Towards A Radically Relational Post-Grotowskian Performance Paradigm
Virginie Magnat
virginie.magnat@ubc.caUniversity of British Columbia (Canada)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5090-4513
Abstract
Jerzy Grotowski chose to name his College de France lecture series La „lignee organique” au theatre et dans le rituel (The „Organic Lineage” in Theatre and Ritual), and the author, who attended and documented these final public talks, contends in this article that organicity constitutes a through-line connecting Grotowski’s theatrical and post-theatrical research. The author draws from these talks, as well as from her Grotowski-based training, including her work with Rena Mirecka, and her research collaborations with Indigenous artists and scholars from Turtle Island (North America), including Floyd Favel, who worked with both Grotowski and Mirecka. The author points out that in diverse traditional cultural practices whose role it is to enhance, restore, and sustain balance between human and non-human forms of life, organicity is understood as a living force endowing performative processes with energy, power, and efficacy. The post-Grotowskian performance paradigm envisioned by the author hinges upon a non-anthropocentric perspective informed by the ecological and spiritual dimensions of relationality articulated by several generations of Indigenous scholars. She contends that such a paradigm shift, which challenges artistic practices glorifying human creative agency, can provide a viable alternative to the dominance of (Eurocentric) new materialist/posthumanist theories of non-human agency.
Keywords:
Jerzy Grotowski, Rena Mirecka, Indigenous epistemologies, non-anthropocentric performance, relationalityReferences
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Authors
Virginie Magnatvirginie.magnat@ubc.ca
University of British Columbia Canada
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5090-4513
Virginie Magnat - performance scholar-practitioner from Occitania, France. She is a Full Professor at the University of British Columbia and works at the intersection of performance studies, cultural anthropology, qualitative research, arts-based inquiry, and Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies. She is the author of two monographs: The Performative Power of Vocality (Routledge 2020) and Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance: Meetings with Remarkable Women (Routledge 2014), as well as the documentary film series Meetings with Remarkable Women featured on the Routledge Performance Archive (https://virginiemagnat.space/).
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