Eugenio Barba

The article focuses on the solo performance "El Romancero de Edipo", created by Eugenio Barba together with the Spanish actor Toni Cots, and staged in several countries between 1984 to 1990. The performance was the very first monologue directed by Barba in his long-standing career. For Barba, it was also the first direct approach to the tragic myth, following an interest already cultivated around the figure of Antigone from the early Eighties onwards, in a moment of crisis and need for renewal for the groups of the “Third Theatre” movement, defined by Barba in 1976. For Cots, the monologue was the last and culminating part of his almost ten-year experience as an actor at the Odin Teatret, where he had also developed a personal actor’s training technique (in part based on Balinese traditional dances) and had accompanied Barba through the first research activities in the new field of Theatre Anthropology. With "El Romancero of Edipo", Barba explored the tragic myth and elaborated an original theatrical narration based on the creative process of the actor, within which lay the rhythm of the montage. The text was therefore sustained by a rigorous score by the actor and by a detailed line of physical and vocal actions, making use of simple but very effective scenic props such as a vase, a self-built mask, drapery, a wig, and a stick. In addition, the use of songs and melodies, as well as other literary sources, extended the performative language of the artwork, giving life to an innovative re-elaboration rich in transcultural influences. By analysing all these elements, the article ‘deconstructs’ the performance, retracing its sources and its development between the actor and the director.

The Odin Teatret Archives presents collections from the archives of one of the foremost reference points in global theatre. Letters, notes, work diaries, articles and a wealth of photographs all chart the daily activity that underpins the life of Odin Teatret, telling the adventurous, complex stories which have produced the pioneering work that defi nes Odin's laboratory approach to theatre. Odin Teatret have been at the forefront of theatrical innovation for over fi fty years, devising new strategies for actor training, knowledge sharing, performance making, theatrical alliances and ways of creating and encountering audiences. Their extraordinary work has pushed boundaries between Western and Eastern theatre; between process and performance; and between different theatre networks across the world. In this unique volume, Mirella Schino brings together a never before seen collection of source materials which reveal the social, political and artistic questions facing not just one groundbreaking company, but everyone who tries to make a life in the theatre.

Three directors who influenced 20th century theatre, Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Jerzy Grotowski, and they each conducted comprehensive studies on the position of acting through theatrical aesthetic. In order to realize this theatrical aesthetic, these directors emphasized the need for actors to practice systematic exercises and develop particular scenic behaviour, which is different from daily behaviour. Their work has paved the way for various theoretical studies on acting. The actor who is going to act within a reality that fictionalized on stage, no matter the strength of its relationship with daily reality, has to leave the automatized daily behaviour behind and develop a technique that is built upon the necessities of the stage context. In this article, the basis of the extra-daily scenic behaviour of actors in the Odin Theatre is dealt with in the light of approaches of directors who strongly affected the theatre approach that developed through the 20th century: namely Stanislavski, Meyerhold and Grotowski.

What is a theatre laboratory?
Why a theatre laboratory?
This book attempts to answer these
questions, focusing on the experiences and
theories, the visions and the techniques,
the differences and similarities of
European theatre laboratories in the
twentieth century. It studies in depth the
Studios of Stanislavski and Meyerhold, the
school of Decroux, the Teatr Laboratorium
of Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen, as
well as Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret.
Theatre laboratories embody a theatre
practice that defies the demands and
fashions of the times, the usual ways of
production and the sensible functions that
stage art enjoys in our society. It is theatre
that refuses to be only art and whose
radical research forges new conditions
with a view to changing both the actor and
the spectator. This research transforms
theatrical craft into a laboratory that has
been compared to the laboratories of the
alchemists, who worked not on material
but on substance. The alchemists of the
stage did not only operate on forms and
styles, but mainly on the living substance
of the theatre: the actor, seen not just as an
artist but above all as a representative of a
new human being.
Laboratory theatres have rarely been
at the centre of the news. Yet their
underground activity has influenced
theatre history. Without them, our very
ideas of theatre, as shaped throughout the
course of the twentieth century, would
have been quite different. In this book
Mirella Schino recounts, as in a novel,
the vicissitudes of a group of practitioners
and scholars who try to uncover
the technical, political and spiritual
perspectives behind the word ‘laboratory’
when applied to the theatre.

