Comment Eugenio Barba

The Laboratory Instinct Comment Eugenio Barba

Ed. note: The following is a speech delivered on the occasion of the Honorary Doctorate bestowed on Eugenio Barba by the Janácˇek Academy of Music and Performing Arts, 12 May 2017, Brno, Czech Republic. Teaching How to Learn and Learning by Teaching I have only done again in my own way what I have learned. I have not forgotten some of the officers from the military col- lege in Naples where I stud- ied and their different ways of Figure 1. The Janácˇek Academy of Music and Performing Arts bestows on Eugenio treating the young undisciplined Barba the title of Doctor Honoris Causa. Brno, Czech Republic, 13 May 2017. (Photo and conceited cadets; a metal courtesy of Janácˇek Academy of Music and Performing Arts, Brno, Czech Republic) worker, Eigil Winnje, taught me in his workshop in Oslo how the force of example and the pride in a job well done united a group of artisans; Jerzy Grotowski, in Opole, Poland, revealed to me that theatre is not just a well-made show. When I was 20, in the Gulf of Biscay, I learned in a few hours that one can go beyond one’s own limits. I had just embarked as a sailor on a Norwegian cargo ship when we met with a storm. The waves shook the floor under my feet. I started to vomit; the seasickness was unbear- able. Worn out, I left the engine room and sought refuge in my berth. Suddenly it seemed that a mighty wave had thrown me up in the air. It was the officer on watch, a giant with a gentle face, who had lifted me up and was saying quietly: “Do you think you are on a cruise? Get back to work.” There on my knees, rolling and getting up again to the rhythm of the swell, for hours I cleaned the greasy metal floor of the engine room, also washing away the traces of my vomit. It was my actors who taught me to be a director. On their own bodies and thanks to their shortcomings and difficulties, their tenacity and the variety of solutions they discovered, I learned the practical skill of theatre craft with its arcane knowledge and Pindaric flights. The rhythm of growth was different for every actor, as was the type of relationship I had with each of them. There was no one method that fitted all. For my actors, behind my rigor, I felt a special kind of love: gratitude and tenderness. Therefore I struggled to keep them from leaving

After working with Jerzy Grotowski for three years in Poland, Eugenio Barba (1936, Italy) created Odin Teatret in 1964 in Oslo and moved with it as a laboratory to Holstebro, Denmark, in 1966. He founded the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) in 1979. He has directed more than 70 productions with his theatre and the intercultural ensemble Theatrum Mundi. Author of a dozen books, his most recent publication, together with Nicola Savarese, is The Five Continents of the Theatre: Facts and Legends about the Material Culture of the Actor (Brill/Sense, 2018).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26 September 2021 TDR Comment 9 - - the unique — to make our own — there exists a value that cannot — or impertinence — always originate in a milieu that conditions the way of always originate in a milieu that conditions — which we can accept, fight, or ignore fight, which we can accept, — these methods —

