The Essence of Theatre

Author(s): Eugenio Barba

Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 46, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 12-30
Published by: The MIT Press
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The

of

Essence

Theatre

EugenioBarba

"What is left of a Jew who is not religious, Zionist or even familiarwith the
language of the Torah, the Holy Book?" Sigmund Freud asked himself this question at the beginning of the 20th century, and his reply was: "Probablythe essential," taking care not to define it.
What is left of the theatre when it is not religious or nationalisticand does not
believe in books, theories, or ideologies that try to explain and spreadcertainties
in the world?
Freud's question contains the seeds of the unrest that, in the same period,
pushed visionary theatre reformersin Europe to implode the century-old theatre
culture, generating new and unexpected identities and attitudes.These visionaries
chose to confront themselves with the four fundamentalproblems for an actor:
not only how to be effective as a performer, but also why, where,andfor whom.
These reformers are our ancestors, the founders of the 20th century's traditions.
The word "tradition"is ambiguous. It brings to mind something that we are
given, that we have idly received from the past. But traditionis also the exercising
of refusal. It is our retrospective look at the human beings, the craft, the very
History that has preceded us and from which we choose to distance ourselves
through the continuity of our work.

The Inventionof Tradition

I am merely an epigone who lives in the ancestors'old house. But my journey
to reach it has been long.
After four yearsin Poland-two and a half of these with Grotowskiin OpoleI returned to Norway in I964. I knocked in vain at the doors of every single
theatre in Oslo in search of employment. I assembleda few young people who
had been rejected by the National Theatre School. At that time the word "theatre" evoked a building or a text. A group of youngsters wanting to be actors,
startingout from nothing and with no place to work were treatedas though they
were deaf-mutes wanting to perform a Beethoven symphony without instruments. That is how we came to found Odin Teatret.
A loss, a privation, a lack, an exclusion-these are the wounds that secrete the
essential. For us of the Odin, expulsion from the world that was supposed to
initiate us into the profession and help us to consolidate the foundations of the
craft representeda sentence with no appeal:we did not possess artisticqualities.
The Drama Review 46, 3 (T175), Fall 2002. Copyright ? 2002
New York University and the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology
12

The Essenceof Theatre 13

1. Pantomimetrainingat
Odin Teatret,1964, the
yearthegroupwasfounded
in Oslo. Fromleft: Torgeir
Wethal,Else MarieLauvik, Anne TrineGrimnes,
and TorSannum.(Photo
courtesyof NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)
In those days there were no groups or alternativetheatre culturesto inspireus or
with whom we could join forces. We were excluded. Nobody came begging us
to enrich the performing art. Theatre was our personal malaria, our endemic
necessity.The world had no need for us as actors. We needed the theatre. It was
right that we should pay out of our own pockets.
All forms of theatre, even under the most favorableconditions, are subject to
constraints:time, money, space, and quantity or quality of collaborators.These
constraints decide the rules of the game and mark the boundaries of what is
possible. Although they may be foreseen especially when you are nobody and
have nothing-you must bow to them in order to survive. Or else you can force
yourselfto outflankthem, thus at times achieving unexpected and original results.
You can also destroy them with a hammer, shatteringthem in a thousandpieces
with which to build your "habitat,"the ideal and material world for work and
the results generated by it. This is how I remember our beginnings in a capital
city that seemed like a desert.
That is the origin of Odin Teatret in Norway-a tiny nucleus of amateurs
who dreamed of becoming professional,five young people who took themselves
terribly seriously: the faultlessexecution of an exercise performed on a spotlessly
clean floor; vocal training as uninterrupted shouts, whispers, resonances, and
vibrations, and absolute silence during the intervals.A small group, who clung
to their own "superstition"and who, through lack of experience, imagined that
theatre was a craftwith a human face. In solitude, outside the geography of the
recognized and recognizabletheatres,we carried on imperturbablyin this desert
in which the only presence was the invisible shadow of the dead and a beloved
master glimpsed at a distance: Grotowski.
It is by bestriding circumstancesthat we determine the true course of events

14

Eugenio Barba

and construct the hammer that demolishes the constraints.In I966 Odin Teatret
abandoned the protective shell of certaintieswith which it justified its precarious
existence and moved to a small town of I8,000 inhabitantsin west Jutland, the
least developed and most religious region of Denmark. There, theatrewas neither
entertainmentnor tradition.There were no interestedspectatorsand, in any case,
the Odin did not have a language in common with them, text being the essential
means of communication on the stage at that time. The Danes had difficulty in
understandingthe Odin's Norwegian actors, whose number was soon increased
by others from different countries and continents. On top of the existing limitations, we had chosen to add yet another: exile from language, a stammer.
Every form of exile is like a poison: if it doesn't kill you it can give you strength.
It is impossible to understandthe history of Odin Teatret, our way of thinking
and behaving during these 37 years, without keeping in mind these two forms
of exclusion: rejection by the theatre world and the mutilation of language. We
have shatteredthis situation of inferiority,these constraints,and from their debris
we have molded an attitude of pride and refusal:our source of strength.
The history of theatre was my consolation, my flying carpet, my Eldorado. I
discovered the essential:Stanislavsky'ssolitude and Artaud's isolation, the exile
and loss of language of Michael Chekhov, Max Reinhardt, Irwin Piscator, and
Helene Weigel; the importance of amateur theatres for Yevgeny Vakhtangov,
Bertolt Brecht, and Federico GarciaLorca;the obstinate researchinto the actor's
scenic "life" by Stanislavskyand Vsevolod Meyerhold; the Art Theatre's First
2. Odin members
training
Studio and Leopold Sulerzhitski'slaboratoryof communal life. The chroniclesof
in Holstebro,1970. From
the pastwere my Talmud,my Bible, and my Quran. I only had to readattentively
left:IbenNagel Rasmussen and decipher anecdotes, episodes, and detailsneglected by historians.An Atlantis
and TorgeirWethal.(Photo of information
emerged and clarified my hesitations and doubts, revealing the
courtesyof NordiskTeateroriginal examples and the astute solutions of those who
laboratorium)
preceded me, their way of brandishingthe hammer.We
were not alone.
~.~-~i. :,
Theatre became the place in which the living could
meet the nonliving, the dead, the ancestors-reformers
who had crossed the desert. Their lives, their performances, and their books have illuminated the Odin's
~ path, guiding us toward a technical knowledge that is
?~+^
our way of breathing. They have inspired the tacit
,.g;
~ knowledge we have absorbed during the course of so
Pm
many years,and they have protected the essentialin our
A~::
productions: the thousand details in the actors' scores,
the flora of impulses and micro-actions, the structure
of tensions, sats,' and intentions that resonate deeply in
the spectators'senses. The living are incapable of noticing all the details,but the nonliving accept the details
and relish the personal temperature that has forged
them in alternatelayers of light and darkness.
The Nonliving Spectators
IN a ?ier

