Editing Jerzy Grotowski (section)

==== Art as Vehicle ====
In 1986, Grotowski was invited by Roberto Bacci oto his theater center in [[Pontedera]], Italy.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/arts/07iht-grotowski.html |title=In Praise of a Polish Theater Master |website=[[The New York Times]] |author=Sally McGrane |date=6 June 2009 |access-date=19 March 2023}}</ref> There, he was offered an opportunity to conduct long-term research on performance without the pressure of having to show results until he was ready.<ref name="culture.pl">{{Cite web |url=https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-theatre |title=A Foreigner's Guide to Polish Theatre |website=culture.pl |access-date=19 March 2023}}</ref> Grotowski gladly accepted, taking with him three assistants from Objective Drama research (Richards, Jimenez and Slowiak) to help in founding his Italian Workcenter. Robart also led a work-team in Pontedera for several years, after which time funding cuts necessitated downscaling to a single research group, led by Richards. Grotowski characterized the focus of his attention in his final phase of research as "art as a vehicle," a term coined by [[Peter Brook]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://issuu.com/sissydoutsiou/docs/theatre_company |title=FROM THE THEATRE COMPANY TO ART AS VEHICLE Jerzy Grotowski |website=issuu.com |date=19 January 2002 |access-date=19 March 2023}}</ref> "It seems to me," Brook said, "that Grotowski is showing us something which existed in the past but has been forgotten over the centuries; that is that one of the vehicles which allows man to have access to another level of perception is to be found in the art of performance." Moreover, it was in 1986 that <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theworkcenter.org/brief-history.html |title=brief history - Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski |access-date=2014-05-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120121095450/http://www.theworkcenter.org/brief-history.html |archive-date=2012-01-21 }}</ref> Grotowski changed the name of the Italian centre to the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, to signal the unique and central place Richards held in his work. Grotowski drove Richards to take on increasingly greater responsibility and leadership in the work, until he was not only the primary doer in the practice of Art as Vehicle, but also its primal leader and "director" (if such a term can be accurately used) of the performance structures created around these [[Afro-Caribbean]] vibratory songs, most significantly 'Downstairs Action' (filmed by Mercedes Gregory in 1989) and 'Action', on which work began in 1994 and continues to the present.{{citation needed|date=June 2019}} Italian actor Mario Biagini, who joined the Workcenter shortly after its founding, also became a central contributor to this research.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://grotowski.net/biogramy/mario-biagini |language=pl |title=Mario Biagini |website=grotowski.net |access-date=19 March 2023}}</ref> Although Grotowski died in 1999 at the end of a prolonged illness, the research of Art as Vehicle continues at the Pontedera Workcenter, with Richards as artistic director and Biagini as associate director. Grotowski's Will declared the two his "universal heirs," holders of copyright on the entirety of his textual output and intellectual property.<ref name="culture.pl"/>