These pathways are methods. Literally, they are roads that lead elsewhere. The methods they are roads that lead elsewhere. Literally, These pathways are methods. Even after they developed their wings, a core of actors remained; others, who flew towards who flew towards remained; others, a core of actors wings, they developed their Even after special kind of love be a method to Can this question of bonds of affection. it is a Ultimately, These roads we have followed the correct path Only at the end of our life can we know if In this urbanism When we set out, many considered we were heading into a cul-de-sac. It is still so today. It is still so today. heading into a cul-de-sac. many considered we were When we set out, are many and different. In the city of the theatre there are roads that are dishonored and over In the city of the theatre there are roads that are dishonored are many and different. The City of the Theatre Theatre The City of the have built: neighborhoods, into theatre as if entering a city that others Each generation steps parking and no parking traffic regulations, and one-way streets, pedestrian precincts suburbs, con- there are rules, this urban environment Within and parks. monuments, buildings, zones, that enable newcomers to get their bearings and to and shortcuts ways of behaving, ventions, eco- a dense web of operational, culture of its own, The city of the theatre has a material live. inhabit the city: These pathways determine how the newcomers and technical pathways. nomic, collaborating living quietly at its edges, with a feeling of exclusion, with indifference or passion, or trying to rebuild it from scratch. refusing it, it, improving rebelling against it, with it, different horizons, have felt the need to return to the “laboratory” we built together. If the- we built together. “laboratory” have felt the need to return to the different horizons, whom I have formed and who have it is the companions I have chosen, atre is a floating island, floating. determined its duration and its way of that have formed me, be taught? and opinion, and honest if dull streets; new avenues about which people as yet have no crowded, unaware that they may be mur that we might marry, old narrow streets that are like rich heirs and lanes, working-class aristocratic boulevards, tidy, There are streets that are always derers. busy alleys of artisans. There are streets of ill repute where we are thinking and acting of those who follow them. How can one orient oneself in and streets where we dream of making our home. forced to live, of distant histories that do not belong to us? How the urbanism of the theatre that is the result belongs to our history and our deepest needs? can we transform it into an urbanism that whether we will be able to reflect on the house we built, Then method that belongs only to us. or whose empty hull will remain after our death, it is a theatre made of bricks and mortar particular whose and men with a unique profile, whether it is a living environment of women disappearance. élan vital will be extinguished with their me. I frequently had to change my habits, our group dynamics, and the organizational and the organizational and and dynamics, our group my habits, had to change I frequently me. needs and artis- their personal in order to accommodate structure of the theatre operational a new like and excitement, all of us uncertainty produced in These changes tic individualisms. efforts to these “earthquakes,” These work. of our that revitalized the repetitiveness beginning longevity. Teatret’s factors behind Odin are one of the of our micro-culture, erase the routine be explained in words. It surfaces silently at the end of our life when observing why, where, and where, at the end of our life when observing why, It surfaces silently be explained in words. animated how we used a theatrical craftsmanship for years and years in a succession of changes by the same stubbornness and coherence. This is what happened in 1964 when four But for some people it has the appeal of a main road. gathered around an Italian emigrant school in Oslo, rejected by the theatre young Norwegians, to oppose the existing tradition and Teatret didn’t found Odin We who wanted to be a director. had no orig- We didn’t succeed in being admitted to it. but because we its formal actor training, only wanted to We were certainly not revolutionaries. We inal ideas or experimental ambitions. Theatre was were ready to pay out of our own pockets. and we make theatre at whatever cost, we had the temerity our backs to the wall, With our raft. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26September 2021 Festival, September 1973. (Photo by Tony D’Urso) Ulrik Skeel, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Tage Larsen. Belgrade International Theatre Else Marie Christiansen, Laukvik, Ragnar Torgeir Wethal, Jens Christensen, who spoke an invented Russian language. Performers (clockwise, from upper left): based on Dostoyevsky’s biography adapted by Eugenio Barba and the seven actors, January Odin 1974, confirming Teatret’s reputation as a laboratory theatre. It was Figure 2. 10 TDR Comment My Father’s House 322 times between April was performed 1972 and them intophases, andwithdifferentrhythms. interpreters ofSophoclesorChekhovbyrepeatingtheseexercisesforhoursonend, segmenting People études inspiredbyStanislavsky:pouringanddrinkingacupofteawithnoteapotcup? from thethenunknownGrotowskitheatre, risky “duels” withsticksthatwehadinvented, and of classicalballet, acrobatics, yogapositions, andplastique[movementflexibility]exercises only throughavarietyofphysicalactivities. Howcouldafutureactormakeuseofthisblend of chutzpah, conceit, andarrogance with noroofoverhisheadpossessedneitheroriginalitynortalent results andforgetthebeginnings. Those youngpeoplewithnoexperienceandtheirdirector the other, authors’textsinterpretedbyactorstrainedindramaschools. buildings whosearchitectureandactor-spectator relationshiphadnotchangedforcenturies;on The theatre’stopographywassimpleatthebeginningof1960s:ononeside, theatre Burning Bodies instinct. Cantheinstinctfortemeritybetransmitted? way. Itwasthetemerityofamomentthatbecamepermanent. Iwouldsaythatitturnedintoan onstrations, performances, pedagogicinitiatives, andartisticprojects. with relationships, objects, texts, andsongsthattheactorindividuallystructuresaswork dem- may beasimpleorganism:brief scene. Then thisorganismbecomesmoreand complex colage accompaniedbysurprise andabilitytomakealivingorganismgrow. Inthebeginning it This canworkforawhile. Then itturnsintoacreative wanderingfortheactor, apersonalbri- Now thatwehavesucceeded, manypeopleappreciatetheroadwefound. They judgethe For meitwasimportanttodiscoverthattrainingisnotconfined toavarietyofexercises. — including myself — were perplexedandaskedhowitwaspossibletobecomesensitive — when theybegantopreparethemselvesdotheatre inner wind. took flight, bornebytheirown the runwayfromwhichthey ity.” Fortheactors, trainingwas chés ofourprivate “spontane- fighting themovementsandcli- ian reflexesfromourmindand body, washingawaytheutilitar way ofthinkingwiththewhole silent, endlessexerciseswerea years itbecameclearthatthe tant ordeadmasters. After afew the formofadialoguewithdis- of beginnerswasa “laboratory.” teach, claimingthatourtheatre ourselves andalreadyaspiredto tice. We haddecidedtolearnby rity, naivety, andlackofprac- all atthesamelevelofinsecu- one oftheseexercises. We were ing hisorhercompanionsin a leader, responsibleforguid- and silence. Yet everyactorwas Our auto-didacticismtook I imposedabsolutediscipline — perhaps justagooddose - TDR Comment 11 - - I thought about Jan Palach’s body in flames, the Czech body in flames, I thought about Jan Palach’s it is the pleasure of old age. We travel not to change place, but to to change place, travel not We it is the pleasure of old age. to discover that which we have never seen by following apparently use- to discover that which we have never seen — —