' :
;: .

.....-

For me, the word "spectator" has never evoked

merely those who are brought together by a performance. My true spectatorshave been absences that are
forcefullypresent,most of them nonliving: not only the
dead, but also those not yet born. It was and it is to
them that the Odin actors addressthemselves, to those
who will clash with the same constraintsthat we have

The Essenceof Theatre 5

3. Odin memberIbenNagel Rasmussentrainingin

Carpignano, 1976. (Photo

courtesyof NordiskTeateroaboratorium)
so often experienced, who will be scorned by the spirit of the time, alone against
the indifference of society and the coldness of the craft.
We can reach those who are not yet born by contagion. We come into contact with them through the living, through our spectators.It is the performance
and its scorpion's sting that decide. You have to give your utmost to the spectators who come with an extraordinarygift: they offer up two or three hours
of their life, placing themselves in our hands with candor and trust. We must
repay their generosity with excellence, but also with an obligation to work: their
senses, their skepticism, their ingenuousness, and their cruelty must be put to
the test, asked to face a storm of contrastingreactions,allusions,ambiguities,and
clusters of meanings that grapple with one another. They have to resolve the
enigma of a performance-a sphinx ready to devour them. The performanceis
a burning caress that touches their sensibilities and intimate wounds, pushing
them toward the hushed landscape that lives in exile within us. We must open

I6

EugenioBarba
the spectators' eyes with the same gentleness that we close those of a loved one
who hasjust died.
The spectatorsmust be cradledby a thousand subterfuges:entertainment,sensual pleasure,artisticquality,emotional immediacy, and aesthetic refinement. But
the essentiallies in the transfigurationof the ephemeralqualityof the performance
into a splinter of life that sinks roots into their flesh and accompanies them
through the years. The performance is the sting of a scorpion, which makes them
dance. This dancing does not come to an end on leaving the theatre. The toxic
secretion penetrates their psychic, mental, and intellectual metabolism and becomes memory. This memory constitutes the unimaginableand unprogrammable
message that is handed down to those who are not yet born.
It is an undertaking that can only succeed through an autonomy that is based
on two conditions: the capacity to keep alive an artistic group with a "superstition" that permeates the behavior of every one of its members like a second
nature; and the creation of performances that, like scorpions, bewitch a few
spectatorswilling to be stung.
Odin Teatret has stayed alive for almost four decades because we live like
Bedouins. Right from the beginning we have been accustomed to possessing
only a handful of dates and a tent-rather like the first nomadic caliphsof Arabia
who conquered Damascus, Baghdad, and Basra,but returned to the desert without remaining in the marble palaces or letting themselves be tamed by the cities
with their temples and bazaars.Holstebro is our tent. It holds the essential:the
anonymity of the daily work whose task is to extract the difficult from the difficult.
But the group is not all; it is only the systole of the heart that keeps alive the
precariousand ever-threatenedprocess of autonomy. The diastoleis the spectators
who need us. After 37 years they barely fill the hundred or so places at each of
our performances.This is our limitation and our strength. They are there waiting
for us wherever we go, whether it is New York or a village in the Andes, a
European capital or a small town in Patagonia.
We recently performed in Rome for five weeks: Ioo spectatorseach evening3,500 in 35 days. Out of these the scorpion's sting may only make one dance,
the one who will encounter our true spectator...who is not yet born.
The Way of Refusal
When I visit theatre buildings, I feel as though I am boarding motionless ships
of stone that are attempting to portraymovement. Inside them I have occasionally
experienced the boundless adventureof travelto the night's end or to the center
of my own being. I compare the ships of stone to the floating islands, to what
Stanislavskycalled "ensemble," and I call "theatregroup": a handful of men and
women who, thanks to the discipline of an artistic craft, reach out beyond their
individualism and carve themselves a place in history. Through a process of creative osmosis, their wounds and needs become politicalaction, i.e., a standpoint
with regardto the norms and circumstancesof their polis, their community.
The essence of theatre does not reside in its aesthetic quality or in its capacity
to represent or criticize life. It consists rather in radiatingthrough the rigor of
scenic technique an individual and collectiveformof being.Theatre can be a social
cell that embodies an ethos, a set of values that guide the refusalsof each of its
components.
Form is fundamentalto theatre.Through the discipline and precision thatform
requires,the actor absorbsand displaysa nucleus of information that escapeswords
and contains the spirit of the ethos of refusal.From the very first exercise on the
first day of apprenticeship,a form of being may be shaped from real actions that

The Essenceof Theatre 17

have been performed in dissensionwith the commonplaces of thought and professionalpractice, obvious opinions, and the ease of choice.
A form of being requiresthe invention of a personal tradition. I see my actors
as the field and at the same time the laborer who tills it. The spectatorswatch
the ripening of unusualfruit whose flavor should sharpen their thirst.

