One of Polish theater's great innovators is Jerzy Grotowski, well known for his lifelong research on the work of the self with and through the other. Taking various forms and undergoing multiple transformations, this single underlying proposition propelled Grotowski's career. In Grotowski's Bridge Made of Memory, Dominika Laster analyzes core aspects of Grotowski's work such as body-memory, vigilance, witnessing, verticality, and transmission, arguing that these performance praxes involve a deliberate blurring of the boundaries of the self and other. This comprehensive study traces key thematic threads across all phases of Grotowski's research, examining lesser-known aspects of his praxis such as performance compositions structured around African and Afro-Caribbean traditional songs and ritual movement, as well as textual material from the Christian Gnostic tradition. As an active process of research and questioning conducted through the "body-being" of the performer, the Grotowski work is a practical realization of the often highly theoretical and abstract discussions of one of the field's main preoccupations: embodied practice as a way of knowing.

This book opens a new interdisciplinary frontier between religion and theatre studies to illuminate what has been seen as the religious or spiritual nature of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski’s work.The central argument is that through an embodied, materialist approach to religion, and through a critical reading of the concepts of the New Age, a new understanding of Grotowski and religion can be developed. This is a vital reference for academics in both Religion and Theatre Studies that have an interest in the spiritual aspects of Grotowski’s work.

One of the original members of Jerzy Grotowski’s acting company, Zygmunt Molik’s Voice and Body Work explores the unique development of voice and body exercises throughout his career in actor training. This book, constructed from conversations between Molik and author Giuliano Campo, provides a fascinating insight into the methodology of this practitioner and teacher, and focuses on his ‘Body Alphabet’ system for actors, allowing them to combine both voice and body in their preparatory process.

In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory—conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances—offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

The autobiography-of-sorts of André Gregory, an iconic figure in American theater and the star of My Dinner with André This is Not My Memoir tells the life story of André Gregory, iconic theatre director, writer, and actor. For the first time, Gregory shares memories from a life lived for art, including stories from the making of My Dinner with André. Taking on the dizzying, wondrous nature of a fever dream, This is Not My Memoir includes fantastic and fantastical stories that take the reader from wartime Paris to golden-age Hollywood, from avant-garde theaters to monasteries in India. Along the way we meet Jerzy Grotowski, Helene Weigel, Gregory Peck, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Wallace Shawn, and many other larger-than-life personalities. This is Not My Memoir is a collaboration between Gregory and Todd London who create a portrait of an artist confronting his later years. Here, too, are the reflections of a man who only recently learned how to love. What does it mean to create art in a world that often places little value on the process of creating it? And what does it mean to confront the process of aging when your greatest work of art may well be your own life?

The Five Continents of Theatre undertakes the exploration of the material culture of the actor, which involves the actors’ pragmatic relations and technical functionality, their behaviour, the norms and conventions that interact with those of the audience and the society in which actors and spectators equally take part. The material culture of the actor is organised around body-mind techniques (see A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology by the same authors) and auxiliary techniques whose variety concern: ■ the diverse circumstances that generate theatre performances: festive or civil occasions, celebrations of power, popular feasts such as carnival, calendar recurrences such as New Year, spring and summer festivals; ■ the financial and organisational aspects: costs, contracts, salaries, impresarios, tickets, subscriptions, tours; ■ the information to be provided to the public: announcements, posters, advertising, parades; ■ the spaces for the performance and those for the spectators: performing spaces in every possible sense of the term; ■ sets, lighting, sound, makeup, costumes, props; ■ the relations established between actor and spectator; ■ the means of transport adopted by actors and even by spectators. Auxiliary techniques repeat themselves not only throughout different historical periods, but also across all theatrical traditions. Interacting dialectically in the stratification of practices, they respond to basic needs that are common to all traditions when a performance has to be created and staged. A comparative overview of auxiliary techniques shows that the material culture of the actor, with its diverse processes, forms and styles, stems from the way in which actors respond to those same practical needs. The authors’ research for this aspect of theatre anthropology was based on examination of practices, texts and of 1400 images, chosen as exemplars.

This acclaimed volume is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of Jerzy Grotowski's long and multi-faceted career. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Grotowski's life and work. Edited by the two leading experts on Grotowski, the sourcebook features: *essays from the key performance theorists who worked with Grotowski, including Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Jan Kott, Eric Bentley, Harold Clurman, and Charles Marowitz *writings which trace every phase of Grotowski's career from his 'theatre of production' to 'objective drama' and 'art as vehicle' *a wide-ranging collection of Grotowski's own writings, plus an interview with his closest collaborator and 'heir', Thomas Richards *an array of photographs documenting Grotowski and his followers in action *a historical-critical study of Grotowski by Richard Schechner.