In Spanish, with simultaneous Polish translation

The focus of the lecture will be Desarraigo, a production directed by Ryszard Cieślak and María Isabel González Múñoz. The piece premiered on 8 September 1984 in El Teatro Municipal de Albacete, Spain, and then played at the 7th Almagro International Classical Theatre Festival on 30 September 1984.

The co-director and co-writer of the piece, María Isabel González Múñoz, will talk about her collaboration with Ryszard Cieślak. She will illustrate her lecture with photos and film footage.

María Isabel González Múñoz is a lecturer at Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático (RESAD), Madrid. She collaborated with Laboratory Theatre’s actors Ryszard Cieślak and Rena Mirecka. She is a co-founder and Director of the Vagalume theatre centre in Vigo, Spain. She has directed and wrote numerous performance pieces.

Ryszard Cieślak was born on 9 March 1937 in Kalisz and died on 15 June 1990 in Houston. Having completed his secondary education in Kalisz, Cieślak studied at Łódź and Kraków Polytechnics before joining the Puppetry Department at the Kraków State Theatre School (PWST). It was there that he became acquainted with Grotowski, who in 1961 employed him at the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole. He played Esau and Hector in Akropolis and Wagner, Valdes and Benvolio in Dr Faustus. Cieślak and Grotowski entered a period of close and intensive collaboration connected with the role of Don Fernando in The Constant Prince. His role of Ciemny (Simpleton) in Apocalypsis cum Figuris became legendary. Following the Laboratory Theatre’s performances in the US in autumn 1969, Cieślak was declared the year’s best off-Broadway actor by New York theatre critics. In 1972 he became actively involved in paratheatrical work, within what was initially known as the Special Project. In 1981 Cieślak was in charge of work on the collective piece Tanatos polski [Polish thanatos]. From 1982 he worked mainly abroad, leading numerous theatre courses and workshops as well as theatre projects. He was also active as a theatre director (Aleph: Impressioni da un Inferno, Pontedera, 1983; Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Ǻrhus, 1987) and actor (Mahabharata directed by Peter Brook, 1985). From September 1989 he was employed as a visiting professor at the New York University Tisch School of Arts.
More information: www.grotowski.net/encyklopedia/cieslak-ryszard

Lecture as part of the Open University of Research

The lecture is co-organized by the Department of Romance Studies at the University of Wrocław.