ITALIANO. Il saggio propone i primi riscontri di una ricognizione storica circa la ricezione dei Performance Studies in ambito italiano, con particolare riguardo all’opera del suo principale promotore, vale a dire Richard Schechner (senza dimenticare, in ogni caso, l'apporto di Victor Turner, ma tenendo conto che la ricezione dei suoi studi presenta una vicenda autonoma nell’ambito delle discipline demo-etno-antropologiche italiane che precede quella dei Performance Studies). Seguendo il corso delle traduzioni italiane degli scritti di Schechner e il loro intrecciarsi con le ricerche autoctone, sollecitando le testimonianze dirette dei diversi studiosi italiani che ne hanno promosso la conoscenza nel nostro paese, nonché considerando le principali posizioni critiche espresse dalla teatrologia italiana nei confronti della proposta dei Performance Studies, l’intervento prova a ricostruire l’itinerario storico e il profilo intellettuale di un confronto ormai più che trentennale tra i Performance Studies di matrice anglosassone e la Nuova Teatrologia di matrice europeo-continentale e in particolare italiana. Ai semplici dati di cronaca (che si suppone possano offrire dati comunque interessanti ai fini del dibattito scientifico) si affianca anche una riflessione di carattere teorico ed epistemologico, volta a rilevare e discutere alcuni aspetti dei principali punti di contatto e di differenza esistenti tra le due prospettive di indagine.
ENGLISH The paper aims to show the provisional outcome of a historical and theoretical survey concerning the insertion of Performance Studies in Italian academy. The focus will be mostly on the work of the field's founder and pioneer, Richard Schechner. This does not mean to forget the second leading figure in the field, Victor Turner; it simply means to recognize that Turner’s work was aptly received, in Italy as well as in other European countries, mainly in the field of social and cultural anthropology, apart from theatre studies. On the one hand, I will follow the timeline of the Italian translation of Schechner's writings; on the other hand, possibly making use of first-hand evidences, I will try to bring the attention toward the sometimes controversial dialogue between Italian "New Theatrology" and English-speaking Performance Studies. My point is that even simple chronicle data can shed light about analogies and differences between the two study perspectives.

Corporeity can be shown as an important study element of the relations between individuals, indicating a singular modus for the development of cognitive-affective processes. The aim of this study was to develop a reflection, starting from the analysis of a creative process that involved the realization of a poetic-theatrical experiment, in order to investigate how the dynamics between the word and the subtext were processed, using corporeity as argument for the explanation of the signification process. The thesis that I defend is that corporeity is the element that propitiate the process of signification, and the subtext being the in-between-place of this communication, establishing this dynamic as a pedagogy of the theatrical event. The dramaturgy of corporeity proposes a working way, originating from an intense intimate dynamization between the sensorial, corporeal, affective, aesthetical, esthesical, volitional, synaesthesical and imagery perceptions developed at the moment of the actors’ creative process. The working procedure addressing the dramaturgy of corporeity would also be a methodological alternative for the actors to learn to understand themselves as artists-educators and on how to make their work a potentiator of the link between these two words. In this study, the poetic-theatrical experiment, based on the text Prometheus Chained, by Aeschylus, was carried out as fieldwork, in order to foster the reflexive motes necessary for understanding the moments of aesthetic living, essential to an understanding of how pedagogy of the theatrical event works. With this work, it was possible to elucidate a differentiated way of operating the cognitive-affective processes, which occurs through the relations of corporeity. This fact made it possible to establish a singular means of educational, cognitive-affective processes, detached from traditional meanings in the field of education which usually think of them when focused through cognitive cognitive-encephalic analyzes. Thus, it was possible to observe the experiential relationships that occur during the theatrical event as an important field in the area of education, which has not yet received an explanatory approach as developed in this research.

