Jerzy Grotowski HOLIDAY - the day that is holy translated by Boleslaw Taborski from Grotowski's conference New York

13.12.1970 Some words are dead, even though we are still using them. There are some which are dead not because they ought to be substituted by others, but because what they mean has died. This is so for many of us, at least. Among such words are: show, performance, theatre, spectator etc. But what is necessary? What is alive? Adventure and meeting; not just any one; but that what we want to happen to us would happen, and then, that it would also happen to others among us. For this, what do we need? First of all, a place and our own kind; and then that our kind, whom we do not know, should come, too. So, what matters is that, in this, first I should not be alone, then we should not be alone. But what does our kind mean? They are those who breathe the same air and - one might say - share our senses. What is possible together? Holiday. The first question which has been asked here is an actor's question. But in order to find an answer to it one has to leave professionalism behind. The questioner has said that what prevents him from really disarming himself is the reason why one engages in acting. He has said also that it is the need for approval from others that contributes to the fact that the actor remains armed. Yes indeed, I believe that the motives which have led us to engage in theatre are not pure. Some want to pursue theatre as an enterprise, others want to be accepted by their environment, or gain a certain status, or receive gifts from high society. Somehow we know that not only there is something dishonest about it, but also - barren. A man who gives his bodily presence in return for material gain - in one sense or another - by this very fact puts himself in a false position; today even more so than in the past, when it was a profession clear in its ambiguity, approaching that of a clown. For that matter, the life around seemed simpler, too, more stabilized; atrocities were being committed then as ever, but they seemed far away; everyone could build up in himself a feeling that he occupied a lasting position in the world; the world also thought itself more or less permanent - fallacious though this was - thought that there exist more or less permanent rules of the game, more or less permanent beliefs. But time is different, and I do not think that such a moment could be known, seen in history, even if we look at a certain singular phenomenon which occured two thousand years ago in the peripheries of the huge empire encompassing the entire Western world, as it then was: some men walked in the wilderness and searched for truth. They searched in accord with the character of those times which, unlike that of ours, was religious. I do not see the possibility of being religious today. This is how it is with me, at least, and I think with many of you, as well. But if there is a similarity between that time and ours, it consists in the need to find a meaning. If one does not possess that meaning, one lives in constant fear; one thinks that the fear is caused by external events, and no doubt it is they that release it; but that something we cannot cope with flows from ourselves, it is our own weakness, and the weakness is the lack of meaning. This is why there is a direct connection between courage and meaning. The men who walked the vicinity of Nazareth two thousand years ago - they were young, which has been forgotten, and they are traditionally represented as old from the start talked about strange things and sometimes behaved imprudently, but in the air there was a need to abandon force, to abandon the prevailing values and search for other values on which one could build life without a lie. I repeat once more that in that epoch it took the shape of a religious phenomenon, something which is strange to us, but if I have presumed to refer to that moment, it is to stress that - with all the differences - what is happening in our age does not happen for the first time and that we are not the first who persist in our quest. And if one persists in one's quest,

there are things one cannot do with a clear conscience: for instance, mount a rostrum and pretend, perform a tragedy or a comedy in order to be applauded, day after day fervently to exert oneself in order not to lose one's employ, push oneself into the limelight, hold tight to someone who is going to launch us. If we feel this to be futile, this is not bad, because the situation becomes less false. But a thousand chances of escape are lying in wait for us; escape from life, in effect. For instance: if instead of occupying oneself with politics - one makes politics in the theatre, this is clear escapism; if instead of revealing oneself as one is - and completely - one abuses nudity and sex for pornography, this is worse than escapism. One could multiply these examples: one could invent a new philosophy, call up new names, proclaim new methods, practise some kind of exercises and some sort of macrobiotic diet, i.e. always find something new for oneself an appearance. In the fear, which is connected with the lack of meaning, we give up living and begin diligently to die. Routine takes the place of life, and the senses - resigned get accustomed to nullity. Every now and then we rebel, but this is only for the sake of appearances; we make a big row, create a scandal, not too violent, as a rule, so that it would not threaten our position: something sufficiently banal that it could be accepted by others with sympathy; for instance we drink ourselves unconscious. This shell, this sheath under which fossilize, becomes