The Actor's Way

241 Pages·1993·14.36 MB·English

by  Christoffersen

THE ACTOR’S WAY
In The Actor’s Way four actors talk about the secrets and practical realities of
over twenty-five years of theatre training with Odin Teatret. Under the
unique direction of Eugenio Barba, director of Odin Teatret, they have
explored issues such as the connections between physical and mental work
on stage, how to gain and control the spectator’s attention, and inter-cultural
performance techniques.
In an interview with Erik Exe Christoffersen they provide the fullest
account yet of Odin Teatret’s ground–breaking combination of European
and Asian Theatre which has put these actors at the forefront of a genuinely
new kind of performance.
The Actor’s Way is a fascinating account of personal and professional
development in the threatre. It will be vital reading for drama students and
actors, but enjoyable and illuminating for anyone interested in the craft of
acting.
Erik Exe Christoffersen is Associate Professor at the Department of
Dramaturgy, University of Aarhus and director of Theatre Akadenwa. He
has worked closely with Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret for a number
of years.

THE ACTOR’S
WAY

Erik Exe Christoffersen
Translated by
Richard Fowler

London and New York
First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

© 1989 Forlaget KLIM
Translation © 1993 Richard Fowler (translation of ‘Training and
performance in relation to Judith’, pp. 144–57, by Gordi Roberts)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Christoffersen, Erik Exe
Actor’s Way
I. Title II. Fowler, Richard
792

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Christoffersen, Erik Exe.
[Skuespillerens vandring. English]
The actor’s way/Erik Exe Christoffersen.
p. cm.
Includes index
1. Odin teatret. 2. Experimental theater—Denmark.
I. Title. II. Series.
PN2746.H62029513 1993
792′.09489–dc20 92–21086

ISBN 0-203-56556-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-56679-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-08795-3 (Print Edition)
0-415-08796-1 (pbk)
CONTENTS

List of illustrations vi
Preface viii
Introduction 1
1 THE FOURTH FLEW INTO THE FIRE AND BURNT UP
The study years: 1961–4 10
2 THE CLOSED ROOM: 1964–74
Ornitofilene, Kaspariana, Ferai and My Father’s House 19
3 JOINING ODIN TEATRET 28
4 THE OPEN ROOM: 1974–82
The Book of Dances, Anabasis, Come! And the day will
be ours, The Million and Brecht’s Ashes 61
5 TRAINING, TECHNIQUE AND THEORY 72
6 BUILDING THE THEATRICAL CHARACTERS 86
7 DRAMATURGY 124
8 THE DANCING TIME-SPACE: 1983–8
Oxyrhincus Evangeliet and Judith 128
9 THE TRAVELLERS OF SPEED 158
10 THE SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY 164
11 THE SHADOW OF ANTIGONE
The director reflects
Eugenio Barba 183
12 THEATRE AGAINST THE CURRENT: THE THEATRE
OF REFUSAL 187
13 THE SPECTATOR’S PERSONAL THEATRE 196
Select bibliography 205
Odin Teatret productions: 1965–92 211
Index 218
v
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Hieronymus, The Wanderer 4
2 Anabasis, Peru, 1978: on the way 9
3 Rehearsals of Ornitofilene, 1965 21
4 Scenic arrangements for Ornitofilene, Kaspariana, Ferai
and My Father’s House 26
5 Training at Odin Teatret, 1965 29
6 Ornitofilene, 1965 32
7 Ferai, 1969 35
8 My Father’s House, 1972 38
9 Training at Odin Teatret, 1968 43
10 The cat chain, 1987 50
11 The Book of Dances, 1974 57
12 Come! And the day will be ours, 1976: barter in Venezuela 63
13 Scenic arrangements for The Million, Come!…,
Brecht’s Ashes, Oxyrhincus Evangeliet and Talabot 69
14 Brecht’s Ashes, 1982: dissecting the fish 71
15 Training at Odin Teatret, 1983: a decided body 74
16 ISTA, 1987: dynamic balance 83
17 The Book of Dances, 1975 87
18 Parade, 1975 89
19 Anabasis, 1978 92
20 The dancing stranger 97
21 Brecht’s Ashes, 1982: the rape of Kattrin 100
22 Brecht’s Ashes, 1982: Kattrin in front of the ‘Wall’ 103
23 Brecht’s Ashes, 1982: Brecht and Arturo Ui 115
24 The Million, 1979 119
25 The Book of Dances, 1978 122
26 Oxyrhincus Evangeliet, 1985: Zusha Mal’ak the tailor 133
27 Oxyrhincus Evangeliet, 1985: Sabbatai Zevi 136
28 and 29 Oxyrhincus Evangeliet, 1985: Antigone sacrifices the child 139
30 Judith, 1987: a sea in revolt 147
31 and 32 Judith, 1987: the energy of the eyes 154
vi
ILLUSTRATIONS
33 Anabasis, Peru, 1978: crossing the desert 175
34 Come!…, 1978: the shaman dance 177
35 Eugenio Barba, 1972 186
36 Barter in Peru, 1978 188
37 Peru, 1988: still on the way 197
38 Talabot, 1988 203
39 Theatre Akadenwa, 1987: the dance on the water 204

