ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the New Age becomes transformed in Grotowski’s work through distinct forms of experimentation with the body and the spirit. Building on Hanegraaff’s scholarship on the New Age movement, this chapter presents an overview of the growing interest in yoga, shamanism and ritual that was part of the New Age from the late 1970s onwards, which had an impact on Grotowski’s work because of his reading of these elements through the body. We first begin with exploring the influence of yoga philosophies on Grotowski’s work and its presence in his early work, as well as Grotowski’s inference that linked yogic disciplines with shamanism. We then explore how the New Age understanding of shamanism influenced Grotowski’s own explorations of shamanism in order to then draw out these embodied correlations. In Chapter 4 we cited a series of questions that were proposed by Vasquez and their potential use for reading elements of a religious materiality in theatre. Vasquez’s suggestions that will be explored through Grotowski’s work in this chapter include (1) how religion is embodied and emplaced through theatre, and (2) what kind of embodied aesthetics accompany the process of sacralization? This entails an exploration regarding shamanism in the New Age and its manifestations in the theatrical body.
