Disciplining the Scream

Abstract

This article analyses the emerging praxis of Danish Third Theatre group Altamira Studio Theatre, focusing on the way in which the group – former artists in residence at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in Holstebro, Denmark - have adopted and adapted a particular approach to song and theatrical musicality originally honed by Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret. After exploring notions of musicality in relation to the dramaturgical practices of Odin Teatret, focus is given to Altamira’s own praxical relationship to song, which is critically analysed in light of issues pertaining to ownership, appropriation and authenticity, with a focus on the tensions between artistic freedom, the globalized consumption of ‘World Music’ and the problematic representability of the cultural Other. The complex process of poetic transvaluation underpinning Altamira’s praxis is also shown to be of particular use in terms of revealing the tension between deference and difference that characterizes the intergenerational transmission of craft within the Third Theatre community, allowing for a genealogical analysis of the ways in which a particular theatrical legacy is currently undergoing transformation and renewal.

Notes

1 For more information on the Third Theatre community, see Watson (1993, 2002) and Turner and Campbell (2019). Turner and Campbell have also generated an online platform (www. thirdtheatrenetwork.com) that foregrounds the work of contemporary Third Theatre groups from Europe and Latin America.

2 Barba was Grotowski’s assistant from 1962 to 1964.

3 Haitian-born master singer Maud Robart co-founded artistic movement and research group Saint Soleil in 1973, mining the Vodoun traditions of her native country. From 1977 to 1993, she was a key collaborator of Jerzy Grotowski’s, working with him on his research into Theatre of Sources, Objective Drama and Art as Vehicle.

4 The use of Songs of Tradition in the current work of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards has shifted somewhat, and while work on songs of tradition remains paramount, predicated on virtuoso levels of rigour, discipline and craft, from 2007 to 2015 the work of the Open Program, led by Mario Biagini, utilized Allen Ginsberg’s poetic texts as a catalyst for the development of original musical material.