A Theatre Which Dances
I have always considered my actors' improvisations as the ability to conduct a dialogue with themselves, dreaming while awake, an active meditation, a personal path on an inner journey which left behind it a wake of perceptible reactions. It was this wake of memorized reactions that I began to elaborate, even changing it radically, until it became for me a coherent sequence of dynamic peripeteias: bios (life), scenic presence ready to represent and acquire a meaning by being connected to a text, to the score of another actor; to an object, a melody or a light. During this initial process of elaboration I began to form the first relationships, establishing links which could be logical or analogical, associative or rhythmic. I continued for a long time the elaboration of an actor's score with the intention of shaping dense actions impregnated with conflicting information, a living oxymoron. I composed with care this mosaic of discordant dynamisms and meanings in' order to provoke gaps and imbalance in the spectator's perception in relationship to the obvious context of a particular scene.
The elaboration of the score consisted in merging and furbishing forms, dynamisms and rhythms: a process of discipline and precision in which the actor's aim was to render perceptible his own inner process to the spectators. It was a psycho-physical activity through which the actor entered into another state of consciousness, with the probability of becoming incandescent, transparent, bright: a dilated body. To dilate did not mean to emphasize, to exceed in vitality and overact. 'Dilation' was a consequence. It resulted from the search for what was essential, from the erasing of superfluous gestures and movements, from the technical ability to know how to preserve the action's energy even though the volume or the pattern of its external form was reduced. The secret of the dilated body consisted in safeguarding the dynamic nucleus of the action: the impulse.
The score was a shell that might contain Disorder: a pearl of light.
There are and have always been actors of prodigious effectiveness who have never fixed the pattern of their actions on stage. These have never thought in terms of a score, avoiding every sign of visible precision that might be controlled from outside. Why then did I insist with my actors on the importance of precision in fixing and knowing how to repeat the dynamic pattern of their actions? On the value of their own independence from the intentions of the director and the writer? On the coherence of their score and subscore?
I had noticed that a score was a factor contributing to the actor's effectiveness in his relationship with the spectator. The long process of distillation of a score, with its artificiality and awareness in choosing each detail, eliminated all superfluous elements. This formal quintessence presented itself as a compact structure of somatic and vocal dynamisms which were the manifestation of the processes of the actor's subscore and of his specific conditions during that evening's performance. The score reminded me of. Aladdin's lamp: a metal oil lamp which, at the actor's will, released a spirit which transfigured it. I was always impressed by the transformation of my actors. It was as if they touched a switch and were suddenly inundated by light. Their immobility their actions, silences and excesses seemed to spring from a zone of uniqueness. They appeared to be in a different state of awareness, charged with determination, cold blood and suggestive energy. It was not trance. It
was the actor's condition after he had broken through the sound barrier: he had overcome his technique, forgotten his score and subscore and was transfigured in what I called a body-in-life. But score and subscore continued to operate in spite of him. As a spectator I experienced double vision: I saw a fictive theatrical character and the Disorder of the actor's individual microcosm; the artificiality of the score and the organic process which shook it; the coherence of an external discipline and the dark forces which made it mysterious for me. This double vision contributed to making the performance the experience of an experience.
It was not the simple repetition of actions which brought the actor to this state of consciousness and alertness, radiating particular energies. It was the integration of the score with the multiple levels of the subscore as well as the interaction between inner motivations, their perceptible signs and what was happening all around. Technically, this process took place respecting the dynamisms and rhythms of the score's actions, but in a permanent state of micro-improvisation.
But I also insisted on the score's importance because the autonomous coherence of the actions (independently of the significance they assumed in the performance) bestowed a particular and precious gift on the actor's material: it became amphibious, capable of passing from one context to another without withering away, able to mutate without losing the roots which kept it alive and continuing to induce an organic effect in the spectator.
I have often had a particular experience when working with Odin actors and with those of Asian classical traditions who were accustomed to performing the same scores for years and years. I could take a whole score or parts of it, alter it, de-contextualize it, let it undergo innumerable modifications without it losing its associative power and organic effect: its identity.
I had the feeling that this autonomy of the score was the consequence of time, as if the years had eroded the bonds keeping the score tied to the situation for which it had been created. Safeguarded by time and repetition, the score had turned into an independent form, animated by an inner improvisation.
I knew what the score was for the actor: a pattern of actions defined in every detail, which may be carried out according to different rhythms, shaped and reshaped, cut and edited. I also knew that, for the actor, every score had an inner lining, a subscore which motivated his actions with a particular quality of energy.
But the score's identity depended neither on the external pattern of the actions nor on its subscore. This identity originated from a design which was incorporated to such an extent that it could be changed externally and lose everything except its essential profile, its quality and source: the permanent improvisation.
