Sunday, November 05, 2006

Eugenio Barba- Legendary Theatre Reformer- Returns to Italy to Offer His Version/Vision

The ANNOTICO Report

Eugenio Barba has a place in the line of reformers that leads from Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Craig, Copeau, Artaud, Brecht, Grotowski, to Peter Brook. But it isn't easy to define his work. Any summary of his forty years of practical research in the theatre would have to be grossly reductive. His interest has always been in unending process, not in neat conclusions. His writing, rife with metaphor and myth, meanders suggestively, but defies conceptualization.

Barba finished school in Naples in 1954 at eighteen and immediately took to the road. He touched down in Norway and then joined the merchant marine and traveled the world. In 1960 he went to study theatre in Poland. He afterward sojourned in India to learn about Kathakali theatre and its roots in the martial arts. Returning to Norway, he couldn't fit into mainstream theatre and formed his own company with rejects of the established drama schools. Barba eventually settled his Odin Company in Denmark, where in 1978 he set up the International School of Theatre Anthropology, dedicated to the study of the performer. This is presumably his first time back in Italy in 53 years!!!!!

To attempt to characterize Barba, to start with, Barba refuses the traditional role of Western theater, which is the interpretation of a written text. As with Grotowski, the most a text can contribute is a theme for a "spectacle." This not only excludes the writer from the theatre but, it seems, any psychological or intellectual probing of a stage production. Realism in most senses of the word is disdained, and we enter a larger than life world where the striking image rules. Barba claims to avoid a specific "style," but borrows with a free hand from avant-garde and experimental theatre practice as well as from non-Western theatre.

Barba's prime interest lies in the performer. His ultimate focus isn't on the spectator but the actor's craft, in Grotowski's words, "the actor's ability to fascinate, independent of context and meaning." The training of his actors never ends,  since an Odin Teatret play, though performed, is never considered finished.

His preference for centering attention on the performer and not the spectator has had mixed results. A teacher might profitably limit his interest to the creative process of actors. But a theatre director who leaves the spectator out of the equation has chosen the wrong profession. The us/them state of mind can lead to complacency among the clan of initiates. So can the idea of a company of actors as a self-sufficient mini society. Inadequate rehearsal time is the bane of contemporary theatre. But the Odin's habit of rehearsing a play for years and never declaring it finished recalls the bad habit of Etienne Decroux. The great mime -- and theoretician -- would stop his performance and repeat an action again and again until he -- never mind the public -- felt it was right.

Yet the Odin Teatret is a remarkable company, never slap dash or less than interesting. Like all real beauty, its brand is sharp as a razor and always tinged with magic.

To the Drama minded, the entire article is fascinating, and mind expanding. You will never look at Theatre the same again.

ITALY INVADED BY TROUPES ARMED WITH THEORY

Swans

by Peter Byrne

November 6, 2006

Eugenio Barba came back to the heel of Italy. It wasn't the first visit of course and he'd sent his troupe to perform on several occasions over the years. But this time it was different. He would celebrate his seventieth birthday in the corner of Europe where he was born. His announcement had been lyrical and surprising. He'd discovered that his long life in the theatre, as director and theorist, owed something after all to the south that he'd so eagerly left behind as a young man. The surprise followed from the fact that no theoretician in theatrical matters has ever made such a positive thing out of expatriation and the abandonment of his mother tongue. Barba's theories all rest on the conviction that to be an outsider in far-flung places grants unique insights. He talks of being a "Floating Island" among cultures.

Barba's Odin Teatret based in Holstebro, Denmark, presented several productions in the cities of Foggia and Lecce in October. There were also seminars, staged didactic presentations, and book launches. The visit was certainly a blessing for Italian theatrical life. This has stalled sadly in recent years. Milan, Rome, and Turin still boast an occasional memorable production by a prestige figure, invariably far from first youth. Festivals and conferences come and go. But there's little continuity or evidence of a theatre milieu that makes the stage, at least for a concerned minority, a vital issue in London, Paris, or some German cities. Italian theatre people seem to fall into a trance of inactivity when state funds are wanting. When money comes, it's usually distributed politically. Italy is the only developed country I know where the first thing you learn about an actor or director is what political faction he belongs to.

Third tier cities like Foggia or Lecce can't expect much in the way of touring productions. Several boulevard plays, adorned with a superannuated TV personality, habitually mark the season. One or two decent productions of serious plays may stop over, but only for a performance or two for fear of empty seats. Amateurish local dialect companies exist but have no more than an antiquarian or linguistic interest. At the same time the schools keep turning out graduates in drama, and there are some stirrings. The Cantieri Koreja Theatre of Lecce where the visitors appeared in that city has for some years now labored to set up a serious, modern center of dramatic art. But the entrenched provincialism that surrounds it has slowed progress. In this bleak landscape, the importance of Barba and his Odin Teatret's visit can't be exaggerated.

A freight car would be needed to bring home Eugenio Barba's theatrical baggage. He finished school in Naples in 1954 at eighteen and immediately took to the road. He touched down in Norway and then joined the merchant marine and traveled the world. In 1960 he went to study theatre in Poland, ending up in Opole at Jerzi Grotowski's Theatre Laboratory where he would remain three and a half years. He afterward sojourned in India to learn about Kathakali theatre and its roots in the martial arts. Returning to Norway, he couldn't fit into mainstream theatre and formed his own company with rejects of the established drama schools. Barba eventually settled his Odin Company in Denmark, where in 1978 he set up the International School of Theatre Anthropology, dedicated to the study of the performer.

No one would question that Barba has a place in the line of reformers that leads from Stanislavski to Peter Brook through Meyerhold, Craig, Copeau, Artaud, Brecht, and Grotowski. But it isn't easy to define his work. Any summary of his forty years of practical research in the theatre would have to be grossly reductive. His interest has always been in unending process, not in neat conclusions. His writing, rife with metaphor and myth, meanders suggestively, but defies conceptualization. All the same, discussion constrains us, while offering apologies, to characterize his viewpoint as best we can. To start with, Barba refuses the traditional role of Western theater, which is the interpretation of a written text. As with Grotowski, the most a text can contribute is a theme for a "spectacle." This not only excludes the writer from the theatre but, it seems, any psychological or intellectual probing of a stage production. Realism in most senses of the word is disdaine d! , and we enter a larger than life world where the striking image rules. Barba claims to avoid a specific "style," but borrows with a free hand from avant-garde and experimental theatre practice as well as from non-Western theatre.

Barba's prime interest lies in the performer. His ultimate focus isn't on the spectator but the actor's craft, in Grotowski's words, "the actor's ability to fascinate, independent of context and meaning." The training of his actors never ends, and to his mind ought to constitute a way of life. Indian examples especially have brought Barba to an extremely physical theatre. This goes beyond simple agility, and his actors work at anchoring bodily expression in the deeper emotions. One critic says that Barba's actors "create the text with their bodies." But this only happens after a complex process, which, again, never stops, since an Odin Teatret play, though performed, is never considered finished.

So work on a play begins, not with a text, but with selected themes. These form the basis for improvisations, which are less aimed at interaction between the actors than at immersion in the thematic material. Among theatrical reformers Barba stands out for emphasizing the actor's personal "trouvailles" and not merely group integration. Only very late in the long rehearsal period does the play come together. Not till then can some sort of script be written.

A theatergoer wary of theory really had no choice in Foggia and Lecce in October. He could only confront the returning prodigal armed with a second old saw: the proof of the pudding would be in the eating. He would have to sit with an open mind and weigh up what the Odin Teatret put on stage before him. In his way, he would be conducting an experiment of his own. ......... (continued)

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