our very existence - we set and become hardened; and we begin to hate everyone in whom a little spark of life is still flickering. This is not a spiritual matter; it envelops all our tissues and the fear of someone's touch, or of exposing oneself, is ever greater. Shame of naked skin, of naked life, of ourselves - and at the same time - often - complete shamelessness when it comes to putting it all on the market, selling it well. We do not love ourselves, our own selves any more; hating others we try to cure that lack of love. With great agility, though hiding our gloom, we busy ourselves about our own funeral. How many functions are needed here, what effort, what ritual. And what is this death? The dressing, covering, possessing, escaping, canonizing one's burden. And what remains, what lives? The forest. We had a saying in Poland: we were not there - the forest was there; we shan't be there - the forest will be there. And so, how to be, how to live, how to give birth as the forest does? I can also say to myself: I am water, pure, which flows, living water; and then the source is he, she not I: he whom I am going forward to meet, before whom I do not defend myself. Only if he is the source, I can be the living water. And now a few words about the, so to speak, final dying. Some people say that man in a moment of dying sees his entire life in a flash, all that was essential in it, that was good - a kind of film. I do not know if this is true, but let's believe that it is. What do you think we are going to see at such a moment? What is important, what will return? The moment when you bought a car, when your boss praised you, or when a trick you played came off and you felt you were better than others because more clever? We are all of us tempted by the magic word: "to be open". But if we say "open", we again find ourselves in line with that thousands-years-old tradition, which, in spite of all its victories and all its fertility, maims us; the tradition that man is divided into the inner and the external, the mind and the body, etc. In the actual fact, when we say "open", we are nilly willy saying that there, within us, is something which should be let out and offered, as it were; that the inner and the external exist as two different things. It is true that in life we often split like this and then, as the Polish Romantic poet Mickiewicz put it, "the tongue belies the voice, and the voice belies the thoughts". And in its turn, let us add, the body belies the voice; this is the split condition, the maimed condition, where everything is done by halves and where everything acts separately - thoughts, concepts, movements, feelings; partly I suppose to avoid acting with one's entire human presence, not to be oneself, whole. I am sitting opposite someone who is like me and like many of you. I feel a need, so tangible that it seems one could touch it

with one's fingers, and yet we cannot find words which could define it. I ask him question after question - the questions which I really ask myself; he replies and when I feel I could not tell whether it is his reply or mine, I note down what he says. And in this way, there gradually emerges the description of our need: To be "looked at" (yes, "looked at", and not "seen"), to be looked at, like a tree, a flower, a river, the fish in that river. Life in falsehood, pulling wool over people's eyes, pretending: how long can one go on? To give up "what I can expect"; to come down to earth and to give one's hand - it is not a clean hand, it does not matter, what matters is the warmth of the body. To take off one's clothes and spectacles and to dip into the source. I know that now I am supposed to reply in a more "technical" manner, for such a question has been asked, but I feel reluctant to approach things in this way; "technique" - in this - serves us a means to bypass what is essential. Do the things I am talking about transcend the psychophysical contact, as Stanislavsky saw it? Do you want me to say I have transcended him? I have too much respect for Stanislavsky to say this; for the theatre, he was a great man - but I am not interested in the theatre any more, only in what I can do leaving theatre behind. If theatre exists as a phenomenon, as a craft, looking for its own sense and meaning - sometimes it exists as such even today - in this sphere Stanislavsky's searches were the most fruitful; I considered him once to be my father, after all, I was a professional in my beginnings. I needed years to realize that I must leave this behind. Many of us present here face the problem: to pursue the profession, or do something else? As far as I am concerned, it's better to do something else. Stanislavsky was concerned with producing written drama, how to stage plays, remaining in agreement with the writer's intentions and the human experience of the actor. If an actor performs Hamlet, he ought to conceive everything that happens in the drama as assumed circumstances: that there are countries which are like prisons, that the atmosphere in such countries is exceptionally tense, that the crown prince loves his mother very much, but maybe he loves his father even more, that his father died murdered, etc. All these are circumstances. Stanislavsky asked the actor the question: what would you do if you found yourself in that situation? In the first - let us call it psychological - period Stanislavsky stressed rather the question: what are you going to experience, what are you going to feel? In the second period - that of physical activity - he stressed rather the question: what would you do? How would you do? How would you behave? One could say that the