At Odin Teatret training has been a way of becoming integrated into the specific culture specific into the integrated of becoming a way has been training Teatret At Odin At the end of the ’60s, my eyes were not solely focused on the transformation of my actors. transformation of my actors. my eyes were not solely focused on the At the end of the ’60s, burn: is this To the merciless reality of history. This is the ambition of theatre people and Learning to learn that allows us to face sieges and adversity. The knowledge accumulated becomes a fortress Learning to unlearn of the group, with its history of actors from different countries without a common language a common language countries without of actors from different with its history of the group, - for freedom for the indi has also been a time But training or with their spectators. among them - of the theatre’s produc independently them over the years, and has accompanied vidual actors personal working path how this increasingly I noticed interests. and the director’s tive priorities and perfor during rehearsals them become transfigured I watched “take off.” made the actors mances, illuminating through their transformations for me the dark corners of my own life and through their transformations for me the illuminating mances, as an emigrant: how to live of these obsessions derived from my condition One my obsessions. the of my obsessions was history, Another own dignity and that of others. without sullying one’s Aleppo, Hiroshima and Auschwitz, where we find Guernica and us, geography that surrounds of the weak. discrimination and abuse , Ferai Rehearsing the performance set fire to himself in oppo- Square in Prague, Wenceslas in a corner of university student who, “Messages sent from citizens. and the demoralization of his fellow sition to the Soviet invasion Artaud speaking of actors. wrote the stake,” dignity in theatre and in one’s own epoch? Is this an a way to oppose and maintain one’s own instinct that can be transmitted? Erasing ghosts I like to make a performance grow like a landscape inhabited by serious and burlesque I like to set in motion a process that engen- who have experienced extreme passions and death. detours, excrescences, a profusion of contrasting elements, accumulation, ders a wild growth, The result is a living landscape that speaks with dis- paths that disappear into the undergrowth. and the know-how of the imagination, cordant voices and whose genesis is in the biography, I devise the most intricate subterfuges to provoke a storm Then I like to erase it. my actors. the carriers of per dismantles the landscape and makes me see its ghosts, wave after wave, that, sonal messages for a few spectators, myself included. During the rehearsals, at the height of the During the rehearsals, included. myself sonal messages for a few spectators, one suddenly, Then I feel an intense happiness just as when, I perceive their apparition. storm, becomes aware of being in love. Every theatre group that is formed by the encounter of motivated people secretes a poison: the Every theatre group that is formed by the groups It is one of the reasons and experiences. unintentional repetition of its own knowledge disband after only a few years. an the alternation of frantic activity and inertia, arid paths: long superfluous deviations, less, that it is going against nature by accepting tasks, excess of energy wasted on simple or childish my antidote for the poi- this has been As a director, not the solution. the problem that counts, son that exhausts a theatre group. Then What we know precedes our decisions. It is also a prison from which we cannot escape. at night in an to plait a rope to throw out of the window we use all our strength to knot sheets, our experience has confined us. attempt to run away from the castle in which only go far when we do not know where we are We change our way of thinking and seeing. Can this not-knowing be taught? going. Traveling Far Far Traveling Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26September 2021

