| Grotowski & Company. ¬ródła i wariacje |
 Author: Ludwik Flaszen Title: Grotowski & Company. ¬ródła i wariacje [Grotowski & Company: Sources and variations] Editor: Monika Blige Publisher: Instytut im. Jerzego Grotowskiego Date: October 2014 ISBN: 978-83-61835-09-7 Dimensions: 218×287 Paperback: 388 Price: 14 Euro Selected pages  “We are many who will be grateful to Ludwik Flaszen for this book. I cannot find a single superfluous word in it. It moves us through the laconic conciseness of the writing. The voice of this rebellious and astute author is unmistakably rooted in silence. His humour has the smile of one who is about to keep quiet. This is a book of theatrical wisdom. Flaszen goes straight to the centre of the problem without looking at the rest. The centre is the luminous and mocking utility of theatre in our life. The rest is the glory and its shadows. Glory and shadows belong to the adventure, by now legendary, to which Ludwik Flaszen gave life, summoning to his side a young theatre director, still a student, to lead together with him a small insignificant theatre in the provinces of Poland. The young pupil was Jerzy Grotowski who later turned into his ‘teacher’. This happened a long time ago, in 1959.” Eugenio Barba Ludwik Flaszen was a witness and participant in a great era of theatre. He co-founded the Laboratory Theatre, was its co-creator throughout the theatre’s life (1959–1984), and its head director in the 1980s. A critic, writer, Grotowski’s long-time partner in a creative dialogue, he himself became a theatre practitioner, leading paratheatrical actions and acting workshops in many countries. His first book, Głowa i mur (The Head and the Wall, 1958), was confiscated by the communist regime’s censors. He is also the author of Cyrograf (A Pact with the Devil), a collection of essays and short prose on the fate of the individual in a totalitarian society (first edition, 1971; latest edition, 1996, Kraków; French version, 1990, Paris), and a tome of sketches on theatre entitled Teatr skazany na magię (A Theatre Sentenced to Practise Magic; Kraków, 1983) containing texts and lectures about his collaboration with Grotowski and his contribution in establishing the creative doctrine of the Laboratory Theatre. In 2010 his book Grotowski & Company came out. Since then, it has been translated and published in Italian (2013), Polish (2014) and Portuguese (2015, in Brazil), and is being translated into French and Spanish. The University of Turin awarded Ludwik Flaszen an honorary doctorate for his artistic and academic work. Since 1984, following the dissolution of the Laboratory Theatre, he has lived in Paris. |