Fondazione Barba Varley Newsletter
On 10 December 2020, the day dedicated to the celebration of human rights, Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley established the Fondazione Barba Varley.
The Board of Directors includes: Eugenio Barba (chairman), Julia Varley (director), Emanuele Amoruso, Anna Bandettini and Luca Ruzza (board members).
The Scientific Committee includes: Ariane Mnouchkine (president), Nora Amin, Patricia Ariza, Parvathy Baul, Patrick Campbell and Claudio La Camera (members).
After the creation of the Fondazione, many people have expressed their willingness to collaborate. It is possible to support the Fondazione with financial contributions by sending a donation to the bank account IBAN IT49L0329601601000067353114 in the name of Fondazione Barba Varleyor by using the methods described on the Fondazione's website (www.fondazionebarbavarley.org).
Letters or requests for information can be addressed to the Barba Varley Fondazione fondazionebarbavarley@gmail.com
On the Fondazione's website, in addition to the current activities and projects, it is possible to find texts by Anna Bandettini, Eugenio Barba, Franco Ruffini, Nicola Savarese and Julia Varley about the nameless and the tradition of the impossible, as well as the biographies of the members of the Board of Directors and the Scientific Committee.
Fondazione Barba Varley activities for the year 2021
The Fondazione Barba Varley promotes the commitment for the causes and values of a tradition of the impossible in theatre. This tradition resurfaces in the manifold culture of the Third Theatre groups and of many other theatres that operate in geographical, social and artistic peripheries. These autonomous cells of a new system of production and relationships demonstrate the transformative function of theatre for those who participate in its processes and benefit from its results.
The Fondazione Barba Varley addresses the culture of the "nameless" in theatre. Its purpose is to support fields of action animated by people who are disadvantaged by gender, ethnicity, geography, age, way of thinking and acting inside and outside theatre. Theatre is politics by other means: those of Beauty, Vulnerability, Obstinacy and Refusal.
The activities of the Fondazione Barba Varley for 2021 include: scholarships, the establishment of itinerant centres, the publication and presentation of the book Terzo Teatro. Un grido di battaglia, support to the Journal of Theatre Anthropology, the online conversations Constellations of the nameless, and the granting of the Barba Varley Award.
Scholarships
The Fondazione Barba Varley is negotiating with the Puglia Region (Italy) and with the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (Romania) to fund scholarships for young theatre artists who want practical experience with significant theatre groups and cultural initiatives. Candidates will be chosen in collaboration with the Puglia Region and the Sibiu International Theatre Festival; the Fondazione Barba Varley advise on the most suitable places for an inclusive experience of development and challenge. Information concerning the scholarships will appear on the Fondazione’s website as soon as the negotiations are concluded.
Barba Varley International Award
Each year the Fondazione grants one or two awards of 5,000 Euros.
The choice of who receives the awards will be made by the Fondazione with particular attention to women and people in situations of social exclusion in accordance with the Fondazione's objectives.
In June 2021, the Fondazione will grant two awards: one to the network of Mexican journalists engaged in investigating on the desaparecidos, and the other to a collective supporting the families of the desaparecidos.
For information on the network see: Interactive map of mass graves.
https://data.adondevanlosdesaparecidos.org
In conjunction with the Barba Varley Award, we are planning a collaboration with the University of Milan on a book and video with interviews with journalists and families of the victims. The publication and presentation of the book will be in Italian. The video will be put on the website www.fondazionebarbavarley.org in Spanish. The Fondazione will invest 2,000 Euros to cover the cost of the interviews filmed in Mexico.
Online conversations
Starting from 26 January, the Fondazione has planned a cycle of ONLINE CONVERSATIONS on the theatre of the “nameless”.