Essa dissertação é fruto de reflexões sobre o processo de preparação de atores do espetáculo ‘Quatro paredes’, realizado pela Cia. Mínima em Goiânia, Goiás, Brasil, 2003. Esta montagem teatral se constituiu inspirada nos postulados de preparação do ator apresentados pelo diretor teatral italiano Eugênio Barba (1936) no Brasil e faz parte da recepção das técnicas desenvolvidas pelo diretor em nosso País. Este trabalho teve como objetivo a sistematização e a reflexão das metodologias e exercícios realizados e hoje batizados neste trabalho, através dos seguintes filtros conceituais para a compreensão deste processo e presentes na construção desta montagem: ritual, fluxo, jogo e improvisação. Foi investigada a metodologia utilizada através de exercícios e procedimentos registrados em diários de trabalho, de fotografias e das memórias de quatro atores durante a preparação do referido espetáculo: Ana Paula Carvalho, Bruno Peixoto, Mayarah Pinheiro e Pedro Vilela.

This dissertation is the result of thoughts on the process of training the actors of the play ‘Quatro paredes’, which was staged in 2003 by Cia Mínima, in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil. This staging was inspired on the postulates of training actors presented in Brazil by the Italian theatrical director Eugenio Barba (1936) and they are part of the reception of the techniques developed by Barba in our Country. This work aims at reflecting and systematizing the methodologies and exercises used in the training of actors of the staging of this play. The proposed analyses use four conceptual filters for the understanding of this process which are present in the making of this staging: ritual, flow, theatrical play and improvisation. The methodology is investigated through the exercises and procedures which were grounded on those conceptual filters. The experiences of four actors, during the training for the mentioned staging, are investigated through registers and analyses of working reports, pictures and the memories. The actors are: Ana Paula Carvalho, Bruno Peixoto, Mayarah Pinheiro e Pedro Vilela.

Apstrakt: Antonen Arto (1896-1948) se smatra jednim od najuticajnijih pozorišnih stvaralaca u 20. veku iako se njegova teorija uzima za nekoherentno i teško razumljivo štivo. Rad ima za cilj da prikaže Artoov nacrt pozorišta surovosti i načine na koje je ta ideja uticala na kasnije pozorišne stvaraoce, tačnije na Pitera Bruka, Ježija Grotovskog i Euđenija Barbu.
Ključne reči: Arto, pozorište surovosti, Grotovski, Euđenio Barba, Piter Bruk, po-svećeni teatar

Bu çalışma, bir sanat alanı olarak kurulmasından itibaren, oyunculuğun temel uğraklarını ziyaret ederek oyuncu dramaturgisinin serüvenini tartışmayı hedeflemektedir. Oyuncu dramaturgisi, oyunculuk alanındaki iktidar ilişkilerinin, mücadele ve müzakerelerin izini içinde barındırır. Yönetmenin hegemonyası altında şekillenen oyuncu dramaturgisi, ağırlıklı olarak performans öncesi hazırlık aşamasının temel unsurlarından biridir ve başat anlamı ayrıcalıklı kılmak için anlam üzerinde gerçekleşen mücadeleye/müzakereye işaret eder. Bu alandaki mücadele, yönetmenin otoritesini ihlal eden oyuncunun özgürleşmesi lehinde sürmektedir. Bu çalışma diğer yandan, gerek oyunculuğun gerekse oyuncu dramaturgisinin, kesintisiz bir biçimde karakter yaratma pratiği değil, her halükarda (tartışılan bütün yaklaşım ve metotlarda olduğu gibi) parça bütün diyalektiğiyle şekillenen bir parçalara ayırma, seçme, düzenleme ve kurgu pratiği olduğunu ileri sürmektedir. David Mamet’in önerdiği güzergah, kurguyu oyunculukta/oyuncu dramaturgisinde doğrudan bir yöntem olarak kullanırken, oyuncuya tanıdığı özerklikle, yönetmen merkezli paradigmanın sınırına gelindiğini de ortaya koyar.
[The aim of this study is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to discuss the background and fault lines of actor’s dramaturgy by making rounds its basic moments since acting established as art. Actor’s dramaturgy involves and reflects the power relations, struggles and negotiations of field of acting. Actor’s dramaturgy, as a fundamental component of pre-performance stage, is shaped under the hegemony of director and indicates the struggles over the dominant meaning, beside struggle proceeds in favour of liberation of actor against authority of director. Secondly, it claims that both acting and actor’s dramaturgy that formed in part-whole dialectics is the practice of segmentation, selection, editing and montage. The conceptual tool kit of cinematography is used for discussions on acting and dramaturgy to transgress the margins between theatre and cinema. Mamet’s suggestion on acting/actor’s dramaturgy is about using montage directly and gives autonomy to actors. Indicating the edge of director-based paradigm makes his method important in this context.]

