# The (Hidden) Fourth Way of Jerzy Grotowski ## The (Hidden) Fourth Way of Jerzy Grotowski Catharine Dada ![Blue Rectangle](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-01/Screen%20Shot%202025-01-22%20at%204.46.20%20PM.png?itok=0fG7fqHu) ## The (Hidden) Fourth Way of Jerzy Grotowski Since there is a wealth of academic writing about the work of Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) already in circulation, I thought it best to begin by offering a more personal reflection on my experience comparing the lives and work of these two men. I will then move into a more academic assessment of the theatrical explorations of Grotowski in light of G. I. Gurdjieff’s work. Although he did not want to be seen as a Fourth Way teacher, and in many respects did not want to be openly associated with Gurdjieff, I believe that Jerzy Grotowski could easily be considered as a Fourth Way teacher working in theater, in spite of himself. The striking similarities between the two men and their work are numerous and convincing. Grotowski is widely honored in the theater world and understood to have been involved in creating what have been called “spiritual experiences” within theater movements of the late twentieth century.[1](#references) His work articulated experiences of the spiritual within the performer’s or the "doer’s" body. It has been said that Grotowski’s work revolutionized theater, and yet for the last several years of his life he worked in seclusion with an intimate group of actors. Obviously, there were discussions among theater scholars about whether the later stages of his work could really be called “theatrical” if there was no audience present, but the consensus is that his work with actors continued to be theatrical. The audience involved in the later phases of his work was the performer themselves. And, it could be argued, one also performed for the “other,” who was always present. Research on the extraordinary parallels between these two men formed a chapter of my doctoral thesis, which explored Grotowski’s work through the lens of religious studies. When I defended my thesis, I did so in the United Kingdom with one of the world’s three greatest Grotowski scholars as an examiner. He himself was shocked to learn about many of these parallels, even though—at that time, and according to his own research—there were over 700,000 academic articles written about Grotowski’s work. Not one had referenced the full extent of Gurdjieff’s influence on Grotowski, even though almost every aspect of Grotowski’s later work was touched in some way by his apparent fascination with Gurdjieff. Later, when I was preparing my book about Grotowski for Routledge, one of the theater scholars, a peer review reader for the chapter paralleling Grotowski’s work to Gurdjieff’s, was so offended by it that he refuted these facts outright. He cited the party line: that Grotowski was influenced by Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938), as stated by literally hundreds of articles and theater texts. He then suggested that Gurdjieff most likely had modeled himself on Grotowski! Never mind that Gurdjieff whad long been dead and buried by the time that Grotowski started working. In his mind the sanctity of Grotowski’s work was such that he believed all the underpinnings of Grotowski’s method had been invented by the man alone. However, I believe that only a few of Grotowski’s post-1982 theatrical explorations were grounded in his own unique ideas. Everything—his manner of working, what he was exploring, his exactitude, his persona—could be seen to be closely modeled on Gurdjieff’s work and behavior. Whether he acknowledged it publicly or not, Grotowski’s work was deeply and indelibly influenced by Gurdjieff. Having said that, I do wish to make it clear that Grotowski’s theatrical work was tremendous. This personal reflective offering is not in any way to disrespect the inroads that Grotowski made in his time, but to acknowledge that he was influenced by his own fascination with Gurdjieff, even if he didn’t want to be seen to be “copying” Gurdjieff. Grotowski claims not to have read any material about, or by, Gurdjieff until his own theatrical ideas were already set. Even in 1991, when Grotowski was interviewed by his friend, English theater director and Fourth Way practitioner Peter Brook (1925–2022)—an interview that was included in Needleman and Baker’s 1996 text about Gurdjieff[2](#references)—he stated that when he was writing his famous text *Towards a Poor Theatre (TAPT)* and developing his own ideas, he had not known who Gurdjieff was.[3](#references) Yet, it is not in *TAPT* that the similarities between Grotowski’s work and Gurdjieff’s are apparent, but in the later *Objective Drama* phase of his work, which began during his time at the University of California, Irvine. He later claimed in the same interview that the work of Gurdjieff was “only somewhat important”[4](#references) to him. Yet, ten years after Grotowski’s death, Polish theater scholar and practitioner Zbigniew Osiński stated that before Grotowski left Poland for America in 1982, Grotowski gave him a copy of *Meetings with Remarkable Men*, claiming that it was a great and important text.[5](#references) He stated that Grotowski considered Gurdjieff to be a personal icon. Osiński notes that not long after this exchange, Grotowski was in America, setting up his *Objective Drama* work at Irvine. Osiński stated that he believed the spiritual understandings and impulses that Grotowski pursued in the last phases of his life’s work were “ . . . *strongly inspired by Gurdjieff*.”