Selected Journal Articles
“Jerzy Grotowski’s 1997-1998 Conferences at Collège de France”
Journal of Theatre Anthropology no. 3-4, 2024, pp. 71-101. https://jta.ista-online.org/issue/view/3
(Open Access)
Abstract:
In 1997, Jerzy Grotowski, the founding director of the Polish Laboratory Theatre, was appointed by the Collège de France to the Chaire d'anthropologie théâtrale. However, instead of giving formal lectures at the Collège de France, Grotowski chose to speak extemporaneously about his work (in French) in various Parisian theatres. He thus gave nine public conferences from March 1997 to January 1998 under the title “La lignée organique au théâtre et dans le rituel.” I attended these talks and documented them for the Polish theatre journal Didaskalia in a series of articles published between 2004 and 2007. Polish scholar Leszek Kolankiewicz has edited my writing into a condensed version specifically for this publication.
“Towards A Radically Relational Post-Grotowskian Performance Paradigm”
PAMIĘTNIK TEATRALNY vol. 72, no. 4, 2023, pp. 11-31.
https://czasopisma.ispan.pl/index.php/pt/issue/view/159
(Open Access)
Abstract:
Jerzy Grotowski chose to name his Collège de France lecture series “La ‘lignée organique’ au théâtre et dans le rituel” [“The ‘Organic Lineage’ in Theatre and Ritual”]. Having attended and documented these final public talks, I contend in this article that organicity constitutes a through-line connecting Grotowski’s theatrical and post-theatrical research. I draw from these talks, as well as from my Grotowski-based training, including my work with Rena Mirecka, and my research collaborations with Indigenous artists and scholars from Turtle Island (North America), including Floyd Favel, who worked with both Grotowski and Mirecka. I point 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 that I envision hinges upon a non-anthropocentric perspective informed by the ecological and spiritual dimensions of relationality articulated by several generations of Indigenous scholars. I argue 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, relationality
“The Stanislavsky-Grotowski Lineage”
Part I: Stanislavski Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 2023, pp. 45-62.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20567790.2023.2196286
Part II: Stanislavski Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 2023, pp. 141-152.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20567790.2023.2246998
Abstracts:
Part I: The connection between Konstantin Stanislavsky and Jerzy Grotowski is often overlooked or underplayed because there are substantial distinctions between them in terms of practices and approaches. In Part I of this essay, I examine Grotowski’s reflection on the significance of Stanislavsky’s final experiments for his own artistic research, I identify key points of connection between the Russian and Polish directors’ respective investigations of performance processes, and I foreground these convergences as particularly consequential in the context of the often-divergent genealogies of twentieth century theatre historiography.
Keywords: Yoga; physical actions; impulses; organicity; associations; physical score; work on oneself
Part II: In the second part of this essay, I explore the implications of the Stanislavsky-Grotowski lineage and its legacy for contemporary performance research by relating Stanislavsky’s idiosyncratic usage of the term perezhivanie, translated by Martin Kurten as “conscious experience,” to the neuroscientific investigation of embodied experience, discussed by Rhonda Blair, and to Grotowski’s own conception of consciousness as a form of embodied awareness. I then focus on a crucial point of convergence between the Russian and Polish directors’ respective approaches lying beyond the purview of neuroscience, namely, the correlation between the physical and the spiritual, prompting Sharon Carnicke to invent the neologism “physiospiritual.” I infer that the legacy of the Stanislavsky-Grotowski lineage consists in an expanded notion of perezhivanie that I relate to philosopher Alva Noë’s phenomenological understanding of the interrelation of consciousness and experience.
Keywords: experiencing, consciousness, neuroscience, aesthesis, embodiment, psychophysical, physiospiritual
“(K)new Materialisms: Honouring Indigenous Perspectives”
Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada, vol.43, no. 1, 2022, pp. 24-37.
https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.43.1.a01
(Open Access)
Abstract:
This article foregrounds the Indigenous ethical principles of respect, reciprocity, relationality, and responsibility that bind human and other/more-than-human agents, a non-anthropocentric conception of agency that may be said to offer a truly radical, if not “new,” eco-critical approach to the crucial questions raised by new materialist and posthumanist scholars. I argue that what distinguishes this understanding of agency from Karen Barad’s influential theory of agential realism is the non-separability of matter and spirit posited by Indigenous scholars Vine Deloria Jr., Gregory Cajete, Manulani Aluli-Meyer, and Shawn Wilson, among others. I contend that holding space for Indigenous philosophy, which values orally transmitted embodied ways of knowing, contributes to decentring, unsettling, and decolonizing Eurocentric paradigms that still inform dominant knowledge systems in the academy, and I suggest that the scholarship of Dylan Robinson and Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, who critically engage with new materialism/posthumanism, opens up possibilities for much-needed cross-cultural dialogue.