Theatre As Transcendence
All the founders of 20th-century traditionshave followed the way of refusal.
This handful of ancestorswho have marked our personal tradition and become
its cardinalpoint, were in opposition to their time and forged the idea of a theatre
that is not limited to performances,does not simply addressitself to an audience,
is not solely preoccupied with filling seats. For them another imperative arose:
to transcend the performance as a physical and ephemeral manifestation, and
attain a metaphysicaldimension-political, social, didactic, therapeutic, ethical,
or spiritual.
Theatre is intolerableif it limits itself to spectacle alone. The rigor of the craft
or the elation of invention is not enough, any more than the awarenessof the
pleasureor knowledge that we can induce in the spectator.Our work should be
nourished by subversionthat projects us beyond our professionalidentity, which
acts as a wall, both protecting and at the same time imprisoning us. The performance sows a seed that grows in the memory of every spectator, and every
spectatorgrows with this seed.
When I started in theatre, I had fours actors with me. We were five in all.
Three of us are still together today. Thirty-seven yearsis a long time and we have
gone through all the crises, the exhaustion, the routine, and the doubts. So why
do we continue? Are we perhaps interested in the present? I believe we are
sustainedby two tensions: the memory of the past and a longing for the future.
On the one hand we have the desire to remain loyal to the dreamsof our youth,
and on the other we share a responsibilitytoward the nameless generations yet
unborn. These are pompous words. And yet they are the voice of that part of us

4. NobushigeKawamura
and his son Kotaroin a
at the
Noh demonstration
TacitKnowledgesymposium
on transmission
in Holstebro, 1999. (Photocourtesy
of NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

I8

EugenioBarba

;
I^^^^H^

5. IbenNagel Rasmussen
and hermother,EsterNathe 'genergel, demonstrate
ationaltransmission
of
at the Tacit
experience"
Knowledgesymposiumin
Holstebro, 1999. (Photo

courtesyof NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

which lives in exile, that secret and very fragile core

which, so often in this profession, we are unable to
protect. Then we finish by losing ourselves.
All theatresare archaic.But within this ancient and
noble art the most anachronisticpassion is the search
for something permanent that outlives the performance. A thirst obliges us to reach out beyond the wall
of the profession, to standon tiptoe, stretchingupward,
toward the beyond. It is not a question of horizontal or
vertical transcendence,but a way to protect ourselves
from becoming victims or silent accomplices in this
tireless tide, this pitiless race that is History. It is an
inexplicable compulsion to remain on tiptoe in order
to sink our roots into the heavens, while all around us
the others advance toward sensible aims at a reasonable
pace. Thus we imagine that we resistbecause we have
found an ideal clod of earth that is not made up of a
nation, an ethnic group, or an ideology, but of a few

be mute. It is action but it cannot be communicated.

A theatre group is the organization of this incommunicability or of this web of personal necessity-or selfishness-as a social organism.
Working with one's own ghosts, one's own obsessions and illusions means
lending one's ear to bodiless voices that guide us. It is like listening to an uproar.
Personal tradition is an echo that comes from afar.At times we are able to distinguish a voice and we tell ourselves that an ancestor is helping us to find our
path. At other times the echo is diffuse, confused, and we cannot discern where
it comes from, who is talking to us. Even so we must decipher the direction it is
pointing out to us.
Odin Teatretis a group of emigrants,people who, through individualnecessity
or by chance, have left their place of origin and have ended up in the Danish
town of Holstebro. The task of inventing the earth on which we place our feet
every single day is part of the emigrant's lot. That earth is not a geographical
entity, a people, or a faith. It is our raisond'etre,our self-justification,the axis that
constantly redefines our equilibrium, our presence, in relation to others. This
common condition of rootlessnesscontributes to the cementing together of the
Odin, in spite of our profound differencesand often diverging aspirations.
At the origin of a creative path there is often a wound. It indicates the separation from something vital, revealing a part of us that remains in exile deep
within us. Sometimes time transformsour wound into a scarthat no longer hurts.
During the course of our career we continually have returned to this intimate
lesion, to reject it or remainfaithfulto it. All this has nothing to do with aesthetics,
theory, or the urgency to communicate with others. It is rather the desire to
rediscover a sensation of intensity, a lost wholeness: In order to meet myself, I
must measuremyself againstthe other-the other within me and the other outside me.
I move in an ageless landscape,no bigger than a small 0 as Shakespearesaid.
Inside it I glimpse what seem to be thousand-year-oldtrees:trunkslike motionless

The Essenceof Theatre I9

men, men like trees that move. On one side there is an old man and a girl. On
the opposite side two men are walking almost blindly as though they are lost. I
recognize them. They are Oedipus and Antigone, Vladimir and Estragon. All
around them, invisible, the damned of the world dance and sing. From somewhere I can hear the crying of a newborn baby. I know that the time has come
for me to gather together all that I have received and sown, handing it over to
an unknown heir who will revive the tradition of revolt and birth, the tradition
of the decipherablepurpose and of the secret meaning of my "doing theatre."

