A. I'd like to talk about that in general because it is a central issue in all our work. Each piece dictates how you approach that issue. Like. in Endgame, if I could say it is about something. I believe it is about presence, Hamm at some point says to Cloy-You know what. I never realized I was never there. it all happened without me-meaning. I think, that one can be in the place that something is happening bodily but really not be there. And being there is something that really counts. Later Cloy says-I say to myself. Cloy you've got to be there better than that if you don't want to suffer anymore. Everyone in the audience is there bodily, but how there they are physically is terrifically important in Endgame. And getting to the other pieces we have done. all through the history of the Open Theatre we've been concerned with the fact that the audience and the performers are in the same room.

On a Trip

Q. I know Jean-Claude Van Italie in the published script of the Serpent talks about almost guiding the andience on a trip.

A. Right. Here is a ritual the spectator is being led through-we're guides. In Terminal we talked about being as well, but not quite in the same way. Terminal is really a meditation. It's our meditation of death as a political metaphor. We have come to the point of calling on the audience to meditate on the same themes. A meditation, it seems to me, can be very, very active, one can run, can jog and be meditating, and one can be lying flat on the ground and doing a yoga exercise and also be meditating. What seems consistent to me is that the mind clears and then things enter and leave it at its own pattern from person to person. Terminal is a projection of a group meditation on certain themes and it calls upon the audience to enter that meditation at its will, so that one may recede from it and enter it. And one may go away meditating on the same questions, coming up with other conclusions or similar conclusions or whatever. It attempts to stimulate the same themes in other peoplee's minds.

In the early days of looking into this question of audience presence many theatres became involved, as we did, in going into the auditorium and acting out that we were all present-touching people, having very direct physical contact with the audience. It becomes clearer and clearer that this is not necessarily the most meaningful form of focusing on the fact that we are all present in the same room. If I touch you it doesn't necessarily make a deeper connection than if I'm standing a hundred yards away from you. Every piece dictates, if you look at it carefully, what kind of contact is appropriate for the material, aesthetically, politically, and otherwise. We're trying with each piece we do to look into it in a way that is unique to that material.

Q. Jerzy Grotowski talks about the concept of theatre as a laboratory for the encounter between people and that he as producer-director is responsil?le for coordinating two groups. the actors and the spectators. He doesn't touch people but is very concerned with the psychic communication involved. His method of rchearsal which he calls via negativa, is a stripping away of any barrier between the actor and the spectutor: he says that even the text is a barrer because it is just one more metaphor separating and so it too must be made subservient to the actor-spectator relationship. It just has to be total communication. Now, this seems to work for him in his special situation. What do you think about Grotowski in relation to what we've just been discussing?

A. Well, I think a lot of things about Grotowski. The first thing I must say is that I saw most of his work and I have spoken to him. I have a great deal of respect for what he is trying to do and have a very strong response to the work itself. My feeling is that he is more successful in that situation where the audience is Polish. Not only because of the question of understanding the language, because I think the way in which it is spoken, the special use of speech makes the words impossible for a Pole to understand also. But I think the environment in which he plays, the situation of being in Poland and Polish makes his work more accessible to the audience than it does for us. I didn't see the success of that communication when it played in the States. I felt myself moved by it in the way I have been moved by great paintings, not by the way I have been moved by a live presence.

Q. That's strange because Grotowski doesn't want his theatre to be like a painting-that is exactly the spectacle aspect he is trying to get away from. He says that is what a movie can be and that is what television can be but theatre must concentrate on its essence. he relationship between the actor and the spectator. And so we have to get rid of all the costumes and props and lights and everything just to get that. So, in fact, your comment is an expression of the ultimate failure of his work for you.

A. Well. it's a very difficult question because he's stripped away all of those things that you just listed. When he works with the actor he says that the first thing he does is to try to strip away all that is exterior. All the exercises, all the things they do. are to get rid of. to take away, everything that is not essence. Tht process of stripping away as a concept is excellent. The problem I find is that frequently what happens when the actor has stripped away body tension and he is entrapped in its place is the trappings of the stripping away. So that he's stripped away body tension and heis entrapped in acrobaties. You know, things such as that. One sort of set of trappings ends up replacing the old set and when that happens I think you haven't gone very far. I think with some of his actors that isn't the case, that they have actually gotten a certain essence which is deeply human.

What I found also really amazing about him is that I saw Akropolis both live and on television it was incredibly moving to me. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and in some ways really participating in. And in person it was at a great distance from me and one if the things I could conclude is that his work must have suffered greatly from being presented in New York City where it was extremely difficult to get tickets for it, where there was a great kind of atmosphere of importance about this event. It was unfortunately for something called "the poor theatre," a real, big, fancy New York event. And I can't blame Grotowski for it, I can only blame New York.

Q. He defends elitism for Poland.

A. But you see elitism in his terms are not the same terms as New York elitism. I think there is nothing wrong with the idea that for example that he works for a certain audience and that audience is genuinely interested in what he is doing. That form of elitism seems fine. If you say to yourself theatre can't really change the world: it can move things a little bit, it can give support to certain things, it can enrich some people's experience. It can't make a revolution, I don't think it has ever done that. I mean a psychic revolution as well as an actual one in the streets. I think it can cause a psychic revolution in an individual, I don't think it can in a large group of people. I think it can affect individuals, I don't think it can affect masses. If you agree with that then you can also agree with an idea that theatre can be made for special audiences. The thing I think was wrong with the elitism in New York, as must be the case in Paris or London, is that special audiences that are sensitive to his work are not the audiences that are the elite audiences. In New York it was the culture vultures. . . .

Theatre and Polities

Q. What place do you think theatre can play in American radical polities?

A. That is a very, very complicated question. One place of it is that people working in the theatre must confront themselves with the question. That's the first step. I don't think it can be summed up and answered neatly.

Q. How have you in the Open Theatre confronted the question of your own involvement in politics?

A. When I first started in the Open Theatre my political activities were personal. Later, many of us have tried to and successfully informed, influenced-whatever you want to call it-the rest of the people in the group. We've radicalized one another in many ways. We've tried to commit ourselves to situations which would educate us and continue to re-educate us all the time and to act on that education. Sometimes that meant playing in the dullest upstate New York communities in the world and at other times doing things that I suppose arenot supposed to be done like being arrested at a draft resistance demonstration, although that's unpleasant.