Description:
For whom does the actor perform? Addressing this question, Acting after Grotowski focuses on an actor's work as a self-revelatory deed. Introducing Grotowski's concept of "carnal prayer," Kris Salata develops an interdisciplinary theory of acting and spectating, while lending thoughts to theatre as a liturgical performance.
Review Quotes:
Acting After Grotowski goes to the heart of the actor's work: not merely why we act, nor how, but, rather, the foundational inseparability of these two questions. Ranging freely across disciplines, from theatre, to philosophy, to religious studies, to neuroscience, Salata investigates the "Grotowski Question" - for whom do I perform? - seeking answers in both the legacy of practice embodied in the contemporary investigations of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, and in Grotowski's own writings on two key, hitherto under-examined, concepts: the "secure partner" and "carnal prayer." Rooting his analysis in a phenomenological approach to the scholar's act of bearing witness, Salata has written a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary work which speaks to multiple audiences: theatre artists, theatre scholars, and philosophers concerned with the nature of human encounter, and performance as embodied philosophical praxis.
Dr. Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva, author/editor: A History of Collective Creation, Collective Creation in Collective Performance, and Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance.