Tadeusz Kantor - From Impossible Theatre (1972)
Leonce and Lena (1984)
Autonomous theatre.
That concept - an old one, known for some decades - retains the lost flavour of avant-gardes past and gone; it evokes the large hopes of our youth - a fascinating climate of radicalism, nonconformism and relenting destruction of all that had gone rigid in the plastic arts, and in values at large.
The idea of autonomous theatre, a theatre seeking only to justify the very fact of its existence, in opposition to a theatre in the service of literature, a theatre that copies life, and that irrevocably loses its theatrical instinct, its sense of liberty, and its expressive force.
This second theatre, renouncing the laws of its own artistic existence, was obliged to submit itself to the conditions, the laws and the conventions of life; it became an institution - and creation was reduced to a mere production machine.
In seeking an autonomous theatre, I do away with the reality of the text.
The theatre, like the other arts, should not fear the intervention of extra-theatrical realities.
The theatre, to evolve and become alive, must come out of itself - must cease to be a theatre.
It is not for literature to trespass on the territory of theatre; it is for theatre to take risks - to venture, as things stand, beyond its own sphere: to trespass on the territory of literature...
The notion of freedom in art, defined and affirmed for the first time in surrealism, in its programme for a total and indivisible reality, is the very principle of new art.
The work of art, confined within its structure, offspring of the creative act, of inner expression, and representation - unique, isolated and finally institutionalised: the work of art has become the principal obstacle, the barrier one must break through.
The great good sense of the collage method is that it re-opens to question the exclusive right of the creator to shape the work; no longer is the creator the only one to form, to imprint, and to express.
The admittance of foreign reality, unconstructed, found or readymade, throws an objective light on the artist's romantic role as godly demiurge of form; it shifts the centre of gravity from sensual to artisan values back to intellectual and imaginative values.
Art has begun to annex fields and objectives which hitherto were forbidden to it.
(back to Manifesto page)
That concept - an old one, known for some decades - retains the lost flavour of avant-gardes past and gone; it evokes the large hopes of our youth - a fascinating climate of radicalism, nonconformism and relenting destruction of all that had gone rigid in the plastic arts, and in values at large.
The idea of autonomous theatre, a theatre seeking only to justify the very fact of its existence, in opposition to a theatre in the service of literature, a theatre that copies life, and that irrevocably loses its theatrical instinct, its sense of liberty, and its expressive force.
This second theatre, renouncing the laws of its own artistic existence, was obliged to submit itself to the conditions, the laws and the conventions of life; it became an institution - and creation was reduced to a mere production machine.
In seeking an autonomous theatre, I do away with the reality of the text.
The theatre, like the other arts, should not fear the intervention of extra-theatrical realities.
The theatre, to evolve and become alive, must come out of itself - must cease to be a theatre.
It is not for literature to trespass on the territory of theatre; it is for theatre to take risks - to venture, as things stand, beyond its own sphere: to trespass on the territory of literature...
The notion of freedom in art, defined and affirmed for the first time in surrealism, in its programme for a total and indivisible reality, is the very principle of new art.
The work of art, confined within its structure, offspring of the creative act, of inner expression, and representation - unique, isolated and finally institutionalised: the work of art has become the principal obstacle, the barrier one must break through.
The great good sense of the collage method is that it re-opens to question the exclusive right of the creator to shape the work; no longer is the creator the only one to form, to imprint, and to express.
The admittance of foreign reality, unconstructed, found or readymade, throws an objective light on the artist's romantic role as godly demiurge of form; it shifts the centre of gravity from sensual to artisan values back to intellectual and imaginative values.
Art has begun to annex fields and objectives which hitherto were forbidden to it.
(back to Manifesto page)
