Facing Medusa: Jerzy Grotowski’s Approach to Romanticism and the Myth of Faust. Part 1. “Farce-mystery”: Faust by J.W. Goethe in the Polish Theatre in Poznań, 1960

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the first of the two re-interpretations of the myth of Faust by Jerzy Grotowski –  the performance of Faust by J.W. Goethe in the Polish Theatre in Poznań (1960), in which Grotowski enters into polemics with Goethe’s romantic and metaphysical vision. The spectacle shows Grotowski’s early aesthetics called as “farce-mystery”, displaying his fascination with ritual as a performative secular alternative to religious experience. The myth of Faust shows his creative confrontation with the archetype, which aims to liberate the spiritual energy beyond religion and myth to renew the community’s sense of the sacred. The author sets out to prove that the story of Faust is of crucial significance to Grotowski as an incarnation of myth that helps him to cope with the trauma of death and go beyond the limits of human condition, which reveals his romantic sensibility.