[6](#references) The two official texts written by or about Grotowski, *Towards a Poor Theatre* and *The Grotowski Sourcebook*, were each entirely vetted by Grotowski who maintained full editorial control over all material written about him in both texts. The references to Gurdjieff in *The Grotowski Sourcebook,* published in 1997 when Grotowski was still alive, were only nominal. #### The Five Phases of Grotowski’s Theatrical Explorations Grotowski’s work spanned five different phases, a distinction made by theater scholars, not by himself, although Grotowski did not disagree with them. ##### Theater of Productions (1958—1969) Grotowski first came to fame in Poland working in the Theatre of the 13 Rows in what was known as his *Theatre of Productions* phase. His work during this time was universally recognized as groundbreaking, even though it occurred in a small theater. His idea of a “poor theatre” originated here. Grotowski believed that there was no way for the theater to compete with film and television as a medium for either grand spectacle or realism—these experiences could be better provided through the media of film and television. He believed that the theater should instead provide a location for breaking the barriers between an actor and an audience. ##### Paratheatre (1969—1975) Here Grotowski decided that his theatrical explorations could be rooted into ritual events. He experimented widely and wildly with a variety of forms of expression; seeking to obliterate the distinction between performer and spectator—although, at his own admission, this didn’t always work. It was during this time that his public persona was garnering attention in a way that might lead one to suspecting that he was a spiritual teacher. He did eventually forgo the methods of working that he had instigated during this time because he noted that often (although not always) the responses elicited from among the participants devolved into the banal and clichéd. ##### Theatre of Sources (1976–1982) The belief that one could use the medium of theater as a vehicle for the performer to come into closer connection with something greater within him/herself led Grotowski to a personal quest to study the works of great Indian saints, and to study some of the world’s ancient traditions. This next phase of Grotowski’s work was named *Theatre of Sources*. During these years he travelled extensively, exploring ritual and theater from an anthropological perspective. ##### Objective Drama (1983–1984) Grotowski never returned to Poland and after a year lecturing at Columbia University, he was able to ground the next phase of his work—the *Objective Drama* phase—at the University of California, Irvine. Here he was given a one-year research grant to explore the isolation of consciousness within performative elements, including voice, movement, rhythms, sound and the use of space, in the context of exploring techniques of sacred movement. Cultures and rituals that were explored during this time included Balinese incantations and songs, Haitian vodun rituals, Korean shamanic dances and songs, Japanese karate, and the whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes. He believed these movements had a tangible effect on the energetic presence of the participant. For texts he used the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and sacred Vedic texts. During this time, we can observe the genesis of Grotowski’s work actively folding the precepts of Gurdjieff’s work into his own, without publicly acknowledging it. There is a distinct parallel between Gurdjieff’s concept of *Objective Art* and Grotowski’s *Objective Drama*. It was more than just the use of the word *objective* that aligned the two men’s paths. Just as Gurdjieff’s dances were created with the intent of focusing on the inner development of the participants, so were Grotowski’s Motions. The exactitude and precision that is required by Gurdjieff’s Movements was also required in Grotowski’s Motions work. Certainly, the degree of commitment that was required by Gurdjieff’s work was also a necessary and vital component in the theatrical work undertaken by Grotowski’s performers. Like Gurdjieff, Grotowski also chose to shun performances for a paying audience, although, as with Gurdjieff, a few people were selectively invited to attend. The focus on Grotowski’s work from the *Objective Drama* phase onwards was on the development of the individual rather than anything that might prove interesting to a regular paying audience. It was Zbigniew Osiński who, after carefully exploring possible parallels between Grotowski’s work and Carl Gustav Jung’s “objective unconscious,” suggested that it might be “more profitable to link it to the distinction between objective art and subjective art made by Gurdjieff.”[8](#references) That was all that was stated while Grotowski was still alive. Other theater scholars suggested parallels between Grotowski’s *Objective Drama* phase, and Thomas Stearns Eliot’s literary critical concept, the *objective correlative*. At the time that Eliot was exploring his understanding of the *objective correlative* he was regularly attending P.D. Ouspensky’s meetings in London, although none of the theater scholars who pursued the *objective correlative* concept tracked Eliot’s ideas to Ouspensky or to Gurdjieff. Richard Schechner, arguably one of Grotowski’s most important links to the world of theater academia, only read about Gurdjieff’s work long after the genesis of his involvement with Grotowski. He notes that he was “immediately struck by the parallels,”[9](#references) which suggests that Grotowski did not tell him about Gurdjieff, although Schechner was working in an observational capacity with Grotowski on the *Objective Drama* phase at Irvine. ##### Art as Vehicle (1984–1999) The *Objective Drama* phase came to an end after a year at UC Irvine. Grotowski landed in the Tuscan hills in the village of Pontedera, where this experimental and precise theatrical work continued until his death in 1999. In keeping with his understanding of the importance of transmission, Grotowski renamed the center *The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards*. Richards was Grotowski’s chosen successor, who he met during the work at Irvine. This final phase of his work was named by his friend Peter Brook: *Art as vehicle.