Summer Intensive Program 2012 at the

Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards

From 18^th to 29^th of June 2012

In 2011 the Wokcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards had the great pleasure to host in their Tuscan countryside home base its first Summer Intensive Program. A great number of applications were received from which 30 participants were selected to come and embrace this unique opportunity to approach the world of Workcenter research in an international environment with artists hailing from all over the world.

The success of last year’s intensive, and the abundance of requests from applicants, brought us without question to organize a Summer Intensive in 2012. It will provide another profound opportunity for actors, directors and individuals interested in advancing their practical knowledge of the performing craft. The two-week intensive program will strive to unearth the creative potentialities of each participant through work on the relations between precision and organicity, tradition and individual work, ritual and drama, concentrating as well on directing capacities, montage techniques, dramaturgical elaboration, as well as physical training.

The technical aspects that the Summer Intensive Program will rigorously explore are:

- Creation of the score: its logic, actions, intentions, meaning and content.
- Singing.
- Vibration of the voice.
- Awareness of space and reacting to its constituent elements.
- Improvisation: the impulses / the vigilant mind.
- Improvisation within a structure.
- Composed movement and rhythm.

The Program will be conducted by Thomas Richards, Mario Biagini and the Workcenter members.

Fee for the Summer Intensive: 1.200€

If you are interested to participate, please send an email with your C.V. and a motivation letter to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Considered one of the most important and influential theatre practitioners of the 20^th century, Jerzy Grotowski revolutionized contemporary theatre in multiple ways. Grotowski changed the way Western theatre practitioners and performance theorists conceive of the audience-actor relationship, theatre staging and the craft of acting. Perhaps best known for his notion of ‘poor theatre,’ Grotowski’s practice extends beyond the confines of conventional theatre assuming a long-term and systematic exploration of the possibilities of the human being in a performance context.

Drawing most significantly on the traditional songs of the African diaspora, Grotowski’s latter work deployed performative techniques as an instrument in the work on oneself. Termed Art as Vehicle, this final phase of work culminated in an intense thirteen-year-long research at the Workcenter, during which Grotowski transmitted what he called “the inner aspect of the work,” to his apprentice and colleague: Thomas Richards. Grotowski and Richards, with Mario Biagini in their practical research team since the Workcenter’s beginnings, developed a unique paradigm of performance practice and research, which to this day thrives as a living tradition.