O, for ‘A Thousand Tongues’: An American Soundscape Heads for Poland

AMERICAN THEATRE: Theatre artists from the time of Aeschylus have been exhorting audiences to ratchet up their level of auditory focus as a mechanism for deeper understanding and a route to catharsis. In modern times, few makers or theorists of theatre have placed more emphasis on listening as a transcendent experience than Poland’s Jerzy Grotowski, who, particularly in the later stages of his work, became as obsessed with the inestimable power of song as he was with the body of the actor.