The European Tradition and the Big Bang

Historically,European theatrewas not born from Greek ritualbut in the markets of Italy around 1545 when the first contract was signed by men and women
intending to live by the craftof performer.The actorswere outcasts,people who
were hungry for adventureor were fleeing their own social condition: vagabonds,
prostitutes,soldierswho had deserted, libertines-the free thinkersof that era6. Mythos, the mostrecent
peasantsescapingfrom poverty,the younger sons of the aristocracywhose fortune Odin Teatret
production,
and coat of arms were destined for the firstborn.
directedby EugenioBarba,
The professional theatre was a financial enterprise producing performances.
1998. Actorsfeatured are
The possibility of earning one's daily bread was dependent upon the ability to
TorgeirWethal,Frans
fill seats,shorten the period of rehearsal,and multiply the choices of performances
Winther,RobertaCarreri,
by rapidlyadaptingthem from place to place. The actors did not think of them- Jan Ferslev,TageLarsen,
selves as creating culture, nor did they define themselves as artists.The traveling IbenNagel
Rasmussen,Jucompanies were characterizedby the laws of commerce, the demand to entertain lia Varley,and Kai Bredand amuse, and by indecency and eroticism. In the eyes of those who lived by holt.
(Photocourtesyof
NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

20

EugenioBarba
the dominant moral norms, actors were people who exhibited themselves and
even went as far as selling themselves for money: corruption and prostitution
among actresseswere proof of this. Hence the lack of respect shown them and
the discrimination they were subject to from society.
With its exceptions and variations, this was the world of theatre up until the
end of the Igth century when Friedrich Nietzsche and Ivan Karamazovdiscovered the eclipse of God. While science appearedto have an explanation for all
questions, new doubts were being raised concerning the human condition, the
organization of society, and the role of the artistin it. A few actors threw themselves into the vortex that was sweeping through all the arts and that markedthe
beginnings of modernity: the avantgarde,the "isms," the break with the canons
and criteria of a shared and accepted tradition. All the recognized and practiced
models exploded.
It was the big bang, the liberation of innumerable diverging energies and intentions, the creation of new paradigms,the blossoming of a theatreecology never
seen before, or simply the intoxicating realizationthat this disparagedprofession
could be an art with a dignity, a purpose, and a specific identity. Theatre became
"theatrical,"emancipated itself from literature,and aimed to be a practice with
a raison d'etre beyond the fiction of the stage.
How could a performer's acting be transformed into real action, authentic
experience, social awareness,the shaping of a "new human being," and a magic
operation recreating the reality that is life's double? Never before during the
course of history had actors posed themselves such questions.

Small Traditions
It was no coincidence that an outsider was the first to raisethis sort of question.
Stanislavskywas an amateur, the son of a rich textile factory owner. He had at
his disposala theatre built especially for him, where for months he could prepare
a production at his ease. Although others preceded him, it was with him that an
original theatrical culture flourished, breaking with past models. The big bang
of 20th-century theatre was marked by his indefatigableactivity as an innovative
director, an ever-questioning actor, the inventor of a consistent pedagogical approach, a stimulatorof rebels, founder of laboratories,protector of other reformers: Gordon Craig, for whom he made it possible to produce Hamlet; and
Meyerhold, whom he welcomed into his Studio. He was not the only one. Other
actors and directors also adjustedtheir art to their personal visions and to an era
that was shakenby industrialization,technological changes, the first "world"war,
and by the devastationof the fascistideology and of the communist social utopia.
There no longer exists one single theatre tradition, a central model to act as a
means of orientation. The big bang generated smallnomadictraditions
whose genesis was the work of a totem, a reforming artistwho combined a visionarypower
with technical solutions that put it into practice. All the reformersrevitalizedand
reshaped their art, aware that theatre was an "empty ritual" in search of a lost
meaning. They had to awaken this ceremony in lethargy,this formalized entertainment, make it assumerisks and responsibilities,jeopardize its ambiguous condition in a torn society.
Compared to other forms of spectacle-sport or cinema-theatre proves to
be anachronistic,answering the needs of another age, out of tune with the very
flow of civilization and its other means of communication. The objective of this
"modern" civilization is to reach the greatest number of people in the shortest
time and as economically as possible. Theatre is quite the opposite: it involves
vast expense, a waste of resources,both human and material, not to mention the
time needed to preparea performance that will only be seen by a limited number
of spectators.

The Essenceof Theatre

If we study the reformers dispassionately,we discover that the source of their
strength did not stem from their craft. They passed through theatre as though it
were an ideal country, driven by a personal longing: ethics, religion, the time of
the "new human being," revolution, individual revolt, esoteric discipline. They
all had needs that collided with the spirit of their time. They all abandoned or
were forced to abandon the guaranteesand criteria that made their activity comprehensibleand acceptable.Solitaryand vulnerable,they left behind currentpractices and replaced them with new ones. Sometimes their endeavors were
recognized only after their deaths. And even if they were accepted by their contemporaries, their resultswere accompanied by the evident or hidden sarcasmof
the critics, the indifference of other theatreartists,and desertion by the spectators.
Suffice it to think of Brecht, even when he was being presented as the pride of
the nation in East Berlin, or Stanislavskywhose convictions concerning his own
"system" were regarded as bizarre, even unhealthy, to the point that his actors
and his partner,Nemirovitch Dantchenko, finally turned their backs on him.
Anthropological Mutation
The forces that in the beginning of the 20th century tore apartthe centraland
unitary model of unquestioned theatre, tracing a multiplicity of paths, were nurtured by opposing tensions. There was the disgust that a minority of actors felt
toward the wretchedness and servitude of their profession. Eleonora Duse complained that "in order to save theatre, theatre must be destroyed. The actors and
actressesmust die of the plague. They make art impossible" (in Craig I957:54).
Gordon Craig, an actor turned director, quotes the great Italianactress'sapocalyptic words as an epigraph to his essay "The Actor and the Ubermarionette"
and proposes closing all theatresto concentrate on the training of a new "race of
athletic workers" for the stage (I957:1).
There was an obsession to legitimize the scenic craft as an artistic discipline
that reaches beyond the aesthetic domain to a social, political, or educational
vocation for the masses.
More than anything else there was an urgent need to fight the sensation of
loss-a loss of existence. The word "existence" has to be taken literally:a capacity
to be, to feel alive and present, and to pass this essentialquality on to the spectator.
It is as though theatrehad been attackedby a form of AIDS, a decline in its vigor.
Hence the dogged searchfor a remedy for its loss of culturaland public presence,
for elaborate methods to develop an immune system, to engender a vital condition that permeates every level of a performance starting with the basic one:
the art of the actor. "We must give life back to the theatre," exclaimed Artaud
in his first article after leaving his master Charles Dullin ([I924]

