Eugenio Barba’s Living Archive & Floating Islands

“A living memory is a living library, a living museum: a place of metamorphosis.The past as proof of the impossible that has become possible.” Eugenio Barba

During the Aragalaya in 2022, seeing (online), the vibrantly theatrical protest march led by artistes and also several cultural events and performative acts staged at Galle Face and elsewhere (which I wrote about in a previous essay for The Island), I felt that Barba’s life-long work in theatre, in several continents and his important scholarship would be of some interest and relevance to theatre folk in Lanka too. I don’t know if some of his work is already been taught at any University, so this is simply a short introduction to his multi-faceted visionary work.

by Laleen Jayamanne

Eugenio Barba is considered the last in the great lineage of European theatrical theorists and directors, beginning with Constantine Stanislavsky of Russia, in the early 20th Century. There is a scholarly series of books documenting the history of their unique and highly influential contributions to world theatre, simply named after each director—all male, naturally! They include names such as Meyerhold, Brecht, Artaud, Copeau and the final volume is titled (Peter) Brooks, Grotowsky, Barba. Their profoundly impassioned experiments in theatre and theatrical thought have now spread through the various currents of the oceans, into all five continents.

In fact, Barba’s most recent book co-written with his long-term collaborator, theatre historian, Nicola Savarese, is called The Five Continents of Theatre: Facts and Legends about the Material Culture of the Actor, a pictorial history of theatre of the globe from ancient times to the present. There, they imagine with Shakespeare, that ‘All the world’s a stage …’; all the players dazzling beacons illuminating the enfolding darkness for a mere instant, leaving us with traces of unforgettable intensity. I do hope this volume might become a reference book for all Lankans studying and doing theatre at a University. I wish I’d had it instead of the bone-dry ones we had to study at New York University. It is beautifully produced by Brill and written in a very engaging style, easy to read because of the hundreds of carefully selected, rare images and because the two scholars have fun giving themselves fictional names of characters from Flaubert’s novel, Bouvard and Pecuchet (who were overwhelmed by the mountains of books they had to read), to discuss theatre history in dialogic form. Like me, you might also linger on a favourite image or two and keep returning to them many times. In paperback, it weighs over one kilo!

Islands don’t float, they are as grounded as subcontinents and continents. What then are Floating Islands? Eugenio Barba coined the name to describe and validate the plethora of ‘nameless theatre groups’ of our world. In doing so he has become a spokesperson and the visionary advocate for some of the poorest and marginal of theatre folk, especially in Latin America who, undaunted by poverty and myriad other difficulties, find it necessary to do theatre and stay together in a group to do so. Earlier on he has referred to these as ‘Group Theatres’ and also ‘Third Theatre’. I’ll come back to the name as it has an interesting global political history. But more recently he coined the poetic phrase ‘Floating Islands,’ creating a fabulous (fable-like) image to pay tribute to their tenacity of spirit, aesthetic will, sense of self-determination and fierce autonomy.

We usually don’t think of archives as being alive, but ‘Living Archive’ is the name chosen for the historical archive of Eugenio Barba and his Odin Teatret, Denmark, newly housed in the Bibliotecca Musiale, Lecce, in the Puglia region, Southern Italy, his birthplace. It is due to open by 2024 with dynamic exhibitions and installations presenting Odin’s theatrical activities over sixty years. The costumes, masks, props, sets, posters and stuff will be presented in contemporary audio-visual, interactive displays, and Barba’s collection of 5,000 books, in the many languages he has mastered, will be accessible to scholars of theatre from across the world. He has himself written many books and a vast number of scholarly articles. In short, it promises to be a major cultural centre for innovative ways of studying theatre and imagining its future in the 21st Century, without necessarily having to have a University degree as an entry ticket.

It’s this sense of dynamism that is captured by the title, ‘Living Archive.’ I hope young Lankan theatre folk will also have an opportunity to visit this visionary institution over the 21st Century or at the very least read his books and follow his lectures, workshops and interviews, now luckily accessible online.

