Grotowski in Taiwan: More than objective drama

In Taiwan’s experimental theatre, the “Grotowski phenomenon” is too prominent to be ignored. The “Grotowski method,” as it is called in Taiwan, has nurtured a generation of experimental theatre workers ever since the mid-1980s. In this dissertation I will investigate the entire picture of how the Grotowski-to-Taiwan transmission began. This investigation begins with the American encounter between the Polish exile and two Taiwanese overseas students in the Objective Drama Program at U.C. Irvine in 1985 – and what subsequently developed from that encounter in the context of Taiwan’s Little Theatre Movement and New Age Movement. Their encounter is not simply a manifestation of Western cultural hegemony. Grotowski’s physical training fills a cultural need in Taiwan, a place in which the grand narrative of the Great China ideology was dissolving and liberation of both language and body was beginning in earnest. Taiwan’s liberal religious and spiritual environment gave Grotowski’s post-theatrical work, particularly the “inner aspect” of his work, a promised land full of fertile ground. And it was upon this fertile ground that the seeds of Grotowski’s ideas fell, with time took root, grew vigorously and finally bloomed in a way that Grotowski could never have imagined