1961). He spoke

explicitly of "life." Before him, Stanislavskyhad spoken of organicity and Meyerhold of biomechanics.
The reformers' efforts toward renewal revealed their contradictory desire to
destroy the very abilities that defined them as actors in the eyes of others. They
wanted to annihilate in themselves what they embodied: an age-old tradition, a
proven know-how. Like the horsemen of the Apocalypse, they bestrode an extreme idea: absolute creativity.Each new production should start from scratch,
grow from nothing, should be a cosmogony similarto that of the Christian God
who created ex nihilo, as opposed to the demiurges of other religions, which
remodel something alreadyexistent.
They were asking burning questions: How do you give life to an actor who
will not be conditioned by a predetermined technique, but each time opens up
a new path disclosing an inner depth? How do you trigger an improvisationthat
until now was intended to intertwine and vary known elements, and turn them
into an original creation?How do you reach an authenticity,a dynamis,a personal

2I

22

Eugenio Barba

force that materializes the poetic essence of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov's
plays, and engages the spectator in the experience of this essence?What process
does the actor have to follow in order to evoke this feeling of life, this "effect of
organicity"in the spectator?
It is from the perspective of these questions that we examine the introduction
of actor trainingbased on exercises, a practice that was absent in the apprenticeship of the European actor.
The Paradox of Exercises
A true anthropologicalmutation shook the European actors' universe during
the first decades of the 20th century. Theatre was no longer a continent, but had
become an archipelagocomposed of islands,each of which was busy building or
knocking down a tradition,following new customs and beliefs, inventing its own
dialect. There was no longer one history and one culture, and the ghosts that
revealed the multiple facets of each of these cultureswere numerous.
The voraciousinterestwith respectto neglected traditions(commedia dell'arte,
circus, cabaret,and other popular forms of entertainment)on the one hand, and
on the other the discovery of distant cultures (classicalAsian performances,African dances, ceremonies, and rituals),blended with effervescentrecklessexperimentation and a fervor to break the chains, habits, and rigid structures.Hence
the importance of founding theatreschools in which individualtalentcould flourish and the consciousness of an artistic dignity ripen. Some actors-turneddirectorsopened studios, privileged places that offered continuous learning-the
utopia of the "eternalbeginning." This is the origin of Stanislavsky'sand Meyerhold's laboratorieswhere the practice of exerciseswas invented and applied.
Through the exercises,Stanislavsky,Meyerhold, and their collaboratorsdevised
a "pedagogicalfiction." Their exercisesgave the impressionthat they were pointing out something of importance; they had nothing in common with the courses
at theatre schools in which students learned singing, diction, fencing, ballet, and
play interpretation.All these were abilitiesthat could be exploited in their future
careers, but were not taught by the exercises. Today we acknowledge that the

7. GennadiBogdanovdemonstratesMeyerhold's
biomechanicexercisesduring
the tenthIstasessionin
Copenhagen,1996. (Photo
courtesyof NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

The Essenceof Theatre 23

exercisesconstitute one of the most daring adventuresof the golden age that was
the 20th century.
At first the exercises appearedto be an aberrationfrom the point of view of
tradition and common sense because it was not easy to see their utility for the
actor. What was the point in repeating dynamic patterns that had no direct relationship to the rehearsals,which focused on characterinterpretation and the
immediate effect of the production on the spectator?Why waste so much time
learning and incorporating an exercise?What are the concealed merits perceived
by Stanislavsky,Meyerhold, and all the others who followed this way of teaching?
There are severalcategories of exercises, each with different objectives: overcoming obstacles and inhibitions; specializing in certain skills;freeing oneself of
conditioning, of "spontaneity,"or of mannerisms;the acquisition of a particular
way of using the brain and the nervous system. All the differenttypes of exercises
involve the development of a scenic bios,which revealsitself onstage through a
behavior guided by a "second nature,"as Stanilavskiand Copeau said.
The exercisesdo not aim at teaching how to act. Often they do not even aspire
to any obvious dexterity.Rather they are models of dramaturgyand composition
on an organic, not a narrativelevel. They are pure form, a linking together of
dynamic peripeteias, without a plot, but infused with information which, once
embodied by the actor, constitutes "the essence of scenic movement" (I993:67),
as Meyerhold used to say about biomechanics. Decroux considered the exercises
to be the foundation of a "presence ready to represent"([I963] I985:28).
Through action the exercises allow the assimilation of a paradoxicalway of
thinking; they challenge daily automatismsand become rooted in the extra-daily
behavior of the stage. Even the simplest exercisespresupposea host of variations,
tensions, sudden or progressivechanges in intensity, an acceleration of rhythm,
and a breaking up of space in different directions and levels.
What kind of information is imparted by the fixed form of an exercise? It
obliges the student to think with the global bodymind and make this thinking
perceptible through a real action (not necessarilyrealistic);to respect the design
of the form; to indicate the beginning and the end of this design; to be awareof
the different phases-changes, variations, and dynamic peripeteias-that make
it up. The exercises are not about work on a text, but on oneself. They ignore

