Tuesday's lesson

Tuesday was different to our normal lessons because we had mini lectures on three different theatre practitioners for the first two hours and the other two hours, we were running our immersive theatre pieces.

Firstly, we had three half hour lectures/workshop on three theatre directors and one group will focus on one director and one of their poems. These directors were Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook.
First, we had a workshop on Grotowski. Jerzy Grotowski (August 11 1933 - January 14 1999) was a polish theatre director who came up with poor theatre and the theatre laboratory. His work was inspired by quite a few religious books and the books of a russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky who wrote about phycology, philosophy and religion. Writings at the time of Grotowski were all naturalistic with props and he wanted to strip theatre down so it was just about the actor(s) and the audience. He called this "poor theatre" and if you were to see a piece of poor theatre it would seem quite budget, bare and just the actor on stage. But that way, you can concentrate purely on the actor. Grotowski also wanted everything on stage to be genuine. So if an actor was meant to be angry, they were well and truly angry and they weren't just acting. He liked his actors to be fit, spiritual and immersive. So he took them running for three hours straight. Though this would leave them exhausted (it's a no-brainer. Nobody goes jogging for three hours for the lols), it's a benefit for them when they're onstage because when you're tired you can get upset more easily and you're vunerable so it's somewhat easier to be onstage. As the actors were being honest on stage (he called this type of actor the "holy actor") the audience and actor will form a bond which Grotowski called a "communion". His choice of words demonstrates his love for religion.

Secondly, we had Peter Brook. He's also the only one of the three directors who is still alive. He is based in France (though he was born in london) and founded the International Centre for Theatre Research which is in the Theatre des Bouffes, which Peter took over for his theatre company in 1974. Peter Brook has also directed films too.

Lastly, we had Antonin Artaud who is the director we are studying (see the post I wrote about him)