Cieslak

"When I left Grotowski's theater, Rysard Cieslak was already a good actor, but he wanted to be an intellectual. It was as though a great brain were getting tangled up with that body that was so full of life, and flattening it out somehow, reducing the life to two dimensions. I saw him again, two years later, when he came to Oslow with The Constant Prince. Right from the start it was as though everything I remembered, everything I had based my ideas on, was disappearing beneath my feet. I saw another being, I saw a man who had discovered his own completeness, his own destiny, his own vulnerability." - Barba

Cieslak said about the same performance -

"The score is like a glass inside which a candle is burning. The glass is solid, it is there, you can depend on it. It contains and guides the flame. But it is not the flame. The flame is my inner process each night. The flame is what illuminates the score, what the spectators see through the score. The flame is alive. Just as the flame in the glass moves, flutters, rises, falls, almost goes out, suddenly glows brightly, responds to each breath of wind – so my inner life varies from night to night, from moment to moment... I begin each night without anticipations: this is the hardest thing to learn. I do not prepare myself to feel anything. I do not say "Last night this scene was extraordinary, I will try to do that again." I want only to be receptive to what will happen. And I am ready to take what happens if I am secure in my score, knowing that even if I feel a minimum, the glass will not break, the objective structure worked out over the months will help me through. But when a night comes that I can glow, shine, live, reveal _ I am ready for it by not anticipating it. The score remains the same, but everything is different because I am different."