Mirella Schino, Ista-the-Whale. Documents and thoughts on the
International School of Theatre Anthropology.
In the course of the twentieth century, theatre has sometimes forsaken its
tendentially solitary introverted nature. There have been moments and places
that have produced relationships that were not necessarily tangible. That
brought changes in mentality rather than transformations in theatre practice.
They produced no concrete result, but created networks of communication
and unexpected or invisible connections. Perhaps they were important –
even vital – moments of transition. Ista, the International School of Theatre
Anthropology, has been one of these places. But in order to dig deeper into
this less obvious and visible perspective, it is necessary to start to observe
it, by temporarily removing, in the metaphorical sense, the aspects which
have always been retained as central: the presence of Eugenio Barba, Odin,
theatre anthropology, personal memories.
Nel corso del Novecento, il teatro ha qualche volta abbandonato la sua
natura, tendenzialmente solitaria, chiusa in sé. Ci sono stati momenti e luoghi
SUMMARIES 409
che hanno prodotto relazioni, non necessariamente concrete. Cambiamenti
nella mentalità, più che trasformazioni nel teatro pratico. Non sono serviti a
niente di concreto, però hanno creato reti di comunicazioni e passaggi spesso
imprevedibili, o invisibili. Forse sono stati momenti di passaggio essenziali,
perfino vitali. Uno di questi luoghi è stato l’Ista, l’International School
of Theatre Anthropology. Ma per cercare di andare a fondo in questo suo
aspetto meno visibile e appariscente, è necessario cominciare a osservarla
rimuovendo, metaforicamente e temporaneamente, gli aspetti da sempre
ritenuti centrali: la presenza di Eugenio Barba, l’Odin, l’antropologia teatrale,
le memorie personali.

The article examines some of Eugenio Barba’s study material now preserved in the Fonds Barba at Odin Teatret Archives (ISTA Series, b. 1). Barba’s readings preceding the first edition of the ISTA in Bonn in 1980 trace the development of interests cultivated by the director, from humanities to science (biology, neuropsychology, studies of perception, posturology). Even before developing the theory of theatre anthropology as an autonomous discipline, Barba evolved many fertile perspectives of study on energy, within which he expanded the understanding of presence as a fundamental component of theatre. Barba’s reading notes reveal an intellectual approach similar to his artistic work: the accumulation of an overabundance of material, which in the theoretical sphere, too, invert the principle of maximum results with minimum effort.

https://jta.ista-online.org/article/view/11

Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance examines collective and devised theatre practices internationally--with emphasis on Russia, Europe, and North America--from the late 20th century, into the present. Building upon the authors’ previous work, A History of Collective Creation, this volume situates contemporary collective creation in a tradition which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and traces the aesthetic, social and political shifts that have marked this mode of theatre making, from mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, to present-day devising practices.