For my actors, it was evident what kept a score alive just after being fixed: it was the search for the original model, the effort to faithfully replicate the
first improvisation with all its details. But after having played a performance 40 or 50 times, I noticed that an improvisation emerged from within every score. It was this zone of improvisation which kept it alive and prevented it from becoming mechanical.
Repetition and duration transform a score into a plant producing seeds which may grow in different forms, yet always of the same species.
Inner music was the name given by Stanislavski to the organic quality of the action as the actor perceived it within himself: a tempo-rhythm of the actor's mental and nervous impulses.
I interpreted inner music as a fragile and active seed which could not be called subscore and which was not a precise structure of actions, but contained the program (coded instructions) for different structures with the same organic quality.
This program comprised three diverse perspectives: form, rhythm and flow. These terms do not indicate different technical principles or aspects of the composition. They designate three facets of the same reality. I distinguished them temporarily when working, well aware that this distinction was a fiction which was useful for research and for the creative process.
An actor and a director may treat a physical score as:
• a form, a dynamic pattern in space and time resulting from an improvisation or a composition;
• a rhythm, a scansion and alternation of tempi, accents, speed, acceleration and energy colors and nuances;
• a river bank which controls the energy's organic flow.
In the practical work I swung relentlessly from one to the other of the following perspectives: form, rhythm, color of the energy and flow (multiple and diverging rhythms). I dissociated them to set up a tension between them. I could stress one of them in order to prevent the supremacy of any of the others. I searched for ways to blend them in densely rich contrapositions. I established an antagonism between them or dissolved their contrast into an indivisible identity.
During the performance, the spectators ought not to distinguish between the action's flow, rhythm and form. In the same way, they should not he able to separate the physical action from the mental, the body from the voice, the words from the intention, the organic effect from the meaning, the performer's pre-expressive level from his expressive effectiveness, nor the actor's dramaturgy from that of a fellow actor or the director.
If I moved from the actor's perspective to that of the spectator, I could translate Stanislayski's inner music with another metaphor: colors of energy.
This was one way to indicate the body-mind, the fusion of score and subscore, the somatic and psychic entirety which is the aim of the actor's dramaturgy.
To me, the actor's score has always had the features of a dance sequence: a non-narrative alternation of tonic leaps of energy, and a simultaneity of tensions and formal patterns which awoke an impression of vulnerability, roughness, exuberance or delicacy, seduction or aggression: a theatre which dances.
This dance takes place through a succession of energy expansions and contractions and is one of the many pieces of information which the performance radiates. Other pieces of information are: the genre (theatre, dance, mime, opera, etc.), the performance's structure, its aesthetics, the story it wishes to tell, the story it tells in spite of itself, how it tells it, the context in which it has been prepared, the context in which it is performed and the particular value it acquires for each spectator.
I conclude with an observation which throws light on the absolute subjectivity of my choices as director in relationship to the actor's dramaturgy. An action (the smallest change of tonicity in the torso of the actor) had for me a complementary nature. I could model it following contradictory categories: as pure dynamism (dance) or as carrier of a clear meaning for me, yet ambiguous for the spectator. I could turn it into a rhythmic entity or into an 'open' action that the spectator would have filled with his own specific sense. I could treat it as a vague associative sign or as a clear conceptual expression, as a stimulus of energy or as a narrative indication for me and/ or for the spectator. It depended on the circumstances and on the web of relationships and references in which I inserted this action.
I carefully appraised the effect of an action in relationship to those preceding and to those following. The action was always integrated in a concatenation and in a simultaneity of other actions, which made it interfere and interact with those of the other actors.
An action was always an interaction. This is not a play on words, the consequences were evident. Its external manifestation interacted with the inner one (the subscore).
As director, I applied myself to exploiting the actions' complementarily and to consolidating their ambiguity by disseminating them into layers of light and darkness.•2010
Excerpt from “Organic Dramaturgy as a Level of Organization” in On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning The House by Eugenio Barba. Translated by Judy Barba. Published by Routledge. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
EUGENIO BARBA — Director, theorist & founder of Odin Teatret, Mr. Barba was Jerzy Grotowski’s assistant for 3 years, and wrote the first book about him. He has directed 18 Odin Teatret productions, including: Ferai, Min Fars Hus (My Father’s House), Brecht’s Ashes, The Gospel According to Oxyrhincus and Kavsmus. He founded ISTA, International School of Theatre Anthropology and has written several books including: Beyond The Floating Island, Land Of Ashes, Diamonds: My Apprenticeship in Poland, 26 Letters from Jerzy Grotowski to Eugenio Barba Theatre, Solitude, Craft, Revolt and A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology with Nicola Savarese