Barba has had a long-standing, deep, ongoing engagement with the classical Indian dance-theatre forms and theories and with some of the living masters in Asia more widely, which I will discuss later, this being one of the main reasons I wanted to write this piece.

Eugenio Barba

During the Aragalaya in 2022, seeing (online), the vibrantly theatrical protest march led by artists and also several cultural events and performative acts staged at Galle Face and elsewhere (which I wrote about in a previous essay for The Island), I felt that Barba’s life-long work in theatre, in several continents and his important scholarship would be of some interest and relevance to theatre folk in Lanka too. I don’t know if some of his work is already been taught at any University, so this is simply a short introduction to his multi-faceted visionary work.

And by the way, it was he who edited and published the theatrical scholarly best seller, Grotowsky’s Towards a Poor Theatre, in his publishing house at Odin theatre in Denmark in the late 60s. I remember to this day the moment I saw this book (with its striking cover image of the Holy Actor), displayed on the open stand for new acquisitions, at the Peradeniya University Library. I read the book soon after in one gulp and was amazed at the photographs of the theatre space and minimalist props, the cultivation of a poverty of means (just a highly trained ascetic actor, an arrangement of an intimate space with benches and some lights). Barba’s scholarly contribution to theatre history has earned him 12 honorary Ph.D.s from universities, European and other. He has said that he is an auto-didact, self-taught, reading very widely, which feeds into his inter-disciplinary theatrical work.

Brief Biography

Barba, born in 1936 in Southern Italy to a middle-class family, has recently celebrated his 86th year. His father who joined Mussolini’s fascist army died when he was young. But because of this army connection he was educated in a high school for children of army personnel. He speaks of the rigorous, severe discipline he experienced there. At 18, perhaps wanting to leave this burdensome paternal legacy behind, he went to Norway, where without any knowledge of Norwegian, he made his way by working as a welder, grateful for the work ethic he learned there doing manual work. He learnt the language by taking evening classes and spending time in the library reading. It appears that he never forgot this link between the skilled manual hand and thought, when he made theatre. Even watching his performances on a computer, I feel a strong tactile connection with the images and sounds Barba creates. This is because of their synaesthetic Rasa-bara richness, our five senses are drawn in to play together in relays.

Having read Romain Rolland’s book on Ramakrishna’s life, an important figure in the Bengali Renaissance, he worked as a sailor on a merchant ship, mostly in the boiler room, so as to get to Calcutta in 1956 at the age of 20. He says that as a Southern Italian with dark skin he faced racism both in Norway and especially on the ship. He visited the Ramakrishna ashram in Calcutta, his trip creating an abiding link with India. On returning to Norway, he entered University to study Norwegian and French literature and Comparative Religion, focusing on forms of mysticism, including those in Islam. He was also interested in Nagarjuna’s Buddhist thought and in altered states of consciousness in various religious practices. He appears to fold these ideas into his actor training and creation of theatre.

Apprenticeship with Grotowski, 1961-1963

On graduation, he received a scholarship to study theatre in Warsaw, Poland, in 1960. After one year at the theatre school he dropped out to join the then unknown Jerzy Grotowski’s small theatre laboratory in Opolo, and worked as his apprentice from 1961-1963. This was to be his most decisive initiation into a life in theatre as a way of life. He considered Grotowski (who was only three years his senior), his guru and felt so to the end. During these three years he also undertook what feel more like pilgrimages (than trips) to witness two profound theatre experiences.

Crying at the Berliner Ensemble

One of his Polish mentors (who had designed Brecht’s poster for Galileo), gave him a letter of introduction to Helena Weigel at the Berliner ensemble, in East Berlin, now under Soviet rule, where she was performing in The Mother, based on a Russian play by Gorky. Brecht was dead by then and Barba, who was deeply immersed in his theories of Epic Theatre and of its social and political functions, was profoundly disturbed to find himself crying at the end of the play, at the Berliner Ensemble. This happened when, at the end of all her trials and tribulations, the mother waves a little red flag.