Keywords: Indigenous philosophy, agency, power, materiality, spirituality, affective, decolonial
Résumé :
Cet article met au premier plan les principes éthiques autochtones de respect, de réciprocité, de relation et de responsabilité qui lient les agents humains aux agents autres-qu’humains ou plus-qu’humains – conception non anthropocentrique de l’agentivité dont on peut dire qu’elle propose une approche écocritique véritablement radicale, à défaut d’être nouvelle, des questions cruciales soulevées par les recherches fondées sur les nouveaux matérialismes et le posthumanisme. Je défends l’idée que la distinction entre cette compréhension de l’agentivité et celle de Karen Barad dans son influente théorie du réalisme agentiel est la non-séparabilité de la matière et de l’esprit postulée par les chercheuses et chercheurs autochtones Vine Deloria Jr, Gregory Cajete, Manulani Aluli Meyer et Shawn Wilson, entre autres. Je soutiens que le fait de faire honneur à la philosophie autochtone, qui valorise les méthodes de savoir incarnées transmises oralement, contribue à décentrer, déstabiliser et décoloniser les paradigmes eurocentristes qui structurent encore les systèmes de connaissance dominants dans le monde universitaire; je montre que les travaux de Dylan Robinson et de Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, par leur approche critique du matérialisme et du posthumanisme, ouvrent de nombreuses possibilités à un dialogue interculturel plus nécessaire que jamais.
Mots clés : philosophie autochtone, agentivité, pouvoir, matérialité, spiritualité, affectivité, décolonisation
“HÍSW̱ḴE”
(SENĆOŦEN word used to express gratitude, to give thanks)
Special Issue “Performance Training and Well-Being,” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training vol. 13, no. 2, 2022, pp. 344-345.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19443927.2022.2066393
(Open Access)
“A Traveling Ethnography of Voice in Qualitative Research”
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, vol. 18, no. 6, 2018, pp. 430-441.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532708617742407
Abstract:
This interdisciplinary exploration of voice seeks to open a space for the non-discursive performative power of vocality in qualitative research. In the first part, I focus on anthropology and ethnographic practice to identify the ways in which “voice” gets muted when transformed by scriptocentrism (see Dwight Conquergood) into a conceptual abstraction or a metaphor. Given anthropology’s colonial legacy and the implication of ethnographers in what Anthony Kwame Harrison defines as the project of literatizing non-literate societies, I argue that the potentially scriptocentric dimension of ethnographic practice must be taken seriously in light of the travels of ethnography across disciplines and its increasingly widespread usage within qualitative inquiry. In the second part, I foreground philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s critique of the devocalization of logos in Western philosophy and its analysis by interdisciplinary voice studies scholar Konstantinos Thomaidis, who investigates the systematic exclusion, marginalization and silencing of voice through Eurocentric constructions of logos as reason and as language. By means of an imaginary visit to ancient Greece, I scrutinize Plato’s anxiety vis-à-vis performance through an ethnographic encounter with the Ion, a dialogue between Socrates and a well-known champion of rhapsodic contests. On the basis of this performative ethnographic fieldwork, I suggest that conducting qualitative research on the significance and relevance of vocality today requires listening to, engaging with, and learning from the voices of ancient and contemporary oral cultural practitioners.
« Chanter la diversité culturelle en Occitanie: Ethnographie performative d’une tradition réimaginée »
Anthropologica Vol. 60 Issue 2, 2018, pp. 439-456.
https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/176/198
(Open Access)
Abstract:
This performative ethnography of Occitan cultural resurgence through the practice of traditional song and music is situated at the intersection of anthropology, ethnomusicology, sociology, and the interdisciplinary field of performance studies. Based on my fieldwork in Occitania as an artist-scholar, I propose a critical and reflexive approach that combines the imaginary with historicity and the legendary with the performative to question the future of an intercultural musical tradition which I associate with my Mediterranean roots. Aiming to produce what D. Soyini Madison (2012) calls a performance of possibilities, I let us see/read/imagine an Occitania revitalized by diversity, inclusion, and solidarity, thereby offering an alternative to nationalist constructions of cultural identity rooted in France’s colonialist legacy and to the disturbing resurgence of far-right movements in Europe.
