by Andreea Telehoi, photo: Maria Ștefănescu
Andreea Telehoi: You often speak of Odin Teatret as a consequence of necessity, of rejection. Could necessity have created more freedom than success ever could?
Eugenio Barba: When you begin to do theatre, you are arrive in a place sort of urbanistic, there exist rules. And these rules, you can call them tradition, criteria, laws, the economical aspect, the cultural aspects, so you have to adapt to it. So freedom consists in finding a way to avoid what is hindering your wish and the need you have can be satisfied. Freedom must be considered not something very general, but the gratification of certain needs one has. Of course, if you are an actor: What does it mean success for an actor? That is appreciated and then out of success it can get more money and better roles, go maybe to television. So success helps in increasing the freedom of an actor and director. But on the other side, you can be free even without success.
And we have a huge Culture, I would say, which is the amateur culture, they don’t think in category of success. They work in categories of freedom, they feel free, gathering when they want, they present what they want. So one thing, when you do theatre, you do theatre in order to adapt to certain rules. You can call it the market. The place of the dialogue, the place of the negotiations, critics belong to the market, in that sense. Writers write in a certain way. The market is not negative. The market is the context in which one theatre exists. So you have to liberate, try to liberate yourself from as much as possible if you have certain particular needs, otherwise you can adapt to the market and most of the people do it in reality. If I could have been doing this in Italy instead of Denmark or Norway, I don’t know, this is a very hypothetical question. Very difficult to answer.
I think that it’s not a question of nationality or nation, it’s a question of individuals who accept to work in a particular way. So, for instance, my actors come from different countries and they all accept the sort of discipline or values, working values, which exist in the Odin.
A.T.: In your work, you’ve mentioned the actor. The actor’s body is central as a side of discipline, of vulnerability, of border ritual. How do you view the use of nudity in theatre?
E.B.: I never used nudity in theater because if you want to present something which is sexual, I am more how to create an erotical situation and erotism has nothing to do with the nudity. Or if you want to show nudity as sort of the spice of the body. If you want to for instance in a play, how Germans were sending people nude, naked in a crematorium. You could do this, but personally I always I have considered theater as the one, the art of evoking and not representing directly. When I see nudity in theater, usually I see only nudity. I don’t see any evocation or association, very often.
A.T.: What do you look for in an actor’s silence? Not the presence, but the silence of the actor. What’s behind it?
E.B.: Silence does not mean, just like immobility, it doesn’t mean that you are not in action. There is a sort of dialogue within yourself. How to make it perceptible to the senses of the spectator? This is a technical question. Of course, an actor should learn to be present even in immobility. and say something, even in silence, so that if I see an actor silent and in a still, immobile posture, I have to, as a spectator, I have to react to it. Even if I don’t know to what I’m reacting, if I don’ t understand it.
A.T.: How do you see digital technology and virtual experiences impacting the ritualistic, embodied nature of theatre? Can digital media coexist with the live presence central to your work?
E.B.: All my theater is not very much technological, although I’ve been making performances very complicated from the point of view of lighting, because I had very good light designers, sometimes I’m very good at architecture, built with very complicated scenographic structures. But I have nothing against technology. The most important technology is an archaic one, the human body. So if the human body there is present and is the most important way of expression, there are technical and technological elements which can create a sort of a contrast in dynamic opposition. But when the performance becomes too much technological, then I very rarely have been enjoying it. It has happened that I’ve been enjoying it, but otherwise it’s very… I like very much to see actors on stage, human beings, how they change, how they try to become different from what they are, how their voices can transform them. This is my pleasure when I go to theater as a spectator.
A.T.: And what about the music? You said something earlier.
E.B.: Music is fundamental. I would say that the most important factor, even sometimes more than the actor, is the music. The music creates moves, creates rhythm, creates… This information, if I start speaking, it will sing you of a certain song, it will remind you of a film or a town or an epoch.
A.T.: Why do you think total freedom in creation can sometimes be more paralyzing than working within constraints?
E.B..: If you don’t have a name, an obligation, a motivation, then freedom is in the way. If you must not do a performance, which is already a big limitation, you are no longer free. Because you have to do a performance. So, how to find a way to stimulate yourself? I think each person has a particular way in finding a starting point. Personally, when I have a text it’s very easy because there is a first scene, then I begin to work with the first scene. I have to solve it. If I don’t have the text, and I take a novel and I want to adapt it, then I ask myself which in this novel would be the first scene. This chapter, that chapter? Then already I have to find a solution. I have to solve the problem. So the question of freedom is connected to the situation you have to solve because all the working, rehearsing is how to solve a transposition from a text or from our imagination into physical and vocal signs. And there you can say freedom is when you can use anything, but at the same time you are obliged, you are limited, because it must come out something concrete. To which you say: This functions, this doesn’t function, this is good for the moment, it can be there and then we find out what happens afterwards. Or w say no, this doesn`t work, let me find another solution.
A.T. What have you learned from younger generations?
E.B. I don’t like generalizations. Most of the young people I know are involved in theatre, they are motivated. When I hear that young people are lost, don’t know what they want, are isolated – I’m surprised. But I know I’m in a privileged position: I meet those who come toward me.