Shakuntala among the Olive Trees

Abstract

Mirella Schino reports on a 1993 project run by European director Eugenio Barba, head of Denmark's Odin Teatret, in which thirty Western scholars, actors, and directors worked with Barba and Sanjukta Panigrahi, Indian Odissi dance artist, in a transcultural, communally oriented collaboration designed to explore ways of expressing the Sanskrit classical drama Shakuntala in performance. The work was done in three stages at Fara Sabina, Italy, and Holstebro, Denmark, under the auspices of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), founded by Barba. Through ISTA, Barba is able to work on methods that differ from but cast light on his work at Odin Teatret.