12 TDR Comment Grotowski calledit atre culture, anditbelongstothemethodologicalbaggage ofthatpragmaticscience ory andhistory, ofpracticeandcreativereflection isessentialforthedevelopmentofa- around ourlaboratorysharesacommoncuriosityandcommitment. The combinationofthe- tiveness ofthetoolsusedinourpractice. The milieuof artistsandscholarsthathasgrownup research andappliedimplythegrowthofamilieuthat enablesustotesttheeffec- questions thatforceustolookagainatourownknowledgefrom anotherangle. Bothpure paring andpracticallyanalyzingtheirdifferentpaths. This procedureisaccompaniedbynaive sists ingoingbacktotheorigins, scrutinizingdeeplythefirstdaysofapprenticeship, andcom- called appliedresearch. research. This fertileandintermediaryzonecorrespondstowhat, inthenaturalsciences, is note. These areactivitiesinwhichartisticcreation, didactics, andsocialawarenessminglewith ities inthecommunityamongwhichFestuge, theHolstebroFestive Week, isworthyof “tacit knowledge,” interculturallaboratoriesofactors’practices, and, aboveall, arangeofactiv - The OpenPage unfolded takings haveconstantlyinteracted. Within thesefieldsofactionfurtherprojectsandinitiatives Odin Teatret Film, andOdin Teatret PublishingHouse. Itgoeswithoutsayingthattheirunder University ofEurasian Theatre, Centrefor Theatre LaboratoryStudies, Odin Teatret Archives, under thenameofOdin Teatret, ISTA (theInternationalSchoolof Theatre Anthropology), separate areasofourlaboratory, eachwithaspecificdesignation:performancesandcourses of action:artistic, pedagogical, andresearch. These differentactivitiesweredevelopedwithin Since itscreationin1964, Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium/Odin Teatret hasdevelopedthreefields Laboratory Can incommunicabilitybetaught? directing atheatre, whatgratifiesusaboutthework, andwhataestheticchoiceswemake. incommunicability decidesourvisions, thetechnicalprocedures, therelationships, thewayof know-how imbuedwithpersonalsuperstitions. in NorwegianiscalledGjengangere Ismene. There arealwayscertainthemesthatreturn. Likeghosts. Notbychance, Ibsen’sGhosts blood, thesamegenealogy, anendlessclashbetweenEteoclesandPolynices, Antigone and advances cautiously, reactingtothepreviousone. A feudbetweenbrothersandsisters:thesame scape thattheactorsandIcultivatewithsomuchcareforlong. Eachnewperformance are bornfromanindecipherablecentripetalvitalitythatembracesandhealstheshatteredland- breaks, silences, unusualinflections, elusivecadences, suddenaccelerations. Theperformances performances aremadeofthesubstancedetails, tinydynamisms, suggestions, transitions, aesthetic physicality, aseductivepower, avoluptuousnature. The ghostswhoinhabittheOdin of theirsensesandmemory. Theatre isatechniquetomake usseeLife. Actors andspectatorsalikemustseeitwith theeyes scription. Buttheatreisnotmedicine, theatreisnotabstraction, norisitmetaphor or poetry. the resultsseemtobeguaranteed evenbeforewehavesetout. Evenworse, itsounds likeapre- them, Ifeeluneasy. They arelikeamapthat pointsoutaroadthatdoesnotyetexistandwhere same nucleusofactorsforover50years. The wordscorrespond tothefacts. Yet, whenIread In theatre, pureresearchcorrespondstothepursuitofbasicprinciples. Oneapproachcon- Our zigzaggingdailypracticeconsolidatesthemutualrespectforthisincommunicability. The deepneedtomaketheatreisdifferentforeachofus. Itisalsoincommunicable. This Beyond theirliteral, metaphoric, orarcanemeaning, thedetails I coulddescribeinthiswaythevariousactivitiesthatourlaboratory hascarriedoutwiththe — studies ongenderintheMagdalenaProject, the Transit Festival, andthejournal — conferences, publicationsonthetransmissionofincorporatedtechniquesand — which canbeappliedinourwork. — those whoreturn. LikeinFrench, LesRevenants. All thisis — like thewords — — have an as Jerzy - TDR Comment 13 a character. It has taken a character. — and they have endowed this task — or temerity —