Résumé :
Cette ethnographie performative de la résurgence culturelle occitane par la pratique du chant et de la musique traditionnels se situe à la croisée de l’anthropologie, l’ethnomusicologie, la sociologie, et le champ interdisciplinaire des performance studies. Nourri par le travail de terrain que je mène en Occitanie en tant qu’artiste-chercheure, cet article propose une démarche critique et réflexive alliant l’imaginaire à l’historicité et le légendaire au performatif pour interroger le devenir d’une tradition musicale interculturelle que j’associe à mes racines méditerranéennes. Afin de produire ce que D. Soyini Madison (2012) nomme performance of possibilities [la performance des possibles], je donne à voir/lire/imaginer une Occitanie revitalisée par la diversité, l’inclusion et la solidarité afin d’offrir une alternative aux constructions nationalistes de l’identité culturelle ancrées dans l’héritage colonialiste de la France ainsi qu’à l’inquiétante recrudescence des mouvements d’extrême droite en Europe.
“We Came Singing”
co-authored with Jill Carter and Mariel Belanger for alt.theatre: Cultural Diversity and the Stage vol. 14, no. 3, 2018, pp. 28-32.
https://issuu.com/alt.theatre
Abstract:
This co-authored article is based on the performative presentation “Singing Circles: Honoring Cultural Diversity through Intergenerational and Cross-Cultural Collective Vocal Practice” co-created with Indigenous Advisory Committee members Dr. Jill Carter and Dr. Vicki Kelly as well as Indigenous Graduate Research Assistants Mariel Belanger and Cori Derickson for the SSHRC-funded project “The Performative Power of Vocality,” Canadian Association of Theatre Research annual conference, Toronto, May 2017.
“Decolonizing Performance Research”
Special Issue “Performance Studies” edited by Marie Pecorari. Études Anglaises - revue du monde anglophone, vol. 69, no. 2, April-June 2016, pp. 135-148.
https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-etudes-anglaises-2016-2-page-131.htm
Abstract:
This essay examines the potentialities and limitations of the Anglo-American performance paradigm. It discusses the epistemological and methodological implications of the “performance turn” in the social sciences. It considers the Indigenous critique of dominant Western knowledge systems that support a form of cultural imperialism privileging binary thinking and mind-body dualism. The exploration of the strands of scholarship emphasizing the political dimension echoes Diana Taylor’s dual concepts of archive and repertoire, material traces and non-written performance, exposing the social and cultural biases behind the archive’s supposed neutrality.
« Performativité et Théâtralité aux Etats-Unis »
Théâtre/Public, vol. 205, 2012, pp. 22-26.
http://theatrepublic.fr/theatrepublic-n%c2%b0205/
Résumé :
Aux États-Unis, si l’étude de la performativité dépasse largement le champ de recherche des études théâtrales traditionnelles, celle-ci déborde également du domaine multidisciplinaire baptisé par Richard Schechner Performance Studies. Cependant, malgré le fait que les chercheurs américains qui utilisent le concept de performativité appartiennent à diverses formations disciplinaires, et bien qu’ils soient partagés sur la définition exacte de ce concept, il est clair qu’ils ont en commun une certaine conception philosophique du Sujet, conception qu’ils qualifient eux-mêmes d’« anti-essentialiste ». Cette prise de position, qui constitue depuis les années 1980 un véritable cri de ralliement pour un grand nombre d’intellectuels de gauche américains, sert à la fois de pierre de touche et de bouclier aux théoriciens de la performativité, souvent accusés à tort ou à raison de contribuer au flou académique du paysage américain universitaire. Cela dit, si la théorie postmoderne américaine pèche par son jargon indigeste, souvent rédhibitoire, il faut bien admettre que c’est parce que ce dernier est calqué en grande partie sur le modèle français. En effet, Foucault, Derrida ainsi que plusieurs autres théoriciens français de la postmodernité sont devenus de véritables monstres sacrés outre-Atlantique et y occupent des places de superstars au box office universitaire. Cependant, en dépit des problèmes de spécificité culturelle et historique liés à ce type d’import-export intellectuel, il ne faut pas manquer de souligner que l’érosion accélérée des fondements du modernisme qui en découle a été particulièrement bénéfique au développement d’une pensée critique américaine transdisciplinaire. Celle-ci a notamment permis aux pionniers des théories poststructuralistes, postmarxistes, postcoloniales, ainsi que des théories du genre et de l’identité, y compris l’identité raciale, de se développer et d’exercer une forte influence dans le milieu universitaire américain.
