In his famous 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”
Walter Benjamin defines the concept of what he calls an “aura of the work of art” as “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction.”194 Mechanical reproduction strips the work of art of its aura because it “substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.”195 The aura, Benjamin argues, is inevitably connected to the ritualistic, religious aspect of the work of art:
Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual – first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value.196
Benjamin separates film from theatre, arguing that the theatrical event preserves the aura, while the cinematic one destroys it. Film is easily available and reproducible, while the theatrical experience, by necessity, is singular and of limited availability.
Benjamin writes:
The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.197
That which is not easily viewed and obtained becomes veiled in mystique, and shrouded in myth. But if replicability and availability destroy an aura, the conscious restriction of access to an object should enhance it. An aura, built on gossip, desire, snobbism, fashion and envy, adds value and creates the meaning of an object. If theatre – by its very nature – preserves the aura of a live and therefore ephemeral performance, restricting access to a theatrical event only adds to its mystique, making it even more meaningful and important. Thus, we can argue following Benjamin’s argument that restricted access boosts the theatrical work’s aura.
When in 1969 Grotowski’s troupe eventually came to the USA on the invitation of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, ninon Tallon Karlweiss and the American
Committee for the Laboratory Theatre, Variety reported in the fall of 1969 that
“The Brooklyn Academy of Music […] has imported the culturally fashionable Polish Laboratory Theatre for a six-week engagement at stiff prices before small audiences.”198 Apparently, everyone expected the performances to take place in Brooklyn, but Grotowski found the performance space unsuitable and “so there started a frantic search for a church, vacant, adaptable and amenable for Grotowski’s purposes.”199 Reportedly, when Grotowski found out that “he could not remove the pews from the Brooklyn church, a search for another, more flexible church was undertaken. Six churches were examined before the Washington Square church was found.”200 The Washington Square church couldn’t host very many people, and that was precisely the point. Robert Findlay noted that Grotowski’s prominence “rest[ed] on a relatively small number of productions seen by relatively few people.”201 As a custom, Grotowski’s group performed for audiences of no more than 40 to 100.202 Only 100 people at a time could watch Akropolis. In fact, according to Stuart W. Little’s report, in the USA “about ninety persons watched each performance of The Constant Prince, between 100 and 120 saw Acropolis, and about forty saw Apocalypse.”203 The tickets for the opening night of Akropolis reportedly sold for $100,204 and for $200 on the black market.205 Adjusted for inflation, that’s about
$590, and $1,180, respectively. (At that time, an average salary in Poland was about
$25–30 per month.) As Simon recalled, “Many people were unaware of the change of location; moreover, the starting time was announced one way on the ticket […]
and another way in the Times.”206 Because of the change of venue, the house was reportedly oversold by 30 percent, which resulted in near-riots. This is how Leonard Lyons described the ensuing mayhem of that opening night: “There are no reserved seats for Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Laboratory Theatre. The customers rush to find places on the long benches at the side of the balcony. A few days ago there was a riot because too many big-seated people were jammed in.”207 Richard Coe of the Washington Post ironically noted that “Only the opening night list of Coco – with the allure of the names of Katharine Hepburn and Chanel – [was] as hard to crash”208 Tickets for Akropolis were so hard to find that eric Bentley, in an open letter to Grotowski published in the New York Times, pleadingly – if sarcastically – complained:
you have been a traumatic experience for new york and while this might do new york a lot of good, it would certainly seem that our city had a lot to put up with. Have you any idea how many people have suffered rebuff, if not insult, in their attempts to see the Polish Laboratory Theater? I seem to have spent most of October and november visiting the wounded. Their cries still ring in my ears. Church doors have not suffered such blows since Martin Luther drove great nails into them – rumor has it that Theodore Mann, for one, went on pounding on yours all through the night and never did get in – though he had tickets.209
Grotowski’s limited-audience approach met with diverse opinions. Richard Coa praised the strategy, writing that “Grotowski is quite right to limit his audience to 100.
