Dr Magdalena Stawman-Tuka PhD

researcher | educator | published author

Magda Tuka My specialisation focuses on the performing arts, contemporary theatre of the 20th and 21st centuries in both theory and practice, with particular emphasis on physical expression, inter­disciplinary and hybrid forms, experimentation, ensemble working processes, and culturally and contextually oriented studies.

Though my practice is firmly rooted in Jerzy Grotowski's notion of Art as vehicle, my ongoing output is by definition more akin with his Theatre of Productions period. I began my career working for nine years (1998 - 2007) full time as an actor in the Warsaw-based Studium Teatralne company of Piotr Borowski, a long-term associate of Grotowski during his late Pontedera phase.
The essence of this work was physical training. It involved rigorous investigation of the relationships between body and space, between precision, improvisation, and intuition — the aim being creative existence, being-in-action, and a constant search for what and where the performer’s attention lies.

Practice

In my performance practice I am drawn to hybrid experiments and a multidisciplinary approach that treats space, image, sound, and body/action as mutual elements. The dramaturgy emerges through its attentive listening and co-existence. I create work in studio environments, outdoor settings, and online spaces, always striving to draw out rather than impose the performance organically from the context of the overall experience. By integrating documentation into live performance I seek to blur the boundaries between reality and perception.

Spatial dramaturgy – or an ecology of working with space – serves as a value that helps me creatively understand the nature of a given process, allowing it to become an act of acceptance and mindfulness towards the specific place. For many years I have collaborated with sound designer Opaean. Our explorations involve laboratory-based, process-oriented, long-term projects that manifest in a variety of presentation formats.

Research

My doctoral thesis, entitled Towards a Burning Method: how might the contemporary performer build on the legacy of Grotowski’s Total Act?, was written under the supervision of Prof. Paul Allain and Dr Angelika Varakis.

The tradition of work associated with Jerzy Grotowski is frequently criticised as being male-dominated and shaped by a patriarchal model of relationships. In my own engagement with this tradition, I have sought (principally through a method of direct confrontation with Grotowski’s own texts) an approach to essence, philosophy, and even poetics that might enable a renewed perspective within contemporary performing arts.

PhD in Drama: Practice as Research [2019-2023]:

Towards a Burning Method: how might the contemporary performer build on the legacy of Grotowski’s Total Act? - link to abstract

Pedagogy

I began my teaching career as a workshop leader in the Warsaw-based theatre group Studium Teatralne (from 1998 to 2007). Since 2010, I have taught elements of Grotowski’s work, movement expression, and performative creativity in drama schools.

I believe that performer training must be continually re-examined to remain alive and in active dialogue with students. In my teaching, I always strive to respect the individuality of each student and their unique mode of expression. My aim is to create safe conditions for conscious creative work, free from the paralysing effects of self-censorship or judgement. I place particular emphasis on ensemble work, understanding the group as a living organism, along with the specific mechanisms that govern it.

The training I offer — grounded in many years of practical experience and systematic theoretical study in the performing arts — views expression and the body as essential both to basic stage or camera presence and as a vital source of creativity.

As a pedagogue, I am especially interested in:

  • experimentation and an interdisciplinary approach
  • contextual studies
  • collaboration
  • the search for unique pathways of individual and collective expression
  • work with the imagination

It is worth noting that my teaching has been profoundly influenced by a brief but highly significant encounter with one of the pioneers of contact improvisation, Lisa Nelson, and her practice of spontaneous composition known as Tuning Scores.

Tuning Scores combine compositional precision with improvisation, reflection on the image created by the body within a spatial frame, and an element of unpredictability — thereby guiding the performer towards conscious presence in a continuous stream of change. This resonates deeply with many levels of my own creative work.

Recent Research, Publications, and Presentations

  • Performer/28 Alchemical process of burning [Alchemiczne procesy spalania] - Peer reviewed Article
  • Culture Teatrali 33/2024 "After the Empty Space: from Traditional Settings to New Creative Ecologies" Emerging hybrid workspaces - Peer reviewed Article
  • Horsedonkey Press June 2024 Burning Method - Research Publication
  • IPPT 9th edition 12th-15th January 2023 Emerging hybrid workspaces - Research Presentation
  • Tekstualia Nr 1 (720) 2023 Confrontation with Grotowski. Record of conversation after Magda Tuka’s performance Burning Method - four lectures on conditional love [Konfrontacja z Grotowskim. Zapis rozmowy po performansie Magdy Tuki Burning Method – cztery wykłady o miłości warunkowej]
  • IPPT 7th edition 9th-12th January 2020 “Words in, of and for Performer Training” - Grotowski's Via Negativa