Kris Salata

Kris Salata is Professor of Performance and Chair of the School of Theatre at Florida State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Drama and Humanities from Stanford University. His teaching and research focus on performance theory, acting and directing, actor training, experimental theatre, and the relationship between theatre practice and critical and philosophical inquiry.

Salata is internationally recognized for his scholarship on Jerzy Grotowski and his legacy in contemporary theatre and performance. His research examines Grotowski not simply as a major historical figure of twentieth-century theatre but as an artist whose investigations of performance, performer training, embodiment, and human encounter continue to pose important questions for theatre makers today. He has also published on Konstantin Stanislavsky, Tadeusz Kantor, and broader questions of acting, directing, and experimental performance.

He is the author of The Unwritten Grotowski: Theory and Practice of the Encounter (Routledge, 2013), which examines the relationship between Grotowski’s practice and his theoretical thinking through the concept of encounter. His second monograph, Theatre’s Carnal Prayer: Acting After Grotowski (Routledge, 2020), explores the actor’s work as a self-revelatory “total act.” Bringing theatre practice into conversation with philosophy, critical theory, performance studies, ritual, and religious studies, the book considers performance as an embodied creative act grounded in exposure, offering, and encounter.

His most recent book, Grotowski’s Process: Approaches to Theatre Practice (Methuen Drama, 2026), co-authored with Polish theatre scholar Dariusz Kosiński, brings Polish and American perspectives into dialogue to reconsider Grotowski’s approaches to performance-making and performer training. Drawing on published and archival sources, the book presents Grotowski’s legacy as an evolving set of practical investigations rather than a fixed theatrical method and considers its continuing significance for contemporary performance.

Across his research and teaching, Salata is interested in the ways theatre practice generates its own forms of knowledge. His work asks how embodied creative processes can illuminate questions of agency, relationality, vulnerability, self-revelation, and the encounter between performers and others.

His current research, developed in collaboration with Kathryn Syssoyeva, focuses on the ethics of rehearsal and actor training. The project examines vulnerability, submission, consent, and creative agency in processes that ask performers to take physical, emotional, and artistic risks. It considers how contemporary theatre can sustain the possibility of experimentation, transformation, and meaningful human encounter while creating ethical conditions in which performers retain agency over their participation.

At Florida State University, Salata teaches courses in performance theory, critical theory, acting, directing, and theatre practice and works with undergraduate and graduate students interested in the intersections of artistic practice and scholarly research.