One doubts that such tensions could be imposed, expressed and communicated to a larger group.”210 In a similar tone, Margaret Croyden, apparently one of the lucky few permitted to enter the church, wrote:
Grotowski insists the audience be part of this “psychic struggle,” and he deliberately limits their number to 100, so that the viewers can sit close enough “to smell the actor’s sweat.” But rather than being “assaulted” verbally or physically, as was the viewer at the Living Theater, the spectator is a “persona” in the play by virtue of his proximity to the action. […] The audience in Acropolis, grouped around the stage and almost impinging upon the action, are the living ones watching the dead re-enact their agony.211
Similarly enthralled, James Roose-evans wrote that:
Grotowski is concerned with the spectator who has genuine spiritual needs and who really wishes, through the confrontation with the performance, to analyze himself. The very physical proximity of the actors and audience is intended to assist the collective self-analysis to take place. does this imply a theatre for an élite? The answer is a positive, yes.212
However, not everyone appreciated Grotowski’s strategy. Particularly unforgiving was again John Simon, who wrote dryly in response to Roose-evans: “People who come to the theatre specifically to be psychoanalyzed are not an elite, but a plurality of neurotics and psychotics in need of help, help that they can get much better elsewhere.”213 And in his New York Theatre review, Simon went even further, admitting:
What I find most repellent about the Grotowski operation is the sacerdotal mystique surrounding it. Audiences are admitted in absurdly small numbers, a few at a time, after unconscionable waiting periods outside the doors. They are seated as uncomfortably as anchorites at penance, squeezed together, and hectored by ushers all the way. [When you leave, you are handed] a kind of icon, woodcut emblematic of the play, along with a lengthy statement from the Master explaining with hierophantic modesty and in absurd detail how these productions are group efforts in the truest sense. Sold also are expensive, mystagogic and totally unreadable books in which the Master set forth his teachings. And the program notes, by Grotowski and his literary advisor, Flaszen, consist of the most portentous lucubrations this side of scientology.214
The tone of Simon’s annoyance with Grotowski’s “sacerdotal mystique” paralleled the Polish sentiments. Likewise, Stuart Little sarcastically noted that “[t]he total audience for the whole engagement would scarcely have filled the Majestic Theater for the two performances on a matinee day of Fiddler on the Roof.”215 describing the hysteria that surrounded the ticketing and admission to Grotowski’s shows, Clive Barnes cited an anecdote, according to which Harvey Lichtenstein, director of the Brooklyn Academy and a man who invited Grotowski to the USA, was unable to
see the performance: “Harvey Lichtenstein […] naturally felt that he and his hard-pressed press cohort, together with a couple of people who had actually paid for their tickets, might unobtrusively stand at the back. The feeling was misplaced. They were thrown out.”216 “The hoopla surrounding Grotowski,”217 as Barnes put it, was grander than what even the most theatrical divas were used to: Grotowski “certainly carries eccentricity to unusual lengths.”218 Grotowski himself famously wrote that he is “not concerned with just any audience, but a special one” that undergoes a “creative process of self-search.”219 Apparently, in new york in 1969, that “special audience” consisted of anyone strong enough to push their way through the crowds.
Regardless of his motive, in artificially limiting access to his performance, Grotowski did accomplish one major objective; he turned himself into a luxury good of the new york theatre boheme, in the same way that Hermès bags or Playboy bunnies were made into luxury goods.220 Limiting the number of spectators also meant that the audience predominantly consisted of inner circles of theatrical connoisseurs. As Martin Gottfried put it: “For serious theatre people as well as professional avant-gardists, the most talked-about and influential stage person in all the Western world is Jerzy Grotowski, director of the Polish Laboratory Theatre, even though, in a real sense, his American reputation is the work of theatre elitists and fashionmongers.”221 It almost seems as if Grotowski managed to replicate in new york a scene characteristic of Poland at that time: persistent shortages of everything led to long lines in front of stores customarily provoking mayhem among the weary kolejkowicze (persons who stand in line for a long time, sometimes doing so professionally for someone else). The shortages and the long lines naturally made goods, whatever they were, veiled in the missing aura. It was perhaps this mechanism of privileged access that Grotowski so well orchestrated in new york, as well as the combination of coincidences and political climate that allowed him, against all odds, to assume the reins of American avant-garde theatre for the next four decades.