8. The livingtraditionof
Decrouxcorporal
mimein
theperformance
of A Little
Thing by TomLeabheart,
1996. (Photocourtesyof
NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

24

Eugenio Barba

the stereotypes or the male/female conditioning of the students, testing them by

confronting them with a series of obstacles,deviations, resistances,which develop
self-knowledge as they force students to encounter their own limits-and to
surpassthem. The exercises result in self-discipline, which is at the same time
autonomy with respect to the expectations and customs of the profession. Apprenticeshipbecomes the practice of an initiation, the growth of an individuality
that is preparing to take a stand. It is a second birth, that of a scenic bodymind,
independent of the demands of the performance but ready to execute them.
In this consists the original and audacious perspective of "the actor'swork on
himself" expounded by Stanislavsky,of Meyerhold's biomechanics, of Vakhtangov's and Michael Chekhov's exercises, and Decroux's series offigureset attitudes.
These pioneers opened up a path that has been followed by all the founders of
small nomadic traditions.Each time a reformerhas searchedfor a deeper personal
meaning, s/he has pursued it unremittingly through the actor's scenic presence
andform of being.They founded presence and perfected the technical means capable of making their theatre take a stand with respect to their time and society.
Exercises to Forget the Moon and the Finger
Askeo, in Greek, means to exercise. An ascetic is someone who does exercises,
and asceticism is the way in which they are executed. The term is usually associated with rigor, submission, sacrifice, penance, even pain, and makes one think
of saints in deserts and mystics lost in a dialogue with the Self. I immediately
think of young ballet dancers.
While studying the principles of Theatre Anthropology, I spent some time
observing the teaching at the Royal Theatre ballet school in Copenhagen. The
pupils startdancing when they are seven or eight years old and the most striking
thing about them is the physical stereotype:little blond girls who are slender and
graceful, with smiles glued to their lips during lessons.
During their break they slip off the delicate little pink shoes and, with a grimace, hold their feet under the cold tap in the bathroom. One of their teachers,
herself a dancer, showed me her own deformed toes and feet: "It is hard dancing
on points. The capacity to resistpain decides the career of a dancer."
Asceticism always characterizesapprenticeshipto artistic, athletic, or spiritual
disciplines. Self-discipline accompanies the endeavors of all individualsintent on
moving beyond their own limits. An actor's training is the initiation into a profession in which endurance,in all its senses,is a fundamentalrequirement:physical
and psychic control; persistence in adversity,in the absence of success, and in
periods of "winter" that yield no fruit; rejection of self-indulgence and obvious
solutions; obstinacy when faced with obstacles; perseverance in extracting the
difficult from the difficult; and tenacity, to resist adapting to the constraintsof a
situation. Every artistic vocation, every impulse to fight against one's binding
destiny or the need to free oneself from the chains of a tradition or a routine,
goes hand in hand with an asceticism of rigorous action and self-control.
Theatre activity has a double effect: on the person who carries it out and on
the person for whom the work is intended-the spectator. The introduction of
the exercises has made it possible to define and delve deeper into the zone of
"the actor's work with himself." The exercises are not aimed at musculardevelopment, but at mental and somatic concentration on a modest but complicated
taskthat sometimes may be paradoxical.The necessity for precision and repetition
determines a specific way of thinking with the entire body by means of a concatenation and simultaneity of tension, contrast, and dynamic immobility. It is
learning to be as an actor, to grow roots through a scenic presence, but it is also
a process of individualization and personal growth. It is no coincidence that the

The Essenceof Theatre 25

. .. ..:........"9.
~:~a
..:~

ActorsZbigniewCynkutis and RyszardCieslakin

Dr. Faust, directedbyjerzy
Grotowski, 1963. (Photo

courtesyof NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

term "exercise"is to be found in all paths of psychic, mental, or spiritualtranscendence which make use of somatic processes:a particularway of breathing,
fixing one's gaze, moving, dancing, or halting the flow of thought.
We can nowadays appreciatethe unknown prospectsrevealedby some of the
reformers and the surprising niches which they carved at the very center of
theatre'secosystem. At the same time we can reflect on the paradoxthat appears
to accompany them: the more they distance themselves from production, the
more they are engrossed in the practice of the exercises.
This was the case with Copeau who chose teaching rather than performing
when he fled Paris.His studentsplayed in Bourgogne, but their daily activity was
above all based on a process of uninterrupted apprenticeship, on that hidden
aspect of the craftwhich distils the actor's ethos.
Grotowski left the theatre in 1970. But from the mid-'8os up until his death
in I999 at his Italianretreatin Pontedera, he applied all the knowledge acquired
through the exercises to his "art as a vehicle." He defined as a "performer"the
person who worked with physical actions that do not aim at representation.This
meticulous and patience-cravingprocess,which also involves the vibratoryquality
of the voice, is not intended for the spectator, but for the "doer," a term used
by Grotowski instead of the word "actor." Occasionally,as an exception, a few
chosen witnesses are allowed to be present.
It was at the school of Copeau's Vieux Colombier thatEtienne Decroux began
his training. His life is strewn with the continual invention of exercisesaimed at
revitalizing the performer's scenic efficacy. His modest house in the suburbsof
Paris was a stronghold of freedom independent of trends, fashions, and markets-where he preparedmany generations of determined and loyal rebels,with
a conspicuous sense of humor.
The most surprising experience-because it was the first of its kind-was
Stanislavsky'sFirstStudio, directedby that extraordinarypersonality,Sulerzhitski,
with the young Vakhtangov,Michael Chekhov, and Richard Boleslavsky. Its
members were immersed in the creation and execution of hundredsof exercises,
with no worries of an imminent performance. They left Moscow to establisha

