School as Workshop

Abstract

Abstract The experience of the master class held by the actress Roberta Carreri (Odin Theatre) at the National University of Arts, Iaşi, has made me understand the necessity of the theatre laboratory born out of the need to leave aside all other concerns, including that of making “good” theatre. The workshop means letting yourself carried in silence as an active life principle, by other principles – of the stage movement – rediscovering the expressiveness of the body as form and sonority. It means forgetting everything you think you know about theatre and what has become an automatism; fighting with the everyday movement, abandoning it. The technical terms that designate the two types of action on the stage are “everyday movement” – where the brain acts in accordance with and by reason of automatisms, and “extra-everyday movement”, where the brain must make the effort to think in spite of the automatism. The extra-everyday movement elaboration comes from an excess/waste/potentiation of energy that is achieved by acting according to certain principles. These were carefully described in the theatre dictionary compiled by Eugenio Barba and the Italian theoretician Nicola Savareze, following half-century experiences through international confrontations of the Asian and European theatre/dance.