In Schechner’s horizon – as in that of one of his most important fellow travelers and models, Jerzy Grotowski – there is something in theatre that goes far beyond theatre, not despite it, but precisely because of its specificity.
This is exactly what happens in his work on Rasa, in which he approaches the Nātyaśāstra as a radical instance of theatre.
Schechner engages with it not just in the name of multicultural interest, but as a field of experimentation—a processual score and an emotional core that unites the outside and the inside, in theatre as in life.
Once again, his lesson begins with a fundamental intellectual honesty of vision, but also with an unprecedented and unforeseen perspective, because – as the Heraclitean epigraph of his masterpiece states—“Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing”.
From a text by Dario Tomasello.