Poor Theatre: goal or path?

This article is a critical review of the book Towards a Poor Theatre by Jerzy Grotowski, recently published in Brazil with a new Portuguese version by Ivan Chagas. This book is considered one of the most important works ever written in the field of the Performing Arts, having contributed to setting new standards for theatre as a practice in the late twentieth century. In this review a brief background of the book is presented and its main ideas are briefly described, such as the notions of: ‘poor theater’, ‘holy actor’ and ‘via negativa’. Ivan Chagas’s translation is critically discussed, especially his change of title.