The Art of the Encounter, an Art of Distance: from Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini to Jerzy Grotowski

This text presents the theatrical act as a passage, based on the observation of the actions of Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini that belong to a work protocol left by Jerzy Grotowski. This is the moment in which art as a vehicle, as Peter Brook wrote, merges with the art of the encounter. It is also the moment in which the experience transmitted by theatre causes the disappearance of boundaries and limits between scene, actor and spectator. The art of the encounter corresponds, then, to the inclusion of the spectator into the theatrical process which favours a return of the presence of oneself, the disappearance of self-estrangement.