we
would either return to the exercises or drop them, always in relation to what was most essential
in the work.
There isn’t a conception of exercises according to which they would be important in
themselves. Exercises are often very important. For example, when, during the performance,
someone feels—in relation to the spectators—that he has power over the souls, or experiences
the loftiness that exempts him from precision. Then immediately one must return to exercises to
do some solid work, to feel the earth, on which things may not be as lofty but rather basic. Our
exercises were subjected to an ongoing evolution.
I often observed people who tried to simplify certain exercises, arguing that they were
making them personal that way. But in that way they were stripping them of their whole
meaning, adapting them to their own fears and lies. To their own laziness. But they say, “Yes,
now it is my personal style of exercises.” A personal system of exercises in a true sense of this
definition exists when we discover the most difficult exercises, to the point of giving up the
surrogates and covers that our self-indulgence suggests to us. These exercises are personal
because they function as a test for our personal inhibitions. So they are much more difficult
for us than for others.

9. If the exercises are aimed at the never-ending attack against surrogates, covers, and eva-
sions, they contain the same opposition that exists in the performance, the opposition between
precision and spontaneity. When we started losing precision in what we were doing in a
performance, we had to look for it in exercises. In exercises, we required from the actor mas-
tery of details to the point at which a personal reaction appears. If someone started hiding in
Reply to Stanislavsky

automatism and perfectionism, we would immediately look for ways to keep the details and
simultaneously go beyond them; that is, to transform them into reactions specific only to that
person. Therefore it was always a sort of intersection of what was still the precision of the
previous work and something already moving toward spontaneity. Or the opposite: a sort of

35
 intersection of what was still in the flux of personal reactions and something already turning
toward precision. When that intersection occurred, the creative moment emerged.
This opposition between spontaneity and precision is natural and organic. Since both these
aspects are the poles of human nature, that’s why when they intersect, we are complete. In some
sense, precision is the domain of consciousness, while spontaneity is the domain of instinct. In
another sense, on the contrary, precision is sex and spontaneity, heart. If sex and heart are two
separate qualities, then we are segmented. Only when they exist together—not as a union of two
things, but as one unique thing—only then are we whole. In the moments of fullness, what is
animal in us isn’t only animal, it is the whole nature. Not human nature, but the whole nature
in man [człowiek]. Then simultaneously the social heritage, man as homo sapiens, is actualized.
But it is not a duality. It is the unity of man. And then, not the “I” does, “it” does; not the “I”
accomplishes the act, but “my man [człowiek]” accomplishes the act. I myself and the genus
humanum together. The entire human context, social and any other, inscribed in me, into my
memory, into my thoughts, into my experiences, into my upbringing, into my formation, into
my potential.
When one speaks of spontaneity and precision, in the very formulation there still remain two
opposing notions that divide... Unjustly.

10. In rehearsals, I did not search for this in words, in terminology. An intimate drama took
place between the actor and me. We looked for sincerity and unveiling, which do not require
the use of words. In fact, it is possible only when facing another. For me, it became possible
facing the actor as a man [człowiek]. I looked for the conditions when it would be possible for the
actor facing me. But it is possible facing any human being individually. Even if there are several
people present, and even if they act simultaneously. It is never a relationship with a group. It is
a relationship facing each one: you, you, and you. But not facing you as a group. Because if one
wishes to seek such a relationship facing a group, one falls into a compromise.
And therefore, an actor who wants to achieve this in relation to the spectators falls into
stereotypes. I used to use the word “confession”: a confession with the body. A confession in
which I don’t hide myself behind common stereotypes, behind everyday details, or behind any
cover, even in the literal sense. Daily life teaches us to hide, to deceive, and to lie. We can all
verify it. In every culture, it functions differently. Let’s take America. There exists a “spirit of
brotherhood.” Everyone desires to give everyone else the impression of being friendly and
fraternal. But in misfortune, who can you count on? How many friends do you really have?
You constantly play at friendship, as do the others facing you. There are moments in life when
people are authentic. When love truly overtakes them; when it is no longer just a matter of
sexual gymnastics. When joy truly overtakes them; when their reactions are unknown even to
them. When misfortune truly breaks them, though sometimes it breaks not so much them but
rather the inter-human mask. And then the understanding that it did not break them, but rather
their way of pretending, can be the turning point.

