The article aims to define theatrical characters in selected productions by Eugenio Barba: their distinctive qualities, the way they are constructed, the meanings they carry, and the functions they perform. A look at how theatrical character can be understood by a theatre practitioner, actor, director and pedagogue Charles Dullin; a sociologist, Jean Duvignaud; and a semiologist, Anne Ubersfeld, serves as the starting point for the inquiry. The origins of the characters that inhabit the world represented in Odin Teatret productions can be grasped by assuming two points of view: by construing the character as “a strictly poetic locus” (Ubersfeld), and by comprehending the actor’s techniques as techniques “of a personality, of a particular and unique body-mind” (Barba). The figures of human imagination brought onto the stage in Barba’s productions are born out of this bifocal vision. Seemingly paradoxical and nonsensical, they come from an unknown part of the soul, just as dreams do, according to Jung. Characters portrayed by Odin Teatret actresses, Iben Nagel Rasmussen (White Angel, Shaman, the mute Kattrin, and Trickster) and Julia Varley (Doña Musica, Kristen Hastrup, Mr Peanut, and Daedalus), supply examples for the analyses carried out by the author.
The essay published in Vinduet in 1963 characterises what the author takes to be the most notable features of the phenomenon of Polish theatre life. By way of introduction, Barba outlines some historical background and then goes on to recount the work of selected theatre directors (Axer, Dejmek, Skuszanka, Swinarski, and most of all, Grotowski) and stage designers (paying most of his attention to Szajna). He is also interested in the teaching of acting and directing at Polish theatre schools, in how the companies are organised, in the amateur and student theatre life, and the development of Polish drama (Broszkiewicz, Mrożek, and Gombrowicz). The portrayal of a blooming theatre life and its multifarious development in Poland was meant to be a challenge and inspiration for the Norwegian artists and intellectuals.
The article focuses on selected motifs of the correspondence between Eugenio Barba and Jens Bjørneboe in 1962–1964. At the time, the artists shared a plan to invigorate the Norwegian theatre life by founding a professional journal and an experimental theatre company. One of the most significant impulses in their quest had been Barba’s Polish experience and his reflexion on the history and contemporary development of Polish theatre that he summed up in the essay first published in Vinduet in 1963, which we now republish in Pamiętnik Teatralny in Polish translation.
The text presents the state of loneliness and isolation experienced in their theatrical work by the members of theatre laboratories (based on the case of the Odin Theatre) and socially excluded people (for example, those taking part in the activities of the theatre operating at the Women’s Rights Centre in Warsaw). In the first part it shows how loneliness can ally itself with the dramatic artist to become an important element of his or her work method and »life in art«. The second part of the paper deals with the original practice of the therapeutic and »ritual theatre« set up by Dagna Ślepowrońska and its influence on women who have been victims of violence in their liberation from the feeling of isolation.
PL
Tekst prezentuje doświadczenia samotności i osamotnienia w pracy teatralnej członków laboratoriów teatralnych (na przykładzie Odin Teatret) oraz osób zagrożonych wykluczeniem społecznym (na przykładzie działalności Kobiecego Ośrodka Teatralnego w Centrum Praw Kobiet w Warszawie). W pierwszej części tekstu ukazuje, w jaki sposób samotność może stać się sprzymierzeńcem artysty teatru i ważnym elementem jego metody pracy i „życia w sztuce”. W drugiej części opisuję praktykę terapeutyczno-teatralną „teatru obrzędowego”, stworzoną przez Dagnę Ślepowrońską oraz jej wpływ na proces uwalniania się z doświadczeń osamotnienia kobiet mających za sobą doświadczenia przemocy.
The author addresses Marco De Marinis’ recent proposal for theatrology. Using the proposal as a point of departure he loosely traces the presence, and often rather the absence, of two important concepts, rhythm and montage, in research analyses. His findings indicate a need for theatrology to draw closer to analyses in the field of theatre anthropology, as understood by Eugenio Barba. One of the possible paths for proceeding requires rethinking the position of the spectator/theatrologist within the theatrical fact and widening the perspective of theatre anthropology.
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