In June 2009, I traveled to Wroclaw, Poland to attend The World as a Place of Truth international theatre festival (as part of the UNESCO declared Grotwoski Year 2009) at the invitation of Arden2's Director, Joanna Klass. While there, I was graciously adopted by the various members of Arden2's U.S. Artists Initiative, a project partially supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, which brought roughly seventy American theater professionals to the festival to attend performances and participate in facilitated discussions on theatre making, internationalism, and Grotwoski's legacy. Participants saw performances by ten world-renowned theater directors, including: Eugenio Barba, Pina Bausch, Peter Brook, Krystian Lupa, Richard Schechner, Tadashi Suzuki, and Krzysztof Warlikowski, as well as performances from ensemble companies from across Central and Eastern Europe. It must be said that many of the US Artists participants saw Pina Bausch's company perform their piece, NEFES, on the eve of the great choreographer's death--a tragic and incredibly moving experience, from what I was told. For many, this was the first time traveling to a former Communist territory and, for a few, this was their first time traveling abroad. Some participants were very familiar with the theatrical culture of Poland while others knew very little about theatrical life in Eastern Europe. However, Jerzy Grotowski served as a common point of interest: all of the Americans were familiar with Grotowski's work and legacy, and many of them were admirers and, in some cases, artistic descendants. This variety of life and artistic experience within the participants combined with the newness of navigating the streets of Wroclaw, the intensity of the festival schedule, and the differing and often times contradictory vocabulary of the performances and directorial styles created much fodder for heated artistic and philosophical debate. This sharing of opinions and ideas and, in some cases, the sowing of seeds for future collaborations was, I believe, the main idea behind bringing this diverse group of professionals together: to expose them to new ways of thinking about work, about the artist's role in society, and to put them outside of their own cultural context...