In 1962, Eugene Barba, who was a student at Warsaw's Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna (PWST, the National School of Theatre), came to Opole as part of his internship. Eventually, he became one of Grotowski's closest collaborators and his most ardent foreign supporter. Shortly after meeting Barba, Grotowski participated in the Eighth World's Youth Festival in Helsinki, where he also met Raymonde Temkine. She visited Opole in 1963, watched a special performance of Akropolis, and was greatly impressed by Grotowski's theatre. Those two contacts augmented international perspectives of Grotowski, but to reach wider audiences, Grotowski needed a concrete theatrical piece that would appeal to international tastes. As Dariusz Kosiński notes:

As a showcase spectacle for a broader international audience, Akropolis fulfilled its function, but in Poland, initial reviews were mixed, to say the least. Puzyna notes that the production “provoked extremely tempestuous discussions.”