4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

actuals 47
hand, the associations that offer themselves to us. Grotowski watches.
He helps us remove blocks, things that prevent us from fully confronting
and experiencing the actions at hand.
Finally we construct a coherent score. This score, which grows
minutely day by day, includes all the objective things a spectator sees
from night to night. For example, in Akropolis my score includes how
my body lies in the wheelbarrow, what tone my voice has, how I
breathe, how my fingers move. The score even includes the associations
I have, what I think about from moment to moment. These
associations I change from time to time, as they get stale. And as it is
for me, so it is for everyone else. Ideally the score is whole and does
not need completion or revision. In practice, it is never that way. Only
a percentage of each production is scored when we begin performing
it for audiences. After four years of performing Akropolis about 80 per
cent of it is scored for me.
The score is like the glass inside which a candle is burning. The
glass is solid, it is there, you can depend on it. It contains and guides
the flame. But it is not the flame. The flame is my inner process each
night. The flame is what illuminates the score, what the spectators see
through the score. The flame is alive. Just as the flame in the candleglass
moves, flutters, rises, fall, almost goes out, suddenly glows
brightly, responds to each breath of wind – so my inner life varies from
night to night, from moment to moment. The way I feel an association,
the interior sense of my voice or a movement of my finger, I
begin each night without anticipations. This is the hardest thing to
learn. I do not prepare myself to feel anything. I do not say, “Last night,
this scene was extraordinary, I will try to do that again.” I want only to
be receptive to what will happen. And I am ready to take what happens
if I am secure in my score, knowing that, even if I feel a minimum, the
glass will not break, the objective structure worked out over the
months will help me through. But when a night comes that I can glow,
shine, live, reveal – I am ready for it by not anticipating it. The score
remains the same, but everything is different because I am different.
(Personal conversation, 1970)
Grotowski describes the score as the “two banks of a river” and the
performer’s process as the “water flowing between those banks.” 11