摘要：本访谈基于尤金尼奥·巴尔巴所开创的戏剧人类学与中国戏曲的关联，讨论巴尔巴如何与戏曲及戏曲从业者接触，聚焦他对戏曲表演程式的看法。访谈同样比较了欧丁剧团演员训练与戏曲及其他东亚戏剧传统的异同，并在此背景下进一步思考戏曲对当今世界戏剧的价值。
关键词：戏剧人类学；戏曲；尤金尼奥·巴尔巴；演员训练

Abstract: Based on the connection between xiqu and Eugenio Barba’s conceptualization of theatre anthropology, this interview introduces how Barba, in his career, encountered xiqu and xiqu professionals, and then focuses on his perception of xiqu’s performance conventions. This interview further considers xiqu’s contribution to contemporary world theatre, along with a comparison of differences and similarities between actor training of Odin Teatret and the tradition of xiqu and other East Asian theatre.

The Invisible City explores urban spaces from the perspective of a traveler, writer, and creator of theatre to illuminate how cities offer travelers and residents theatrical visions whilst also remaining mostly invisible, beyond the limits of attention.

The text explores the city as both stage and content in three parts. Firstly, it follows in pattern Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, wherein Marco Polo describes cities to the Mongol emperor Kublai Kahn, to produce a constellation of vignettes recalling individual cities through travel writing and engagement with artworks. Secondly, Gillette traces the Teatro Potlach group and its ongoing immersive, site-specific performance project Invisible Cities, which has staged performances in dozens of cities across Europe and the Americas. The final part of the book offers useful exercises for artists and travelers interested in researching their own invisible cities.

Written for practitioners, travelers, students and thinkers interested in the city as site and source of performance, The Invisible City mixes travelogue with criticism and cleverly combines philosophical meditations with theatrical pedagogy.

Tłumaczenie rozdziału książki Eugenia Barby „Alla ricerca del teatro perduto. Una proposta dell’ avanguardia polacca” (Marsilio Editori, Padwa 1965) – pierwszej książki o teatrze Grotowskiego – jest przechowywane w Archiwum Instytutu im. Jerzego Grotowskiego we Wrocławiu. Autor tłumaczenia, okoliczności jego powstania oraz losy maszynopisu nie są znane. Przez lata w spisie rękopisów i maszynopisów tekst funkcjonował jako niepublikowany szkic napisany przez Jerzego Grotowskiego. Dopiero niedawno Zbigniew Jędrychowski uważniej przyjrzał się maszynopisowi i rozpoznał źródło. Eugenio Barba, zapytany o to przez Zbyszka, nie pamięta, kto i w jakich okolicznościach mógł dokonać tego przekładu. Zdecydowaliśmy się go opublikować przede wszystkim jako historyczne a nieistniejące dotychczas po polsku pionierskie opracowanie – świadectwo czasu i roli, jaką odegrał Eugenio Barba w propagowaniu teatru Grotowskiego, a także ówczesnych poglądów założyciela Odin Teatret. Publikujemy go także jako ślad nieznanej historii. Może po tej publikacji ktoś przypomni sobie towarzyszące jej okoliczności…
Tłumaczenie nieznanego autorstwa pochodzące z Archiwum, zostało sprawdzone i uzupełnione o opuszczone fragmenty oryginału włoskiego przez Katarzynę Woźniak.

Teaching in universities seems less and less a way to put different people in live contact with sharing specific knowledge. Activities usually take a technical shape of transmitting information, practices, a know how of a domain, area or expertise. Performance is often excluded. Often, you don't need the presence of "actors". But Theatre still keeps the track of a live and ancestral communication tool: the presence. Is this yet enough to cope with the technological milieu we're living in? Eugenio Barba's theatre might also be considered from this point of view, of a sense of teaching where director and actor confront themselves with the proliferation of artifacts of the TIC. Who is who in the process of teaching and sharing? The Life of Knowledge. Usually, acting is seen as a sum of practices acquired during a certain period of time. It is also considered a level of artistic experience displayed on stage every time when is needed. For Eugenio Barba and his Odin Teatret, to teach became since a long time not a technique of transmitting but a way to discover the unknown. It is not the search for knowledge but that of the unknown that eventually leads to the actors' own findings during the process of work. As Barba mentioned many times, these findings are a result of number of exercises that generate energy and not fixed technical procedures. They will, of course, establish a kind of, let's say, competence of the actor to put him/herself into the right way to express artistic abilities on stage. This competence is acquired through intensive trainings. Barba (BARBA 1986: 56) made explicit that training is not a theatrical know how: Training does not teach how to act, how to be clever, does not prepare one for creation. Training is a process of self-definition, a process of self-discipline which manifests itself indissolubly through physical reactions. It is not the exercise in itself that counts-for example, bending or somersaults-but the individual's justification for his own work, a justification which although perhaps banal or difficult to explain through words, is physiologically perceptible, evident to the observer. There's always knowledge of the mind to share but also knowledge of the body to share, in fact to communicate to the audience. To make this kind of knowledge common to both actors and audience needs to be the sense of theatrical experience. Barba's theatrical pedagogy has opened the way since early '70s to a non-linear approach to working with the actor: it is not the reality of the exercises but the justification for them that should be the goal of both the work and the reflection of it by the spectators. One way to get to this life of knowledge shared with the spectators is to come up the "knots" during the exercise: When I composed a scene, I strove for a synthesis of contradictory information in a convincing sensory form. These antithetical elements 1 Marian Popescu is Professor of Performance Studies and Communication at the University of Bucharest

Eugenio Barba, homme de théâtre italien qui, dans la foulée de Jerzy Grotowski, a développé une approche anti-représentationnelle du théâtre centrée sur la présence corporelle performative, distingue un anonymat du plein, « fruit d’un acquiescement à l’esprit du temps », d’un anonymat du vide, « qui se conquiert à la première personne ». En quoi consiste cet anonymat à la première personne? (Ce texte est un extrait de "Comment sauver le commun du communisme?, Le quartanier, 2014, fin du chap.4)

This is the full version of an interview I conducted with Eugenio Barba in June 1998 in Coventry.  It is a reflection on common areas of interest between Odin Teatret and Triangle Theatre amongst other observations.  In particular it gives an interesting insight into Odin Teatret's work in the late 90s.

"Eugenio Barba. L’albero della conoscenza dello spettacolo" offre un resoconto inedito sull’opera di Eugenio Barba. Assumendo lo spettacolo dell’Odin Teatret "L’albero" (2016) come punto di partenza, il libro spazia negli ambiti storico, immaginifico e pratico del lavoro di Barba. Attraverso l’immagine dell’albero come metafora concettuale e spaziale, il volume offre una narrazione di prima mano su tematiche quali gli spettacoli di Barba, l’interculturalismo, il teatro di comunità, e introduce nuove aree d’indagine dal pensiero paradossale alla drammaturgia, dall’esilio all’eredità. In questo modo, il libro disvela ambiti inediti della scrittura di Barba. Kuhlmann e Ledger, grazie a una collaborazione insolita nel campo degli studi artistici, hanno concepito l’opera di Barba non tanto come un resoconto cronologico, quanto come una struttura organizzativa di tipo reticolare: forniscono così una trattazione contemporanea, coinvolgente e poetica, del paesaggio creativo di questo influente regista.

"Eugenio Barba. L’albero della conoscenza dello spettacolo" offers an original account of the work of Eugenio Barba. Using the Odin Teatret’s performance "L’albero" (2016) as a starting point, the book ranges widely across historical, imagistic and practical areas of Barba’s work. Developing the image of ‘the tree’ as a conceptual and spatial metaphor, the book offers a fist-hand account of topics such as Barba’s performances, interculturalism and community performance, but also introduces new areas of enquiry, such as his paradoxical ideas, dramaturgy, exile and legacy. Throughout, it also reveals Barba’s extensive writings. Rather than a chronological account, Kuhlmann and Ledger’s collaboration, unusual in arts scholarship, has conceived of Barba’s work as a web-like organisational structure. It provides a contemporary, engaging and poetic treatment of the landscape of this highly influential director’s work.

https://www.cuepress.com/catalogo/eugenio-barba

The initial idea was to write a kind of (Alaska, to quote Pinter) a philosophical, post-apocalyptic and dystopian play. A formal experiment with drama where characters are rather undefined, apparently bi-dimensional and simple but through interaction reveal themselves, layer by layer, like peeling an onion. The same goes for the story. The narrative isn't necessary linear or logic. The sense of time and space is stretched to the point of giving the sensation that none is real and these characters might be trapped in some sort of loop.

Influences from theatre of the absurd from Ionesco to Pirandello, the existentialism of Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, Oh Happy Days), the outrageous Heiner Müller (Hamletmachine) and other following post-dramatic theatre experiences. The plays of Caryl Churchill have always had a great impact on me and my theatre-making (Far Away, Love and Information, Top Girls). In literature, the obvious Franz Kafka and Günter Grass, and I pay explicit homages to them by borrowing symbolic elements usually associated to them.

The writing process of this play is entrenched into the visualization of it in terms of mise-en-scene. The words create and suggest how the set design, lighting and sound should be. In terms of the acting and staging of it, it aligns with the exploration of basic human needs and emotions. Worth mentioning the work of Jerzy Grotowski, his concept of poor theatre and physical actions to reach the essence of theater and Anne Bogart with her Viewpoints and Composition techniques applied to playwright and directing. Other ' Bs' that are part of my artistic body, mind and soul are Barba, Brook and Boal, who thought, felt and made theatre in their own terms and going beyond the restrains of the form, expanding the concept of dramaturgy and theatre-making.

Purple Onions is stageplay about many things: how do we live alone, in our own bubbles and fictional worlds. How do we relate to other people on a very primal basic emotional level? How does one get to enter another's person world and open up their own as well? It's about needs - and the most important of them is the need for self-realization - a subjective feeling that we know when we have it, when we feel it and it cannot be fully achieved unless we accept your own limitations and flaws.

Dreams and art create, reinvent and defy realities. is this 'crazy' story happening in her mind? is it Earth? If so, is it a remote past or a dystopian future? theatre is the realm where imagination is the main force to construct these alternative scenarios or dimensions, and it is thanks to imagination that we embark on the journey too, thus making it real it for us too, outside the character's (or the author's) head. A leap of faith and a strong belief in the power of words and the signs of drama.

Note: This article was published in the refereed journal Shakespearean International Yearbook *BEFORE* Alexa was recruited to become a co-general editor.

On 10 December, 1981, in the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, France, a medieval English court scene was being created by a group of French performers in eclectic costumes bursting – like Kabuki actors – through a paper screen. The scene took place on a square carpeted area connected by Kabuki-style hanamichi-bridge ramps to curtained cubicles in the four corners. Some performers sported commedia dell'arte or Noh masks, while others (including the king) were clad in royal kimonos with ruffled collars.

Asian-themed Shakespearean performance in Europe raises critical issues about cultural tourism and the identities of Shakespeare's text, Europe, and Asia. While various national Shakespeare traditions around the world also raise similar issues, the additional layer of defamiliarisation of performing Asian-themed Shakespeares for an European audience – rather than a home (Asian) audience or an English-speaking audience who often assume native familiarity with either Asia or Shakespeare – makes both Shakespeare and Asian audio-visual idioms seem at once familiar and alienated, which complicates the idea of the "original" and the "derivative."

How do new sites of performance (Europe) and a non-Asian canon (Shakespeare) affect the traffic between European and Asian identities?

Asian Shakespeares in Europe have evolved from something that is unfamiliar to something that is familiarly known at major festivals but that needs to be defamiliarised again, with Ninagawa being a prominent example.

