Performing the Grotesque through Hybridity and Excess: an Investigation Sited in the Katyn Massacre

The research develops a practice of a grotesque performative for Western theatre, a ‘style’ based on hybridity and excess in gesture and speech. The researcher uses a phenomenological method of investigation to perceive the things which arise in experimental performances in a play entitled Katyń. ‘Katyń’ refers to the massacre of over 21,000 Polish officers and élite in 1940 by the Soviets. The essences which appear confirm the literary and artistic tropes of animality, force, and the presence of an ‘It’, and—new-found—a sense of misery, loss and dislocation, memory, and the artistic self wherein excess dominates.