Two faces of theatre laboratory tradition: ways of working with song in the Laboratorio di Domenico Castaldo and in Raúl Iaiza’s project ‘Regula contra regulam’

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to describe the ways of working with music and song in the process of training actors in the ‘Regula contra regulam’ project conducted by Raúl Iaiza (Regula Theatre, Milan) and in the work of Domenico Castaldo (Laboratorio di Castaldo, Turin). The investigations of both artists belong to the stream of the Italian laboratory tradition, for which the main inspirations remain the work of Jerzy Grotowski and of Eugenio Barba. The article explains what the sources of this tradition are and how we can contemporarily understand the concept of the theatre as a ‘laboratory’. It subsequently describes briefly the most important findings regarding the approach to working with the voice advanced by Grotowski and Barba. We can find the continuation and expansion of their thoughts regarding work with the voice and with music in the work of both Iaiza and Castaldo, although, as this article attempts to show, the investigations of each of these artists achieve their own individual, original character.

Keywords:

• Grotowski
• Barba
• Castaldo
• Iaiza
• song

Notes

¹ Carla Pollastrelli – administrator, longstanding translator and propagator of Grotowski’s work in Italy – talks about his influence on artistic environment in Italy, especially on experimental or research theatre (teatro di ricerca).

² Since 2007, there have been two teams at the Workcenter: the Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle – the group led by Thomas Richards (the artistic heir to Grotowski) – and the Open Program, conceived and led by Mario Biagini.

³ See e.g. the work of Instabili Vaganti (Bologna), as well as that of Teatro Akropolis (Genova) led by Clemente Tafuri and David Beronio.

⁴ See e.g. the work of Teatro Potlach (Fara Sabina), Teatrocontinuo (Padua), Teatro Proskenion (Scilla), Teatro dell’Albero (Milano).

⁵ According to Mirella Schino (2009, p. 9), the main figures and propagators of the laboratory tradition in the second half of the twentieth century are Grotowski, Barba and Peter Brook. The common area of investigation of these artists was to draw attention to the significance and possibilities of the art of acting. In a broad sense, theatre as a laboratory may be a term for every experimental theatre in which artists create their own individual style of work and seek new theatrical techniques not necessarily associated with the actor’s art.

⁶ In 2007–2009, I worked at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, where, together with Grzegorz Ziółkowski, I co-created the project ‘Song In-Between’. The results of that endeavour consisted of a solo performance The Leaden Ball: A Work-in-Promise, as well as numerous sessions of work with actors in Poland, South Korea, Malta and Armenia. In 2009, I assisted at the international course for actors, entitled Atelier: To the Light in Brzezinka, the forest base of the Grotowski Institute. In 2007–2011, I was the actor at Rosa Theatre led by Ziółkowski. I was also a participant in international projects concerning the actor’s training: ‘Regula contra Regulam’ (2007–2011) and ‘Theatralia’ (2012).

⁷ Also participating in the project during these years were Elisabetta Bianca, Alessandro Borroni, Simone Lampis, Serena Magazzeni, Roberta Secchi, Marta Smaruj, Signe Thomsen, Maciej Zakrzewski and Monika Zipparri.

⁸ This is what the next works that arose at the Workcenter were called, along the lines of art as a vehicle. Opus, from Latin, means work.

⁹ For many years, at the core of the Laboratorio were also the actors Katia Capato and Francesca Netto

¹⁰ In Naples, figurelle, or small figurines, are made in the likenesses of both sacred and secular figures, e.g. footballers.

¹¹ The latest findings of musicologists and music anthropologists concur with this idea (Clarke et al. 2016) regarding the impact of music on the emotions, as well as studies according to which music can be a representation of a ‘virtual character’ and participate in the emotional states experienced by the listener (Watt and Ash 1998, Livingstone and Thomson 2009). Similar conclusions were drawn, among other things, on the basis of an experiment studying the reactions of sad individuals to sad music. The music that manifests ‘empathetic ability’ does not just accompany listeners and reflect their feelings with its mood, but instead allows them to come to grips, e.g. with their sadness. Music, then, has a therapeutic ability.

¹² https://www.regulacontraregulam.eu/index.php?id=8 [Accessed 19 May 2016].

¹³ The Argentine director also attended courses at the prestigious Chigiana Academy in Siena, taught by the world-class virtuoso Frans Brueggen and his student Kees Boek. His strong ties to the world of music are shown also by how from 1999 to 2013 he was the Italian coordinator of the project ‘Mus-e Italia Onlus’ of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, the purpose of which is to bring art closer to children.