Presentation of the CONVERSATIONS (Nicola Savarese)
Port-Bou is a small Spanish town on the border with France where the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, hunted by the Gestapo, took refuge when fleeing France invaded by the Nazis. On the night between 25 and 26 September 1940, fearing he could not embark for the United States to join friends in exile, Benjamin committed suicide at the age of forty-eight by taking a massive dose of morphine. As a Jew who in addition had committed suicide, Benjamin could not be buried in the beautiful catholic cemetery of Port Bou overlooking the waves. But about fifty metres away there is a strange descent to the sea, a tunnel supported by iron slabs corroded by rust and salt with steps, also made of iron, which lead down to the blue waters. It is the monument of the Israeli sculptor Dani Keverian dedicated to the German philosopher and recalling one of the Parisian flâneries celebrated by Benjamin, rather than a descent into the abyss. On descending the steps we suddenly find our image reflected in a glass plate through which the sea can be glimpsed, and on which the following inscription is engraved in capital letters in German, Spanish, French and English:
IT IS A MORE DIFFICULT TASK TO HONOUR THE MEMORY OF
NAMELESS PEOPLE THAN THAT OF THE FAMOUS.
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY SHOULD BE DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF THE NAMELESS. (Walter Benjamin)
This story was recalled by Eugenio Barba in the Italian journal Teatro e Storia as a tribute to the memory of one of its founders, Fabrizio Cruciani who died in 1992, emphasising the difficult task of remembering the thousands of anonymous artists who have contributed and still contribute to theatre history.
The Constellations of the Nameless - Conversations
23 February 2021: The clown with Patch Adams, Ginevra Sanguigno and Claudio La Camera
27 February 2021: The theatre of shaman clowns with Ginevra Sanguigno, Italo Bertolasi and Claudio La Camera
24 March 2021: Theatre as a practice of peace with Patricia Ariza and Julia Varley
27 April 2021: Theatre as a practice of peace with Gianni Scotto and Claudio La Camera
25 May 2021: The other face of theatre with Ariane Mnouchkine and Eugenio Barba
29 June 2021: Theatre in reclusion with Donatella Massimilla, Claudio La Camera and Julia Varley
27 July 2021: On the periphery with Parvathy Baul and Julia Varley
Itinerant centres
An Itinerant Centre of the Fondazione Barba Varley aims to enhance encounters and exchanges between groups, individuals and territories as an environment for interaction, creation of alliances and establishment of collaborative relationships. The programme of an Itinerant Centre includes all forms of initiatives that utilise theatre knowledge in all its modalities and in areas not traditionally dedicated to theatre performance.
An Itinerant Centre can be established at the request of the Fondazione or of any group, institution or artist who wants to be spokesperson for the aims of the Fondazione Barba Varley. The Itinerant Centre is financed by the Centre itself, by other public or private entities and, in special cases, by contributions from the Fondazione. The programme may also include an exchange of activities and donations of teaching materials and technical equipment.
At present Teatro tascabile di Bergamo (Italy), Associazione Politeama (Italy), Biblioteca Nacional (Cuba), Sibiu International Theatre Festival and AIRPAS and The Academic Institute for Research in the Performing Arts (Romania), Residui Teatro (Spain) are Itinerant Centres of the Fondazione Barba Varley.
Publications
The book Terzo Teatro. Un grido di battaglia contains online talks (May 2020) by Eugenio Barba, Irene Di Lelio, Franco Ruffini, Nicola Savarese and Julia Varley. The book, edited by Claudio La Camera, will be published in June 2021 by La Bussola Publishing House, with the support of Ipazia Production.
Presentations of the book will be scheduled in the Itinerant Centres from June 2021. A Portuguese translation of the book is being planned by Cia. Biruta, a theatre group of Petrolina (Brazil).
Among the activities related to publications, the Fondazione Barba Varley supports the annual Journal of Theatre Anthropology, founded by Eugenio Barba (https://jta.ista-online.org). The journal will be published every year in March, in an open access digital format and on paper, printed by Mimesis Edizioni of Milan-Udine. Conceived as a comprehensive knowledge sharing project on actor's techniques, the JTA is published under the auspices of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), with the support of the Fondazione Barba Varley, in collaboration with Odin Teatret Archives and the Centre for Theatre Laboratory Studies of the Dramaturgy Department of Aarhus University (Denmark).
Via Pian della Casa snc. 00060 Civitella San Paolo (Roma), Italia
fondazionebarbavarley@gmail.com