26

EugenioBarba

lo. Julia Varley(Odin Tea-

tret),SanjuktaPanigrahi
(Odissidance),andAugusto Omolu(Orixa dance)

theatricalphalansteryin the Caucasus,cultivatedthe land, and organizedevenings

for the peasants,while still concentrating on the exercises.
An obscure tension, which cannot be explained solely in terms of artisticoriginality, drove these individuals to take a stand against society and the theatre of
their time. It was perhapsArtaud who formulated this tension in a more explicit
form: theatre should not imitate life, but recreate it. In this way, the craft-a
technique which is pervaded by an inexorable necessity-becomes a bundle of
energy to be discoveredand laid bare in order to re-form human beings and their
social and spiritualdimension.
The quantity and variety of exercises devised by the reformers are truly a
"pedagogicalfiction." They neither teach nor explain the rules of acting for the
actor. They plunge the students into an often unintelligible stream of physical
and mental obstaclesand limitationsin order to liberatethem from the functional
and utilitarian categories of daily life. It is a lengthy apprenticeshipthat allows
the growth of a scenic presence embodying the values assimilatedin the course
of years of training. The exercises conceal their heart in an activity that appears
to be one of self-obliteration,but which leads to autonomy.
Trainingand exerciseswere rediscoveredand circulatedafterthe I96os, mainly
in the world of"third theatre,"the floating islands,the auto-didactic groups, and
those excluded from or opposing the mainstreamculture. The exercises, nevertheless, contain an ambiguity with respect to their usefulness.This ambiguity can
be summarized in the story
of the aster
orwho
andin at the
the
rmoon,pointed
student who fixed his gaze on the pointing finger, blind to the distantastralbody.
The exercisesmay impressby their suggestiveness,by the gratification
thetiony bestow
on those who execute them, by the physical adroitnessthat they develop, by the
sensation of oversteppinglimits, by the magic value attributedto the person who
teaches them, and because thehywere invented and practiced by masterswhose
performances are still an inspiration. There is no harm in this; it is reminiscent
of the attitude that drives one to swallow pills in the belief that they will have a
slimming effect.
The exercises elaborated by the reformers contained a nucleus of essential
information in symbiosiswith the vision and the goals of the only form of theatre
to which each of them wanted to give life. Their actorstransformedand breathed
life into the stereotyped patterns of the exercises with endless personal energy,

The Essenceof Theatre 27

11. Sanjuta Panigrahi and

Kazu Ohno improviseat

without letting themselves be devoured by their gymnastic aspects.On the conOdin Teatreton the occatrary,they involuntarily extracted from them a quality of lightness and radiance sion of its 30th Anniversary,
capable of evoking resonance and associationsin observers.
1994. (Photo courtesyof
When the exercisesare repeated outside the original context, there is a risk of NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)
emptying them of their hidden heart and only reproducingthe external shell. In
the absence of a rigorous and competent guide and an environment that is conducive to maintaining awarenessof the existence of a far-off aim-the shimmering moon that conceals a darkand inaccessibleside-the exercisesteach only
how to look at a pointing finger.
The secret heart helps to see the master'sfinger close by, to be conscious of
the distant moon at which the finger is pointing, and to forget both of these
along the path that should lead each of us to an encounter with ourselves.
Tradition Does Not Exist
For me theatre is immediate experience. For historianstheatreis a question of
facts. I enjoy wandering through "the subterraneanhistory" of my craft where
the reformerscome toward me like flayed heretics crying out their solitude and
revolt, displaying their wounds and stuttering inarticulately,opening up within
me an abyss of questions. I am hypnotized by their biographies;I study incredulously the audacity of their productions and am moved by their choices. Mine
is both a searchfor a professionalidentity and a journey within myself. I discover
my culture, my ancestors, the heritage they have bestowed upon me: my roots
and my wings. I experience a very strong sensation that I call "superstition":a