Whether watching these performances at their places of origin or in Europe, with or without the cultural and linguistic competence to understand them fully, the audience will become keenly aware of the gap between unexamined assumptions.

The paper focuses on the solo-performance "An Ordinary Day of the Dancer Gregorio Samsa" created by Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley and Lorenzo Gleijeses and performed since 2016. The pièce, which sees Gleijeses on stage as a solo performer, has followed an intense process of development over five years, through numerous rewriting processes. Partially inspired by Kafka’s "Metamorphosis", the performance deals with the difficult relationship between a young artist and his main reference figures (a demanding father, an authoritarian theatre director, a worried partner, a schematic psychologist). On stage, the actor’s score develops around an obsessive repetition of movements and actions, performed with modulation of intensity and rhythm. From the circularity of the theatrical repetitions, however, the work of the actor creates a more linear, perhaps vertical, path, which aims at self-purification through exhausting effort, at the precision of craftsmanship, and which, in the finale, questions the possibility of transcendence in the incompleteness of the artistic creation. The inexhaustible and essential search for a performative work based on the organic nature of the actor-dancer, explored as the quintessence of human existence, is therefore both a ‘condemnation’ and a possibility of elevation offered by the theatre performance. Sorrounded by a refined lighting and sound apparatus, the actor-dancer acts in a multi-sensorial context within which a new poetics of space unravels. Reflecting upon these elements, the paper intends to offer a reconstruction of the genesis and creative process of the performance, also comparing it with some of Barba’s previous works and theatrical thought.

Celem niniejszego tekstu jest próba odczytania dramatu Semmelweis norweskiego autora Jensa Bjørneboe jako reakcji na rewoltę studencką, która w 1968 roku przetoczyła się przez Europę Zachodnią. Analiza tekstu dramatu oraz okoliczności jego powstania pozwala, po pierwsze, unaocznić specyfikę ówczesnego norweskiego dyskursu kulturowo-politycznego, rozwijającego się na peryferiach Europy, po drugie zaś umożliwia przedstawienie interesującego spojrzenia Jensa Bjørneboe na kwestię studenckich przewrotów jako takich. Okazuje się bowiem, że norweski pisarz widział w nich szlachetne, lecz z góry skazane na porażkę zrywy, mające jedynie utorować drogę dla globalnej anarchistycznej rewolucji.

The experience of the master class held by the actress Roberta Carreri (Odin Theater) at the National University of Arts, Iaşi, has made me understand the necessity of the theater laboratory born out of the need to leave aside all other concerns, including that of making "good" theater. The workshop means letting yourself carried in silence as an active life principle, by other principles-of the stage movement-rediscovering the expressiveness of the body as form and sonority. It means forgetting everything you think you know about theater and what has become an automatism; fighting with the everyday movement, abandoning it. The technical terms that designate the two types of action on the stage are "everyday movement"-where the brain acts in accordance with and by reason of automatisms, and "extra-everyday movement", where the brain must make the effort to think despite the automatism. The extra-everyday movement elaboration comes from an excess/ waste/potentiation of energy that is achieved by acting according to certain principles. These were carefully described in the theater dictionary compiled by Eugenio Barba and the Italian theoretician Nicola Savareze, following half-century experiences through international confrontations of the Asian and European theater/dance.

Drogi Eugenio,
minęły dwa miesiące od naszej wizyty w Holstebro z okazji „Pierwszego kamienia”2, ten list stanowi więc przede wszystkim dowód niedopełnienia obowiązku. Nie zdołałem dokończyć obiecanej Ci relacji ze spotkania z Ludwikiem Flaszenem w Twoim domu. Chciałem poruszyć w niej trzy kwestie, raz jeszcze zadręczając Cię moimi dywagacjami. Koniec końców tekst nie wytrzymał ciśnienia, został pokonany przez zbyt wiele słów. Przesyłam Ci streszczenie niedoszłej relacji, pewnego rodzaju plan dyskusji, do których być może nie będzie ani okazji, ani czasu, ani powodu. [...]