Summer Intensive


11 August 2021 – 25 August 2021

/ Recruitment by June 30 (2021)Update:
We have news that everyone’s probably been expecting, but nobody wanted to hear: This year’s Summer Intensive will not be taking place, due to the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic and the subsequent ban on large-scale public events in Poland. We’ll be back next year. New date:”Gardzienice” Summer Intensive11 August 2021 – 25 August 2021

Watch the FILM on Summer Intensive: here

„Gardzienice” Summer Intensive

10 – 23 August 2020

During the summer, the Staniewski Centre for Theatre Practices „Gardzienice” will invite around twenty people of diverse ages and nationalities to live, work, and train intensively with the company for 14 days. The participants in this work session will be deeply immersed in the current projects of the Center for Theater Practices as well as in learning about its rich history.

The experience will include:

  • The company’s actor training methods, mutuality exercises, and night running.
  • Vocal and musical techniques both from antiquity and from living indigenous traditions.
  • Work with ancient Greek iconography and cheironomia or Art of Gesture.
  • Individual, partner, and group etudes.
  • Presentations of performances from Gardzienice’s current repertoire.
  • Open rehearsals and work demonstrations or theatrical essays.
  • Participation in Company’s work on new theatrical material (text, music, training).
  • Films documenting the company’s history and expeditions.
  • Excursion to the most interesting sites of the Lublin area.

A group of young Polish students of Academy of Theatre Practices „Gardzienice” will take part in the work session. Participation in the session of „Gardzienice” Summer Intensive opens the possibility for further cooperation with the Company. There will be approximately six hours of work each day, beginning around 10am. Meals will be taken together. Participants will live in the theatre’s guest rooms; (basic conditions). Training and exercises will be done indoors and outdoors, in the wilderness.


 The achievements of „Gardzienice” come as a wonderful gift… Under the inspired leadership of Włodzimierz Staniewski, the „Gardzienice” group are, in my view, one of few essential theatre companies working anywhere in the world today.

Susan Sontag


For the last 30 years the „Gardzienice” Theatre has based itself in a tiny village in rural eastern Poland, but performances and workshops have taken it abroad to theaters and festivals all around the world. The company has become well known for its rigorous investigation of indigenous and ancient musical traditions, its powerful physical and vocal techniques, its commitment to the creation of theatre in a natural environment, and its emphasis on principles of mutuality and musicalit (…)

„Gardzienice’s” training – Alison Hodge, 'Twentieth Century Actor Training’, Routledge 1999

If you would like to participate, please send a letter of interest, a CV and a photo to:
office@gardzienice.org  (include „Summer Intensive” in the subject line) in the subject line) by June 30 of the current year.