“Can Research Become Ceremony? Performance Ethnography and Indigenous Epistemologies”
Canadian Theatre Review 151 (Summer 2012): 30-36.
https://ctr.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/ctr.151.30
Abstract:
Pioneered by Victor Turner and further developed by Dwight Conquergood and Norman K. Denzin, performance ethnography foregrounds the experiential, reflexive, intersubjective, and embodied dimensions of performance. Moreover, performance ethnography proposes to integrate the Indigenous critique of Euro-American research, and supports collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars. How, then, might Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies rooted in traditional cultural practices contribute to the future(s) of performance ethnography? Decolonizing performance ethnography necessarily entails redefining both ethnographic research, shaped by the contested discipline of anthropology, and performance practice, linked to Euro-American conceptions of theatre. Drawing from the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Manulani Aluli-Meyer, Shawn Wilson, and Floyd Favel, I ask whether performance ethnography, informed and possibly transformed by Indigenous perspectives, can become a way of engaging in research that contributes not only to our survival, but to the survival of all living species and of the natural world which we co-inhabit.
“Conducting Embodied Research at the Intersection of Performance Studies, Experimental Ethnography, and Indigenous Methodologies”
Anthropologica, vol. 53, no. 2, 2011, pp. 213-227.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41473875?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Abstract:
Grounding embodied research in Indigenous methodologies as well as feminist, sensory and experimental ethnography, I propose an alternative performance-based approach modelled on the creative work of women from different cultures and generations who collaborated with influential theatre innovator Jerzy Grotowski. I infer from my experimental fieldwork and embodied research on the work of these artists that positionality, relationality, relevance, respect, and reciprocity are critical to articulating experiential ways of cognition beyond the limitations imposed by dominant conceptions of knowledge.
“La filiación Stanislavski-Grotowski”
[The Stanislavski-Grotowski Lineage]
Trans. Desiderio Navarro. Criterios, International Journal of Theory, Literature, Arts and Culture, nº 36 (2009), Havana, Cuba: 339-384.
Abstract:
The focus on psychological realism that characterizes Euro-American discourses on Stanislavski tends to obscure the pioneering research that the Russian director conducted towards the end of his life, research upon which Grotowski based his own approach to performance. In this paper, I relate Stanislavski’s investigation of the actor’s “work on oneself” to Grotowski’s post-Stanislavskian performance research through the discussion of a number of critical connections between the two director’s influential perspectives. I address the questions of transmission and legacy; examine Grotowski’s understanding of Stanislavski’s System, with a particular focus on the Method of Physical Actions; and investigate the relationship between embodiment and interculturalism within Stanislavski and Grotowski’s respective exploration of performance processes.
“Devising Utopia, or Asking for the Moon”
Theatre Topics, Vol. 15, no. 1 (March 2005) Special Issue on Devising: 73-86.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/180840
Abstract:
Rather than contrasting the seemingly chaotic dimension of devising with the supposedly more reliable processes of “conventional” approaches to theatre-making, I argue that it might be more productive to envision devised theatre as offering a “third way” beyond the constraints of such binary oppositions. This promising conception of devising was evoked by Canadian director Robert Lepage on May 11, 2001, during his address to the faculty and student body of the University of California, Davis, prior to performing The Far Side of the Moon, his acclaimed devised solo piece. To provide a concrete example of devising in the academy, I discuss the creation of Interruptions, a U.C. Davis Mainstage production, which, incidentally, closed only a few days prior to Lepage’s solo on the very same stage. Interruptions was created over a three-month rehearsal period by Annabel Arden, a British Lecoq-trained actor/director and founding member of Théâtre de Complicité, along with British playwright Stephen Jeffreys and a group of twelve U.C. Davis actors comprising six women (including myself) and six men selected by Arden and Jeffreys during preliminary auditions. I infer from my comparison of Lepage’s and Arden’s respective approaches to devising that when trying to make a case for devised theatre in the academy, it is critical to foreground the utopian dimension of collectively created work, inasmuch as devising reflects the desire to engage in a mutual endeavor whose goal is the active involvement of each participant in the overall process. From this perspective, the teaching of devising exposes students to the broader existential question of how human beings can learn to live and work together.
« Cette vie n’est pas suffisante: de l’acteur selon Stanislavski au performer selon Grotowski »
Théâtre/Public 153 (2000): 4-19.
https://theatrepublic.fr/n%c2%b0153-jerzy-grotowski-%e2%80%93-konstantin-stanislavski-%e2%80%93-theatres-de-ville-et-compagnies-theatrales/#more-117
Résumé:
La série de conférences publiques données par Jerzy Grotowski à Paris de mars 97 à janvier 98 a contribué à mettre une nouvelle et ultime fois en lumière les liens de parenté fondamentaux qui existent entre la recherche menée par Konstantin Stanislavski sur l’art de l’acteur et celle du fondateur du Théâtre Laboratoire portant sur le processus du « performer », comme je le démontre dans cet article.