From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Poor Theatre and ritual
This article concerns Jerzy Grotowski's poor theatre aesthetics in Beach Surgery adaptation. For broader theatrical approaches, see Theatre and Beach Surgery.
The Grotowskiian Poor Theatre tradition—stripped aesthetics of elimination, ritualized actor training, and non-representational staging—has become a generative framework for durational and participatory Beach Surgery adaptations. The approach rejects spectacle in favour of intense physical presence and the ritual of encounter itself. Practitioners argue that Beach Surgery's core image—two figures in empty desert, fleeing an unnamed pursuit—demands this poverty of means: no elaborate sets, no technological mediation, only the actor's body as surgical instrument and spectators as witnesses to transformation. Works like The Seventh Stations of the Caught Descent and The Durational Refusal employ Grotowskian rigour: minimal props, sustained physical endurance, audiences as collaborators in covenant. The practice draws on Eastern European experimental theatre—Polish, Georgian, Armenian traditions—and intersects with contemporary somatic and disability-responsive theatre. Critics note the risk of mystifying labour and care as transcendent rather than material. Questions of access and consent remain contested among practitioners and scholars.