11. When the actor is already on the way toward the act (in performance, for example) and he
does not know what he should do, he thinks about it all the time because he knows he is being
observed. And that’s why Stanislavsky, rightly and pragmatically, demanded from the actor a
prepared line of actions that would free him from this problem. According to Stanislavsky, this
line should be a line, a score, of physical actions. Personally, I prefer a score based on a current
of impulses on one hand, and on the principle of organization on the other. This means that
there should be something like a riverbed. The banks of the river.
Jerzy Grotowski

It is easier to understand it in terms of space. Your space is not simply in this place, but
between this place and that place. It isn’t a rigidly fixed space: you have the space “between”
in a given scene, in a given moment. This “between,” from here to there, is fixed, as are the
riverbanks, but the space is always unforeseeable, the river you enter is always new. Clearly,

36
it is a banal example, but in reality it touches all elements of human behavior in the role. We
must set “from here to there,” the riverbanks that create that “between.” And that is the score.
Then the actor is not condemned to think constantly “What should I do?” He is freer, because
he did not give up organization.
With his work on physical actions, Stanislavsky went beyond but also extended his old idea
of “emotional recall.” He asked his actor, “What would you do if you were in the given circum-
stances?” These circumstances are the circumstances of the role: age, type, corporality, a certain
type of experience. From Stanislavsky’s perspective, it was logical and very efficacious.
When working with an actor, I did not think of the “what if ” or the “given circumstances.”
There exist pretexts or springboards that create the performance event. The actor refers to his
own life. He does not look in the domain of “emotional recall” or of “what if.” He turns to the
body-memory, not so much to the memory of a body, but precisely to the body-memory. And
to the body-life. So he turns to experiences that were truly important for him and to experiences
he still expects to come, that have not yet happened—at times a memory of a moment, of just
that one moment, or a series of memories with something unchanging in them. For example,
memories of a key situation with a woman. The face of this woman changes (in different
episodes of life, in life and in what has not yet been lived), the whole person can change, but in
all these existences or incarnations, there is something unchanging, like different films laid over
one another. These memories (from the past and from the future) are recognized or discovered
by the body and by all the Rest, that is the body-life. Everything is written there. But when one
is doing, there exists what one is doing, that which is direct—today, hic et nunc.
And it is always then that what is not consciously fixed, what is less perceptible but somehow
more essential than physical action, is released. It is still physical, and already pre-physical. I call
it “impulse.” Every physical action is preceded by a subcutaneous movement that flows from
inside the body, unknown, but palpable. An impulse does not exist without a partner, not in the
sense of an acting partner, but another human existence. Or simply, another existence. Because
for someone it could be an existence other than human: God, Fire, Tree. When Hamlet speaks
of his father, he speaks a monologue, but he is facing his father. Impulse always exists facing.
And for example, I project the existence that is the aim of my impulse onto my partner as
onto a screen. Let’s say I project a woman or women from my life (the women I have met, or
have not met and maybe I will meet), onto the actress with whom I work. It is not something
private between her and me, although it is personal. My impulses go toward my partner. In life,
I had met with a specific reaction, but now I cannot predict anything. In my action, I answer
both the “image” I am projecting and my partner. And again: my answer will not be private,
nor will it be the repetition of that answer “from life.” It will be something unknown and direct.
There is a link to my experience (or to the potential), but mainly there is what happens here and
now. The fact is literal. So on the one hand, here and now, and on the other, the material can be
drawn from other days and places, past and possible.

12. One shouldn’t listen to the names given to things; one should immerse oneself in listening
to the things themselves. When one listens to the names, what is essential disappears and only
terminology remains. In the past, I used the word “association.” Associations are actions
hooking into our lives, our experiences, our potential. So they are not games of subtexts or
thoughts. It is not at all something one can formulate in words, in the sense that, for example,
I will say, “Good morning, madam” (a line from my part), and I will think, “Why is she so sad
today?” This subtext, this “I will think,” is silly. Barren. A sort of domestication of thought,
Reply to Stanislavsky

that’s all. One cannot think this. One has to examine with the body-memory, with the body-life.
Not just give names.

13. Stanislavsky believed that theatre is the realization of the drama. He was perhaps the
greatest, purest, undisputable professional in the entire history of theatre. Theatre was the aim

37
 for him. I don’t feel that theatre is the aim for me. There exists only the Act. It might have
happened that this Act was close enough to the dramatic text as a basis. However, I can’t ask
myself whether it was or wasn’t a realization of the text. I don’t know. I don’t know whether it
was faithful to the text or not. I have no interest in the theatre of the word, because it is based
on a false vision of human existence. I also have no interest in physical theatre. Because what is
it anyway? Acrobatics onstage? Screaming? Wallowing on the floor? Violence? Neither the
theatre of the word nor the physical theatre—nor theatre, but a living existence in its revealing.
Stanislavsky once said, “Words are the peaks of physical actions.” It happens that spoken
language is just a pretext.

