Theatre in Times of War
Abstract
Eugenio. – I first encountered war through my father, who died during the Second World War. After that, I was fortunate: eighty-five years without experiencing war firsthand. Yet I often think of the wars I have lived through in my mind, and of Vakhtangov, who died of throat cancer at only thirty-nine, just a few years after the Bolshevik Revolution, while the Russian Civil War was still raging. It was the bitter winter of 1922: freezing cold, with neither food nor hope. My next experience of theatre in a time of war dates back to 1988, in Peru, during the armed conflict between the State and the Maoist revolutionary movement Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Ayacucho, high in the Andes, five hundred kilometres from Lima, was the city where Sendero Luminoso had first taken root. Julia Varley will tell you about it.
Julia. – We had travelled there to take part in a group-theatre meeting organised by Mario Delgado and his company, Cuatrotablas. The political situation was extremely difficult, and a curfew was in force. We were invited to perform in the neighbourhoods clinging to the mountainsides around Ayacucho – places where the police did not dare to go, and where white tourists never ventured. But I no longer felt white: I carried all the colours of my costume.
Keywords
theatre, war
Eugenio Barba
Eugenio Barba is a theatre director and the founder of Odin Teatret (1964) and the ISTA – International School of Theatre Anthropology (1979). He has directed more than eighty productions, some of which have emerged from exceptionally long creative processes. His books include La canoa di carta. Trattato di Antropologia teatrale; Teatro. Solitudine, mestiere e rivolta; La terra di cenere e diamanti. Il mio apprendistato in Polonia. Seguito da 26 lettere di Jerzy Grotowski a Eugenio Barba; La conquista della differenza; Bruciare la casa. Origini di un regista; Le mie vite nel Terzo Teatro. Differenza, mestiere, rivolta; and, in collaboration with Nicola Savarese, L’arte segreta dell’attore. Un dizionario di antropologia teatrale and I cinque continenti del teatro. Fatti e leggende della vita materiale dell’attore. He serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities, the Sonning Prize from the University of Copenhagen, and the Luigi Pirandello International Prize.
Julia Varley
Julia Varley is an actress and theatre director. From 1971 to 1976, she worked in Milan with Teatro del Drago, Centro Sociale Santa Marta, and Circolo La Comune. She joined Odin Teatret in 1976 and has since performed in all of its ensemble productions. She is one of the founders of the Magdalena Project, an international network of women in contemporary theatre. She has published several books translated into multiple languages, as well as numerous essays. In 2020, together with Eugenio Barba, she established the Barba Varley Foundation, and in 2021 she founded Transit Next Forum – Women and Theatre, an association based in Denmark through which she continues her activities connected with the Magdalena Project.