Mountain Project

[Przedsięwzięcie Góra] a multi-phase paratheatrical project carried out in summer 1977 by a group of members of the Laboratory Theatre led by Jacek Zmysłowski (including Zbigniew Kozłowski and Irena Rycyk). The project was first announced two years earlier by Grotowski in a text published in the monthly journal Odra (no. 6/1975, pp. 23–27). According to the principles presented in the manifesto, the objective of the Project was to bring into being a work-stream with a fluid structure based to a great extent on improvisation within which each participant would be able to find his or her own path. The first stage towards realising the project was the Night Vigils cycle.

In mid-July 1977 the subsequent stage began: titled The Way Project (Przedsięwzięcie – Droga) it was a hike led by guides (including Tomasz Rodowicz) in the direction of Grodziec castle near Legnica with a night spent in the forest. For two weeks of July, groups of eight to ten people would depart Wrocław each day embarking on a hike towards the ‘Mountain of Flame’, i.e. the castle in Grodziec, where conditions were created that were suitable for an action whose principle was the most radical abolition of the dramaturgy of everyday life possible, which included the day/night rhythm. This was to lead to the de-conditioning and revival of perception. These were, then, activities that, in a way, deepened paratheatrical experiences and experiments by testing the ideas expressed in the early 1970s in the text Holiday (Święto). These activities also made reference to experiments and personal experiences of an originary nature, while at the same time demonstrating a subtle connection to the experiments of the Theatre of Sources phase which was initiated around the same time (the allusion in the title to the Hindu Mountain of Flame Arunachala, which is connected to Sri Ramana Maharshi, with an image of the mountain being a permanent feature of the posters created for the project by Krzysztof M. Bednarski).