vii
PREFACE

Two men pass one another at an interval of about a hundred years. In 1864,
Henrik Ibsen travelled from Norway to Italy. A hundred years later,
Eugenio Barba made the same journey, but in the opposite direction.
Separated by time and space, both men went into a kind of voluntary exile.
Both were concerned with the individual who, in order to find himself,
seeks out the foreign and the unknown. The two men are otherwise
dissimilar.
To be a stranger in a foreign land, to travel out into the unknown, can be
something one does out of desire or out of necessity.
Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House in 1879, in his self-chosen exile in
Italy. There, in the summer’s burning heat, under the high blue sky, he wrote
about the home in a Norwegian town which, in the dark wintertime just after
Christmas, burst into flames and burnt to the ground. The difference
between the two places is part of what creates the dramatic tension in
Ibsen’s drama. The distance is necessary for Ibsen’s understanding of why
Nora had to leave, why she had to give up her husband and children. She
recognizes that they are strangers to her. In order to learn to know herself,
she herself had to become a stranger.
Eugenio Barba travelled the opposite way. From Italy he went to
Norway and later to Denmark. The central element in his artistic
production is the individual who, like Nora, leaves home and becomes
a stranger. In the same way, Odin Teatret has kept itself apart in a kind
of self-chosen exile which is both geographical and mental. This
situation, this ‘not-belonging’, demands a maximum presence. The
actor must treat each and every performance as a last chance to speak.
As a testament, says Barba in ‘Letter to Actor D’ (Barba, 1986a: 22), a
parallel to Ibsen’s perception of his authorship as a total Day of
Judgement of himself.
A long series of authors, dramatists and actors have also ‘betrayed’ their
original homelands to seek, just like Nora, their own identity in the
unknown. It is paradoxical that it becomes necessary for some people to
leave their homelands and choose an existence as strangers in order to find
viii
PREFACE
themselves, to be true to themselves having transformed their foreignness
into artistic strength.
The same was true of another traveller, Marco Polo (1254–1324), when,
after seventeen years as Kublai Khan’s emissary, he had to describe the cities
he had visited: unfamiliar as he was with the language, he expressed himself
with signs, movements, props. The spectators had to decode the signs, and
never knew if they expressed an experience or something he was told. Whatever
they were, the signs had the power to become a part of the spectators’ memory.
Marco Polo was the first European to explore East Asia. He travelled for
twenty-five years.
Odin Teatret’s dramaturgy is a break with psychological and social
realism. It is not a form of dramaturgy which aims to organize reality
according to clear polarities, meanings, or thematic oppositions. Its main
characteristic is the very detailed study of extreme states of energy which
are neither psychologically nor emotionally motivated but which contain
their own contrasts. Barba works with montage technique, discontinuous
jumps in action and thought, breaks between action and impulse. It is not a
question of a linear, progressive time model or of a cause-and-effect logic,
and therefore psychology and plot are no longer the dramatic foundation.
The actors are not limited by their characters’ psychological recognizability.
They can jump between various characters and between various times and
actions. They are not restricted by the immediate reality which they
represent but can establish their own legitimacy. Many different actions can
be executed together or against each other in a performance architecture
which gives the spectators the opportunity to interpret the reality in which
they find themselves and thereby become co-creators of the theatre.
The point of departure is not a completed dramatic text but the actor’s
ability to form his or her presence for the spectator in space and time. This
presence is interwoven with textual material, a theme and the montage of
stories and associations, and results in a ‘performance text’ which creates
meaningful relationships in a simultaneous context.
When Marco Polo returned home to Italy and told of his experiences, he
was called ‘The Million’, because everything he told was believed to be
unreal: in a prison in Genoa he wrote his ‘tall stories’.
THE PAST IS DANCING
Most of the theatre groups established in the 1960s are long gone. Many
died, others split and broke up. Experience shows that these groups very
often do not keep together for more than ten years. There is one exception in
a small town in Denmark. For twenty-seven years Odin Teatret has worked
in Holstebro with the same core of people. This is quite an event within
theatrical history.
ix