actor ought to have constructed of the material of his own nature, the image of a role, its vision, shape. It was an excellent technique for the theatre. I think that, in Stanislavsky, theatre - as the art of the actor - received its apogee. Wasn't a man divided in this kind of work? Yes, he was, and Stanislavsky seemed to assume this. He said, for instance, that the actor ought to have two perspectives: the purpose of his work (what it will give the spectator), and what the character he creates is doing and thinking. There are, however, different interpretations of this; for instance, the first perspective was also described by Stanislavsky as a kind of creative strategy. The actor already knows that Hamlet will die in the finale of the play this is the actor's perspective - so how is he to prepare that death? In what, for example, consists the difference between what we are aiming at, and Stanislavsky's wisdom, that genuine wisdom of craft? For us the question is: what do you want to do with your life; and then - do you want to hide, or to reveal yourself, do you want to discover yourself, in both senses of the word: discover - uncover? What did Stanislavsky understand by physical action. He saw it as ordinary, everyday behaviour: I am looking, I see you, I am wondering what to say, I withdraw into myself, I think again, again I look at you, I check the way you react - these are the most essential of physical actions - but they include also sitting down, walking, listening, various activities. Stanislavsky demanded of the actor to look for a logic in them, the logic of actions, continuity of behaviour,

and why at a given moment he should do this and not the other. But are the everyday actions important in what is close to me, in that towards which we are aiming? Sometimes, perhaps, yes, at other times no, not at all. On the whole, however, the everyday actions, which for Stanislavsky were something essential, and in his case rightly so, from our perspective, that of people not aiming at theatre, they are rather means by which we hide, or arm ourselves, in life. Do you regard the way you behave with your friends in a caf, as disarmament? Everyone of you must have experienced himself that, when he was sincere to the end - what was happening with him was not ordinary, and was not happening when he was talking, or rather - when he only talked, but when he was totally naked, as in real love, which is not just gymnastics, but embraces us, us whole, up to the loss of self before another person. Is it ordinary what we are doing then? Certainly, there are actions resulting from habit, but the most important of them are not such. Why is this not ordinary? Because in this case, when we touch, we touch with our own self; and when we touch in everyday life, we already think about something else. Perhaps, everything I am talking to you about just now, you take to be metaphors. They are not metaphors, this is tangible and practical. It is not a philosophy but something one does; and if someone thinks that this is a way of formulating thoughts, he is mistaken; this has to be taken literally, this is experience. That these are metaphors... this is where the difference begins and the core of difficulty. It is enough to understand that I am attempting here - in as much as I can - to touch on the experience of meeting - meeting man; an experience altogether different than the traditional ones, but very real. To reject this word: metaphor... Am I talking about a way of life, a kind of existence rather than about theatre? Undoubtedly. I think that it is at this point that we are faced with a choice. Does the behaviour of those people in the wilderness I mentioned at the outset, the practices of yogi or Buddhism belong to other epochs? It happened in another epoch and so belongs to another epoch. Can we learn something from them? Not so much learn as comprehend. We can understand them because we have reached a similar point, but we are unable to give the same answer, or even to formulate an answer in words. An analysis of this could take us too far from the theme of our conversation. May I be allowed to say, however, that there is something which remains the same in all epochs, or at least in those when people are aware of their human condition - this is the quest. The quest for what is the most essential in life. Different names have been invented to call it; in the past these names usually had a religious sound. I do not think it possible for myself to invent religious names; what's more I do not feel any need at all for inventing words. But the question of what is the most essential in life, which some of you can think abstract, really is of great import, and no one who denies the quest will be happy. Many people do reject it; they feel obliged to smile, as if they were advertizing tooth paste; but why are they so sad? May be they have missed something in life? May be they never asked themselves the only question they ought to have asked. It must be asked. And the answer? One can't formulate it, one can only do it. We do a great deal in order to find a reply to this question. We want to learn means: how to perform? how best to pretend to be something or someone? how to perform classical plays and modern plays; how to perform tragic plays and comic plays? But if one learns how to do, one does not reveal oneself; one only reveals the skill for doing. Anf if someone looks for means, resulting from our alleged method, or some other method, he does it not to disarm himself, but to find asylum, a safe haven, where he could avoid the act which would be the answer. This is the most difficult point. For years one works and wants to know more, to acquire more skill, but in the end one has to reject it all and not learn but unlearn, not to know how to do, but how not to do, and always face doing; to risk total defeat; not a defeat in the eyes of others - which is less important - but the defeat of a missed gift, an unsuccessful meeting

