Rehearse for Three Days or Three Months — Anything in Between is... well... “pleasuring oneself”

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There’s a quote attributed to Jerzy Grotowski that’s haunted me since my time at NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing:

“Either rehearse for three days, or rehearse for three months. Anything in between is a waste of time.”

Now, did he actually say that? Depends who you ask. But he was known for putting full plays up - in front of audiences - after just 3 days of rehearsal.

Why? And how can we harness his reasoning in our self-tapes?

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Who was Grotowski?

Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish theatre director, teacher, and one of the boldest experimenters of the 20th century. He took Stanislavski’s ideas on Physical Actions and Impulse to the extreme. One of his core tenets was unlocking the body and psyche to ask... What happens when you take everything away, and all you’re left with is presence?

At NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing, his philosophy wasn’t an idea we read about — it was a daily practice. We weren’t rehearsing to get something right. We were exploring to uncover something. That takes either brutal honesty in a flash of insight — or relentless excavation over time.

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Why Three Days or Three Months?

Because those are two profound timelines where truth (or the illusion of truth) can exist.

• Three days: You trust your gut, go with instinct, and let it rip. It’s raw, it’s alive, it’s do or die. It might even be messy — but every second is infused with the truth that you don’t know what’s going to happen next. The lightning-strike version of performance.

• Three months: You immerse. It felt good at first but now it is stagnant and rehearsed. So then you have time to break every moment down into smaller and smaller moments until you are able to recreate the illusion of spontaneity. You break yourself down and rebuild. You live in the text, let it rewire you, shape your breath and posture. You earn the performance. No shortcuts.

But anything in between? That’s the danger zone. The place where art turns into performance. Presence into posturing. We are chasing what we already found. We are re-creating rather than creating.

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What This Means for Self-Tapes

That was theater, decades ago. So let’s talk modern-day. Self-tapes. Auditions. That tight window between receiving the sides and hitting record.

You’ve got 24, maybe 72 hours. But there is still a “3 days” and “3 months” way to look at this.

(Disclaimer: There are no “rules” to this. On one audition you might be ready to go immediately and on another you want to break it down into every possible millisecond. Trust your gut.)

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3 DAYS

What if you embrace the “three days” mindset when you tape? What if you give yourself permission to follow the fire, rather than control it? To prioritize action, expectation, and urgency over polish?

A strong actor can show up 80% ready and discover the remaining 20% while the camera is rolling.

This is a magical way to self-tape because you, like the actors in front of an audience after 3 days, are still figuring everything out in real time.

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3 MONTHS

If you go the “3 month” route, you are committing to following every question, every impulse, every rehearsal with more questions, more impulses, and more rehearsals.

Your job is to find a moment that feels good at first and then break it down into smaller and smaller moments so that the audience can no longer tell the difference between truth and the illusion of truth.

In the “3 month” scenario, you have created such a vast fortress for yourself that you are connected every second - because you understand every second.

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SELF PLEASURE

But if you’re going to sit in the “between” - prioritizing memorization, playing emotions, and trying to get it right - it (most often) will not serve you or the audience.

It is performance. It is neither alive nor nuanced. It is self-serving and often birthed from isolation.

And we feel that. We know we’re not connected. We know it’s goal-based and seeking an outcome rather than living in this moment. Right now.

So next time you encounter something... consider whether you need 3 days or 3 months with it.

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One Final Thought

This is why I teach what I teach. Why I bring Grotowski’s legacy into a camera-focused world. Why I use tools like Viewpoints, Laban, Rasa, Chekhov—not to make things “look cool,” but to give actors something to feel.

Because we don’t need more perfectly adequate tapes.

We need something alive.

See you in 3 days or 3 months!
—J