MEETINGS ON THIRD THEATRE AND THEATRE ANTHROPOLOGY

A Tribute to Eugenio Barba: 85 years of life, 60 years of theatre, 34 years of encounters in Brazil

Free online event, broadcast on Youtube on the channel Terceiro Teatro 2021
More information on Instagram @Terceiro_Teatro2021 and on Facebook Terceiro Teatro 2021

Coordination: Ricardo Gomes - Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP); Gilberto Icle - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) e Universidade de Brasília (UnB); Fernando Mencarelli - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG).

Honorary committee: Aderbal Freire Filho, Marieta Severo, Tânia Farias - Brazil; Jorge Dubatti - Argentina; Patricia Ariza - Colombia; Raquel Carrió - Cuba; Wilson Pico - Equador; Ariane Mnouchkine, Jean-Marie Pradier - France; Nicola Savarese - Italy; Miguel Rubio Zapata - Peru; Jill Greenhalgh, Richard Gough - United Kingdom.

In collaboration with: ISTA/NG - International School of Theatre Anthropology - New Generation (https://jta.ista-online.org); Université Paris 8, ARTA - Association de recherche des techniques de l'acteur, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris Nord - Laboratoire d’Ethnoscénologie, SOFETH - Société Française d’Ethnoscénologie - France; Artez-Bilbao - Spain; Journal Performance Research, Queen Margaret University - Reino Unido; Universidad de las Artes de Cuba; Movimiento de Grupos de Teatro Independiente - Peru; Università degli Studi Roma Tre - Italy.

Sailing through the continents of theatre

The starting point for this event was the desire to pay tribute to Eugenio Barba, and reflect on his legacy in Brazil and throughout the world. The great and enthusiastic adhesion to our initiative is the demonstration that, at 85 years of age, the master is still in dialogue with artists and researchers, encouraging us through his creativity and inspiring us through his attitudes and coherence.

The event will be divided in three weeks: the last weeks of September (27/9 to 1/10), October (25 to 29/10) and November (22 to 26/11). In each week we will approach a different concept that Barba has formulated or approached in his path and that we consider to be crucial themes for theatre in this starting millenium. In the first week, the theme is the Third Theatre, a concept that shone on theatre during the 1970's, bringing to light the ethos that guided Group Theatre in those times. We intend to inquire about the meaning of this concept in today's Theatre. The Theatrical Anthropology, that investigates the pre-expressive level that is subjacent to performative behavior - the foundation of construction of the identity of artists and groups, in dialogue with the brands (ethnic, gender, class, etc.) of their original cultures - this is the theme of the second week. In the third week, we will investigate the cultural action of the Theatre Groups, that characterizes their relationship with society, by creating a context in which the perfomance is only one of the aspects of group culture. Another of the aspects of this cultural action is the articulation of artists and scholars in networks of experience and information exchange.

To discuss these themes, their unfoldings and entanglements, we have gathered 23 Brazilian groups (coming from 4 regions) and 4 foreign groups (from Denmark, Italy and Peru), plus 5 Brazilian and 8 foreign scholars (from Denmark, Italy and the UK). In bringing together, for this virtual meeting, a numerous and significative gathering of groups and scholars that have been sailing through the oceans of the performing arts, guiding themselves through the stars mapped out by the Italian master-sailor Eugenio Barba and by his companions of Odin Teatret, this event has reached a previously unpredicted scale: we realize that, beside the divulgation of ideas and artistic works to a wider audience, this is also a propitious situation to fuel the exchange of experiences and practices between the participating groups, in the vein of group encounters that forged the Third Theatre movement, in the 1970's and 1980's. We hope this will be an occasion to weave the networks of exchanges between artists and researchers that help creating the routes of our sailings.