14. I think that within certain limits we are condemned to restlessness. There are, however,
definite limits of restlessness that we can bear. If we try to hide behind intellectual formulas,
ideas, slogans, meaning, if with all refinement we lie to every moment, we are condemned to
unhappiness. If all that we want to do is always only lukewarm, always up to a certain point,
always “as the others do,” always to be accepted, we are condemned to unhappiness. But if,
paradoxically, we go in another direction, then, on a certain level quiet appears.
There exist moments when we are not halfway, when we are in agreement with ourselves, not
intellectually, but in entirety. If it happens in the work, then later we will put our mask back on,
no doubt, because it is not possible to avoid it entirely. Perhaps we will fall into compromises,
but they will not touch our work. And in fact, these compromises won’t go too far. Similarly, our
fear will decrease, because it is a function of our lukewarmness and of our lies. It comes from the
fact that we are afraid to stand face to face with life.
There are mortal dangers, but one can face them. There is a direct connection between
restlessness, incompleteness, and fear. For one can respond to danger only by calling upon the
sources, but the sources of life really begin to function only when we eliminate patch-jobs, lies,
and lukewarmness.

15. It is often said that the actor should act in the first person: “I,” and not “the role.” It was
Stanislavsky’s thesis. He said, “I—in the circumstances of the role.” On the other hand, often,
most often, when the actor thinks “I,” he thinks of his self-portrait, of the image he would like to
impose upon the others and upon himself. But if he is called upon: “Reveal your man [człowiek],”
this call exceeds his usual forces, breaks this social image, demands everything. And if he replies
to the call with an action, he cannot even say: “I do,” because “that does itself ” (don’t confuse
this “that” and “itself” with the Freudian “id”).

16. I stated at the beginning that Meyerhold and Vakhtangov were Stanislavsky’s best dis-
ciples. We can ask ourselves whether Meyerhold was the measure of Stanislavsky’s greatness.
Meyerhold’s reply to the master is the proof of Stanislavsky’s great impregnating force. Toward
the end of his life, Meyerhold said: “Well, the difference between our theatre [the Meyerhold
Theatre] and the Moscow Art Theatre is that the Moscow Art Theatre had its First Studio, but
we are the 999th studio of the Moscow Art Theatre.” What is most worth envying Stanislavsky
for is the incredible variety of his disciples, many of whom were able to find their own path—
sometimes like a cut, through a far leap, sometimes within the limits of a close connection with
him. Because all other relationships with the masters are false. Countless Stanislavsky “disciples”
repeat terms from his vocabulary, talk about “superobjective” and “line of action.” This is
evident here in America, where the abuse of his terminology is common. But also elsewhere
there were those dreadful disciples of Stanislavsky... Stanislavsky was murdered by them after
Jerzy Grotowski

his death. It is a great lesson.

17. I once said (which is not original, by the way) that a true disciple betrays his master on a high
level. And so, if I looked for true disciples, I sought those who would betray me on a high level.

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 A low betrayal is spitting at someone with whom we were close. A low betrayal is also a
return to what is untruthful and unfaithful to our nature, what is more in agreement with what
others (our environment, for example) expect of us than with ourselves. Then, we fall back into
all that moves away from the seed. But there exists a high betrayal—in action, not in words.
When it emerges from faithfulness to one’s own path. No one can prescribe this path for
someone else; no one can calculate it. One can only discover it through enormous effort.
I realize that sentences that are expressed in such a way are always somehow stereotypical,
as if flattened, but after all, behind these formulations there is some reality, some experience.
When I used to say that the technique I follow is the technique of creating one’s own
personal techniques, there was in this, as a matter of fact, a postulate of the “high betrayal.”
If a disciple senses his own technique, then he will depart from me, from my needs, which
I actualize in my own way and in my own process. He will be different. He will move away.
I think that only the technique of creating your own technique is important. Any other
technique or method is barren.
However, now all these problems are very distant from me, including the whole issue of
master and disciple. I think that already the thought itself, the very necessity to be a master,
represents—as often happens when one rationalizes—a weakness, because it is an attempt to
stand out by having disciples.

18. I don’t think that my work in theatre could be called a new method. One can call it a
method, but this word is very limited. Also, I don’t think that it is anything new. I think that
this type of research most often existed outside theatre, although it sometimes existed in some
theatres as well. It is the path of life and of knowledge. It is very old. It reveals and formulates
itself depending on the epoch, time, and society. I am not sure whether those who did the
paintings in the Trois Frères cave only wanted to confront their terror. Maybe...but not only.
And I think that painting wasn’t the aim there. Painting was the path. In this sense, I feel much
closer to the one who made that rock painting than to the artists who think they are creating the
avantgarde of a new theatre.

Text edited for publication by Leszek Kolankiewicz from the shorthand notes of Grotowski’s meeting with
directors and actors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 22 February 1969. The text was revised
and elaborated by the author. Originally published in Polish as “Odpowiedź Stanisławskiemu,”
Dialog 5, May 1980:111-119. Published also in Teksty z lat 1965–1969, by Jerzy Grotowski.
Wrocław: Wiedza o kulturze, 1999:145–64.
Reply to Stanislavsky

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