with someone, that is to say an unsuccessful meeting with oneself. When someone looks at the world in order to see (and many look in order not to see), he will notice what is weak and unsure, what is pulsating towards its birth. It is something new between people - as yet hardly existing, but already to be felt, a half impulse, half need. That thing - I am deliberately using a term which is, by its nature, cold - is a different sensibility. It is only beginning and we hear the almost imperceptible sound of it, growing with generations now entering life. It is like a fish, swimming in the river of new generations. However, one must not confuse the fish with the river, because it is not the same. The generation needs exist, but one must not make a fetish of them. In a sufficiently long time perspective they become more relative: note that all those present here, without exception, no matter what our age and generation affinities, are contemporaries in the face of the dead and those not yet born. Does a man arm himself again, after he has fulfilled the act of bodily sincerity, disarmed himself in the meeting I am talking about - and when he, so to speak, is returning into everyday life? In order to approach the "impossible", one must somehow be a realist. In life, can one not hide? It is better if we do not hide, but let us imagine a situation in which you will reject all means of a concealment, but others will not... May be one must begin with some particular places; yes, I think that there is an urgent need to have a place where we do not hide ourselves and simply are, as we are, in all the possible senses of the word. Does it mean that we remain in a vicious circle - that life is different here, and different there? No, I think that this will come out outside the place I have been talking about, will come out through a small opening, gap, window, door, penetrate outside. We are surrounded by a street, this may be a bit infectious, but in both directions: one can somehow not let oneself be infected but be infectious: with oneself, without pretensions to it, without striving for it. In order to begin, one needs a beginning, somewhere, some time; so, this begins with a certain place, let us begin, we have a place, and then we'll see... Is the future in big cities, or in abandoning big cities? How can I know? Big cities are now undergoing a constant development; e.g. such a country as Japan has almost become one big city. The important question that comes to mind in this respect should, perhaps, be: how can we, remaining in a big city, at the same time abandon it, how not to be an object in it? But if you want to escape from cities, why don't you? What matters is what there is to be done, and only later the question arises, where. You like using the word "together"; be together, live together, go out together, etc. This word "together" can be given very different meanings. For instance, that everybody be obliged to be the same, to behave in the same way; that the nonconformism with regard to the former generation be replaced with a kind of conformism towards one's own generation, or towards, shall we say, one's own community, milieu, or circle. In a word "together" may mean levelling, pressure of clich, or appearance of a way of life. But "together" may mean something quite different, something like a second birth, real, overt, not furtive, not complacent about one's seclusion. Together with someone, with a few, in a group - the discovering, revealing of yourself and him. There is in it also something like cleansing of our life. And it even makes me think very literally, tangibly, as an action: cleansing. There is no other way out here, but one must talk by association; for some it will seem abstract, even embarassing or ridiculous, for others it will be as concrete as it is for me. This too is something we can recognize one another by. And so, I am taking that risk and will tell you about associations; here they are, only some of them, they are very many: games, frolics, life, our kind, ducking, flight; man-bird, man-colt, man-wind, man-sun, man-brother. And here the most essential, central: brother. This contains "the likeness of God", giving and man; but also the brother of earth, the brother of senses, the brother of sun, the brother of touch, the brother of Milky Way, the brother of grass, the brother of river. Man as he is, whole, so that he would not

hide himself; and who lives and that means - not everyone. Body and blood this is brother, that's where "God" is, it is the bare foot and the naked skin, in which there is brother. This too is a holiday, to be in the holiday, to be the holiday. All this is inseparable from meeting. The real one, full, in which man does not lie with himself, and is in it whole. Where there is none of that fear, none of that shame of oneself which gives birth to the lie and hiding, and is its own grandfather because it is itself born of lie and hiding. In this meeting, man does not refuse himself and does not impose himself. He lets himself be touched and does not push with his presence. He comes forward and is not afraid of somebody's eyes, whole. It is as if one spoke with one's self: you are, so I am; and also: I am being born so that you are born, so that you become; and also: do not be afraid, I am going with you.