So, what made Barba cry at the Berliner Ensemble, despite all Brecht’s warnings about the danger of being swayed by emotions in the theatre and despite himself? Barba doesn’t tell us, so we don’t know, but can imagine. We don’t always know why we are moved to tears. It remains an ambiguous sign, far more than, say, laughter. Do some animals cry? Barba was profoundly aware of the new politics of the Cold War having been in Poland. So, when he had to go through the flourishing consumer capitalist neon lit paradise of West Berlin (under the largesse of the US Marshall plan), in order to get to the impoverished East Belin under Soviet style bureaucratic control, the contrasts, the contradictions, were immediately felt. He says he felt nauseous seeing the luxury in West Berlin, having come from a grim postwar Poland where the rubble was still being cleared, with shortages and food queues. Barba crossed the recently erected wall to enter East Berlin in 1961.

“Theatre as A Politics by Other Means” (Barba)

This trip to see Brecht’s play was a compressed journey through mid-century European history (in which he and his family were enmeshed), and a dramatic experience of the new bi-polar world. This, I believe must have fed into Barba’s cathartic experience within Brecht’s revolutionary theatre, in a totalitarian state after Stalin’s death. He says the Brechtian theory he fervently believed in became irrelevant. What mattered was to be able to stay with that impulse to cry and work through the sense of bewilderment and disorientation he experienced, so as to figure out a path to do theatre without preconceptions. Barba has made a virtue of uncertainty and disorientation, so as to break with theatrical and other habits, cliches.

Barba’s mature thought, about audience reception of energy and impulses from the actor, are significantly different in form, focus and intent from Brecht’s Epic constructs, though the latter has said that a theatre which failed to entertain would be a failed one. However, what Brecht didn’t want was an audience punch drunk on sentiment alone.

But Brecht didn’t make a fetish of ‘Reason’ either, given its violently instrumental, spectacular expression in Nazism. Certainly, what Barba experienced was his guru Brecht’s gift to him, beyond the grave, with the great epic actor, Helene Weigel (also Brecht’s ever loyal wife), as its vital conduit. Great gurus do not make clones, rather, they propel disciples to diverge and strike a new path. The tears were a gift!

Kathakali in Kerala, 1963

In 1963, while at Grotowski’s theatre, he went to India for a second time, to the Kathakali Kalamandalam to see the dance form. He watched an all-night performance and observed the relaxed state of the audience, eating, talking, falling asleep, and their appreciation and keen attention at some moments. But above all, he was taken by the rigorous discipline the young boys had to submit to in their training, to become Kathakali dancers much later in life. Their daily 4 am waking up schedule, their intricate exercise routines all day and the monastic discipline left a lasting impression on Barba and will help determine his own rigorous approach to actor training later.

It is indeed strange that a Lankan like me studied Kathakali dance-theatre with a drily-erudite Indian scholar, at New York University, when Kerala was just a short flight from Colombo, where I had lived for 23 years! A. J. Gunawardena, a Professor of English, edited an excellent special double Issue of The Drama Review (TDR) on Asian Theatre, also at New York University, which had an article on Kathakali as well. It’s the case that some Lankans have to go to the ‘west’ to discover India. Though the most gifted and cluey of Lankan artists of earlier generations knew better and had studied at Tagore’s Shantiniketan (Vishava Bharathi, Universal India!) and therefore have contributed to a Pan-Asian and cosmopolitan awareness in Lanka, countering the parochial Sinhala Buddhist nationalist ideology of the post-colonial era. Names like Manjusri, Harry Pieris, Bellanvila Siththara, Sunil Santha, and later Sarachchandra, come to mind. I wish someone would compile a full list of Lankan students of Shantiniketan.

(To be continued)