, Odin Teatret’s most recent production. Kai Bredholdt as the Serbian War Lord in a a in Lord War Serbian the as Bredholdt Kai production. recent most Teatret’s Odin , Tree The

. I have been avid . see others This has been my laboratory: painting eyes so I may see and make My craft reminds me of the work of the artisan in Ceylon, long ago, who painted the eyes long ago, in Ceylon, My craft reminds me of the work of the artisan They infuse I imagine my actors as artisans painting eyes on the figures of theatrical fiction. with a deep meaning, different for each of them, one that links us profoundly and which we them, different for each of with a deep meaning, “happy few.” share with a handful of the from that I don’t know where this instinct comes . of eyes to capture the secrets of the painters of the statues of Buddha to be placed in the temples. It was the last detail to be completed. The completed. It was the last detail to be temples. of the statues of Buddha to be placed in the They had to be painted into an ardent sacred object. eyes were the spark that turned the statue had attained enlightenment and become Buddha when the night turned pale: Prince Gautama adorned with jewels and with a in sumptuous cloths, The artisan, at five o’clock in the morning. without existence or observed the monstrous face of the statue without eyes, sword in his belt, He climbed up a ladder Truth. and Life, It was his task to infuse it with Presence, inner light. and a mirror the paints, followed by an assistant who carried the brushes, in front of the statue, the paint while turning his back to the statue as though The artisan dipped a brush in of metal. The artisan lifted the brush above his held up the mirror. a step below, The assistant, to shun it. but was at the face, He never looked directly then the other. left shoulder and painted one eye, Only the mirror received the direct image of Buddha’s guided by the reflection in the mirror. at the No human eyes should meet the gaze of Buddha gaze in the process of being created. The task could take several hours or one very moment of attaining enlightenment and seeing. or years. At times months, minute. I observe them while some of the sublime qualities of life. beauty, dignity, them with sacredness, mirror that I set before them and which shows only a concentrating on the they are painting, who comes from far away featureless face of a ghost part of the blind, them half a century to embody this know-how Figure 3. Figure 2016. September Poland, Wroclaw, Studio. Grobli Na Institute, Grotowski Olympics, victoryTheatre dance. Galli) Francesco by (Photo Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00743 by guest on 26September 2021

14 TDR Comment its arms. its transparency, inawhirlwindoffiction, Iseethedanceofopposites. ItisLiferockingmein I seered:theactors’innerfiretransformssand, erasesandreshapesitintoglass. Through desert. Sometimesfromahiddencracksuddenwindunfurls, liftingthesandandblindingme. only truelaboratory it withfinesand. Surroundedbymyactorsduringtherehearsalsforanewperformance ests andneeds. Ihaveexploredthislandscapeformorethanhalfacenturyandtimehascovered in alandscape, inwhichIstillliketobenddownlookfortracesthathaveescapedmyinter for me. Isthisthesanctityoffiction?Cantheseinstinctsbehandeddown? pushes metoactthus, justastheinstinctthatpushesmyactorstofollowmeremainsamystery http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/suppl/10.1162/DRAM_a_00743 To view supplementalmaterialsrelatedtothisarticle, pleasevisit Time hasdilutedfrontiers, categories, certaintiesinmysensesandbrain. Ifindmyself — I recognizeundermyfeetthelandscapecoveredbysand:anendless

— translated from Italian by Judy Barba — the -