28

EugenioBarba
presence that is above me, perhapsbeside me. It is a vulnerable and pensive face
that I do not recognize, a depositary of a plus-value that surpassesall the values,
meanings, alibis, and longings I project into my profession. "Superstition"is the
opposite of fetishism, of a belief in technical systems, politicaljustifications, and
aesthetic categories.
I invent a tradition in order to discover my heritage and confront myself with
it, strugglingto capturesomething that is a part of my integrity, to which I belong
and which belongs to me. I feel the need to give it life, to decide how and where
to invest it, how and to whom to pass it on. My ancestors-their destinies, their
coherence, and their illusions, the words and the forms they convey to me from
the past-whisper a secret to me alone. I decipher this secret through action.
More or less consciously, my actions set ablaze their forms and words. I watch
their ashesbeing swept awayby the winds of oblivion, of derision, and the cruelty
of the times. In the smoke of the fire that I have lit I glimpse the mysterious
meaning that drives me through theatre like a blind horse galloping on the edge
of a frozen precipice.
Tradition does not exist. I am the tradition, a tradition-in-life that materializes
and transcendsmy experience and that of the ancestors, whom I have turned to
ashes. It condenses the encounters, tensions, enlightenments, and shadowy sides,
the wounds and the invisible trackson which I never cease to get lost and be led.
It is a tradition that leaves traces like an astute and elated trickster, full of traps
that mingle precious instruments for orientation together with a mass of inapplicable knowledge. When I am gone, this tradition-in-life will no longer exist.
Perhapsone day, compelled by mute necessity,somebody will shake this heritage
in hibernation and make it their own, burning it with the heat of their actions.
Thus, in an act that presupposesmuch love, the involuntaryheir will uproot the
secret of my inheritance and distil it into his or her own personal meaning.
To make something one's own means to knowhow to nurtureoneself, to choose
the sources of one's own knowledge. The Brasilianpoet Osvaldo de Andrade
claimed that every artist should be anthropophagous (I928). Anthropophagy is
not cannibalismaccording to him. A cannibal devours another human being out
of voracity, whereas anthropophagy implies feeding on those selected parts of
another which are imbued with qualities,properties,and virtues that nurtureour
own strength. De Andrade concluded that we have to be anthropophagous-not
cannibalistic-when approachinganother culture. The same applies to the past
and to our ancestors.
It appearsto be an accidental and harmless encounter that does not demand
total commitment. In reality it is a dangerous operation full of unknown pitfalls
since at that precise moment we make contact with the very source of our existence, of our being. The relationshipsbetween human beings and those who
surroundthem-the living, those who preceded them, and those who will follow
after them-are strewn with occult signs and messagesthat are decipherableonly
if we transpiercethe transient.
To question ourselves about tradition means to reflect on the instinct of revolt
that guided our first steps toward a horizon which today shuts us in, or which
perhaps still incites us to keep on going as it grows ever more distant. It also
means asking ourselves how to escape the voracity of the present, while holding
on to this splinter of the past for which we alone representthe future.
A Fortress with Walls of Wind
Our ancestors gave the example. They approached theatre as one enters the
desert:to encounter themselves, but also to found a place differentfrom all others,
a fortress with walls of wind where new rules of life could be established.An

The Essenceof Theatre 29

islandof freedom. Behind these metaphorshides reality:every day you must enter
the rehearsalspace, face a group of people, be able to stimulatethem in order to
be stimulatedin return, hesitantlyfeeling your way forwardin the hope that the
work will show the way. It is this attitude that preventsyour floating islandfrom
sinking.
In I994 when Odin Teatretcelebrated its 30th anniversary,I told myself that
I had to make a radicaldecision and once again brandishthe hammer, shattering
the certaintiesthat had become my limits. I thought about telling my actors that
it was time for me to retire, that I had fulfilled my task. But I no longer belong
to myself. I belong to a small traditionwhose ancestorsremain alive through the
coherence and continuity of my actions. This small tradition has proved that
theatreis an ensemble, a group of individualistswho cultivatea plot of land, build
a fortress,who are both peasantsand caliphs. Since Stanislavskythis traditionhas
been inhabited by the longing for the discipline of a craft that is an island of
freedom, a refuge from the spirit of the times, and a searchfor the essential.
In the rooms of the Olmec culture at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico
City, there are some gigantic statues on display.They have been horribly disfigured, to the point that it is impossible to see whether they representpeople or
animals. They were discovered buried under several meters of red earth and
surrounded by offerings. The archaeologistsbelieve that a change of religious
sensibility drove the Olmecs to deface the statues and hide them. They realized
they were committing a dangerous act, and so they also buried gifts to placate
the wrath of the forsakendivinities.
It is as though theatre has lost its effigy, as though the erosion and the frenzy
of time, or the same human beings, had mutilated its face. It no longer has a
profile. Offerings are made to this disfiguredtheatre and it is adorned with theories and significances.But the only featuresthat can restoreits life and wholeness
stem from that part of ourselves in which a stammering voice sings and bleeds:
our vulnerableidentity of wolf and child.

S k*I $; .X 0

^~~~D V.~t-; .~ -,Fa : ...~

pi

.12.

P~~~
~ 4a~

Guestsof Odin Teatrets3oth Anniversaryin

1994,standinfrontof the
entranceto the theatrein
Holstebro.In the centercan
be seen SanjuktaPanigrahi,
Kazu Ohno, Eugenio
Barba,MarioDelgado,JudithMalina,Hanon Reznikov,IngemarLindh,and
Clive BarkerThirdfrom
the left,standing,is
ThomasRichards.Grotowski,who attendedthe
is
anniversary
celebration,
not in thephoto. (Photo
courtesyof NordiskTeaterlaboratorium)

30

Eugenio Barba

Note
i. "Sats"refersto a Norwegian term which in theatreanthropologyrefersto the impulse,the
stateof readinessbefore executing an action (see Barba1995:55-6I).

References
de Andrade,Osvaldo
1928

I.
"Antopofagia:Manifesto"(SanPaulo). RevistadeAntropofagia

Artaud,Antonin
vol. 2. Paris:Gallimard.
I96I [1924] "L'evolutiondu decor." In A. Artaud,Oeuvrescompletes,
Barba,Eugenio
ThePaperCanoe:A Guideto TheatreAnthropology.
Translatedby RichardFowler.
1995
New York:Routledge.
Craig,EdwardGordon
On theArt of the Theatre.New York:TheatreArtsBooks.
1957
Decroux, Etienne
1985 [I963] "Wordson Mime" (PomonaCollege). Mime Journal.
Meyerhold,Vsevolod
"L'acteurdu futureet la biomecanique."In Ecritssurle theatre,vol. 2.
1993

Eugenio Barba is thefounderand director

of Odin Teatretin Holstebro,Denmark,and
of the International School of Theatre Anthropology, as well as a TDR Contributing
Editor. His most recent book is Theatre: Solitude, Craft, Revolt (Black Mountain
Press, 1999).