Rethinking Theatre/Drama as an Encounter

“The core of theatre is encounter,” as defined by the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, who has left a significant legacy in Taiwan’s little theatre. This encounter includes the meeting of actors and audiences, encounters among members of the creative team, and their encounter with the text. Among these, Grotowski particularly emphasizes the encounter between actors and audiences. What he speaks of as an encounter is an extreme confrontation–actors, through self-penetration or sacrifice, expose and reveal what is hidden or avoided, inviting or provoking the audience to also remove their masks and examine their innermost truth. During Grotowski's ten years of theatre production (1959-1969), to achieve this kind of encounter, he deconstructed texts, worked with highly-trained actors, and experimented with the spectator-actor relationship in small spaces.

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This conference starts from Grotowski's concept of encounter and reconsiders various aspects of contemporary theatre and dramatic texts, both literally and metaphorically. The essence of theatre as an encounter remains unchanged—the simultaneous presence of the audience and actors (the creative team). What has changed is the “why,” “how,” and “where” of these encounters, which have become more complex and diverse. Grotowski's ideas about theatre reflect the influence of the Austrian-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber—“I exist through you,” therefore theatre is an encounter—which Grotowski used to explore his lifelong question of “who am I.” So, what is theatre today? This fundamental question becomes more pressing as virtual reality and the cloud have created their own worlds. Why do we need the audience and actors to be present simultaneously? In other words, why must it be theatre? Which playwrights and directors presents their reflections on this? 

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Regarding where and how the audience and actors meet, venues and forms have become more diverse, leading to a redefinition of the spectator-actor relationship in innovative ways. For instance, the audience may wander with the actors in specific settings, even taking on roles, or individuals may find themselves in solitary encounters with actors within a room. The audience’s encounters also extend beyond just actors/characters to include robots, puppets, remote live audiences, and more. How do we describe and theorize these vastly different experiences of encounters? In a broader context, international theatre festivals introduce foreign teams and attract foreign audiences. How do the venues and mechanisms shape distinctive encounter experiences?

Furthermore, encounters are abstract. How do Grotowski’s theories and other theatre theories get received, put into practice, and subsequently transformed when they make their way to Taiwan and encounter theatre practitioners or scholars? In Taiwan, due to the ongoing “encounters” between new media and theatre, modern theatre and Xiqu, or various forms of Xiqu, what observable phenomena are emerging? How do these changes in theatrical encounters influence script creation and manifest in the form and content of scripts?

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On the other hand, this conference employs “encounter” as a metaphor, simultaneously exploring how dramatic texts handle various forms of encounters. For Grotowski, the text is merely a tool for both actors and directors, “like a scalpel,” used to open them up and allow them to discover what is hidden within, facilitating the act of encountering the audience. Expanding on this metaphor, let’s consider how the text addresses encounters among different ethnic groups, diverse gender orientations, varying cultures, as well as encounters with the self, history, tradition, and new technologies, among others. In doing so, the text also opens us up, makes us aware of our own limitations and situations, and compels or aids us to perceive these encounters and their objects with a fresh perspective.

This conference calls for papers related to the following topics:

1. Theatre theory and practice 

2. Acting theory and practice 

3. Directing theory and practice 

4. Reception, practice, and transformation of foreign dramatic theories in Taiwan 

5. Encounters between media and theatre and among cross-cultural forms 

6. Space, venues, and audiences 

7. Encounters in dramatic texts 

8. Theatre design and encounters 

9. New perspectives in drama research methods and theory