* An exploration of the pieces that evolved at the Workcenter yield many parallels to Gurdjieff’s work: performers had to have the ability to repeat the moves with a heightened degree of precision during the daily repetitions. In the context of formulating a movement, the guiding impulse was always to transform the body into a force of, and for, expansive intelligence. The discipline required an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual commitment. Gurdjieff’s process of self-observation and self-remembering can be seen to have strong parallels in Grotowski’s “work on oneself”—a basic tenet in the *Art as vehicle* phase. Grotowski also made use of the words “mechanical” and “essence" in the same way that Gurdjieff did. Both teachers used the concept of being asleep and spoke of the necessity of waking up. Grotowski also explored concepts of ascent, descent, and verticality in this phase. Without calling it as such, descriptions of Grotowski’s work by those who were his practitioners almost exactly describe an exploration of Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation. As with Gurdjieff, those who worked with Grotowski spoke of being pushed to the limits of their physical endurance, which was ostensibly done to wake them up. Grotowski didn’t make it easy for people to find or be acquainted with his work. Like Gurdjieff, he believed that this was part of the process. The overcoming of obstacles meant that his ideas would be more valued by the participant. Finally, Grotowski could even be seen as a guru figure, influencing the lives of those actors who worked with him, also paralleling Gurdjieff’s actions in the lives of his disciples. Perhaps the best final word on these parallels should come from Peter Brook, a man who had publicly given his life to, and celebrated, Gurdjieff. Among his many other activities regarding Gurdjieff’s work, Brook directed the film *Meetings with Remarkable Men* (1979) and was a friend and lifelong champion of Grotowski’s work. At Brook’s first exposure to Grotowski’s work, he believed he had found an “ . . . *emissary of a lost branch of Gurdjieff’s school*.”[9](#references) The similarities between the work of these two men are more than superficial. Grotowski’s transformative theater work shows strong and indelible elements of being influenced by Gurdjieff’s ideas, practices and behavior. ### Author Biography Catharine Dada studied at Cambridge and trained as a classical actress at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company as an actress. She holds an MA (Hons) in The Study of Mysticism & Religious Experience and a PhD in Religious Studies both from the University of Kent, UK. As a producer her films have won numerous international awards and accolades. As a professor, Catharine teaches at Loyola Marymount University. She is particularly interested in exploring spiritual experience and liminality in theatre and in film. Her research on Jerzy Grotowski provided groundbreaking evidence that his famous theatrical work was heavily influenced by his fascination with G.I. Gurdjieff. ![Catherine Dada](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2024-12/Dada_square.png?itok=Ef2gndWD) ## References 1. Catharine Christof, *Rethinking Religion in the Theatre of Grotowski* (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 2. Jacob Needleman and George Baker, eds., *Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teachings* (London and New York: Continuum, 1998). [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 3. Jerzy Grotowski, “A Kind of Volcano,” in Needleman and Baker, *Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teachings*, 87. [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 4. Richard Schechner, “Exoduction: Shape-Shifter, Shaman, Trickster, Artist, Adept, Director, Leader, Grotowski," in *The Grotowski Sourcebook*, ed. Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 471. [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 5. Zbigniew Osiński, “Sacrilegious Rites: Abounding in Sorcery—On Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre,” lecture, November 19, 2009, Loyola Marymount University. [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 6. Osiński, “Sacrilegious Rites.” [\[Return to Section\]](#section1) 7. Zbigniew Osiński, “Grotowski Blazes the Trails: From Objective Drama to Art as Vehicle,” in Schechner and Wolford, *The Grotowski Sourcebook*, 381. [\[Return to Section\]](#section6) 8. Schechner, “Exoduction,” 469. [\[Return to Section\]](#section6) 9. Schechner, “Exoduction,” 478. Italics mine. [\[Return to Section\]](#section7) #### Suggested Citation Dada, Catharine. "The Hidden Fourth Way of Jerzy Grotowski" in The Teachings & Legacy of G.I.Gurdjieff: Conference Anthology, edited by Carole Cusack and Gosia Sklodowska. Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2025. © License: CC BY-NC.