Tell me about your two friends, Jerzy... "Avec Grotowsky" Texts by Peter Brook about Jerzy Grotowski.

I've just started reading "Avec Grotowski", a book by Romanian-French theatre researcher George Banu, where collects Peter Brook's words about Jerzy Grotowski.  In the introduction of the book Banu quotes a short conversation with Grotowski, a really charming and clarifying sentences about one part of Grotowski's personal world:

" (...) je l'interrogeais sur son amitié bifrons avec Barba et Brook :

'Tu as deux amis. De quoi parles-tu avec Eugenio? Et avec Brook?

- Avec Eugenio je ne parle que du théâtre, avec Peter je ne parle que de la vie !' "

...and we can translate those words in this way:

" (...) I asked him about his bifrons friendship with Barba and with Brook :

'You have two friends. What do you talk about with Eugenio? and what about with Brook?

- With Eugenio I only speak about theatre, with Peter I only speak about life!' "

That demon of two heads (bifrons) puts every of its heads on each side of Grotowski, but the Polish director was never in the centre of anything, ¡he always was on the extreme!

Fascinating research for unveiling the secrets hiding behind the encounter of great men!

"Avec Grotowski" is without any doubt a book full of wisdom of life, wisdom of human relationships, and wisdom of theatre itself. I'm reading it with passion and curiosity. We'll see...

- Posted by Gustavo Thomas. Registered by Creative Commons.

The Stage Director in Roberta Carreri's defintion.

Roberta Carreri, the Odin Teatret Actress, defines in her book Tracce the work of the stage director, in this case Eugenio Barba, based on her experience with the creation of Judith.

This definition is particularly interesting for us, people of the theatre, and specially for those dedicated to exploring the actor's technique. Roberta Carreri speaks about her own director, with whom she has worked in a unique, respected, successful and absolutely alternative theatrical style (or school) for more than 30 years:

(A stage director) is the person that during weeks, months, years, struggles to infuse life to the spectacle, first defending the actor's creativity, and then following his own creative logic to guide the sensorial voyage of the spectator.

Of course Roberta Carreri didn't write the definition per se, she just wrote about her acting experience and about her director, and this is what I extracted from it.

The original text in Italian says: 

(Talking about the process of Judith...) "Per settimane, messi, anni Eugenio ha lottato per infondergli vita, difendendo in un primo periodo la creatività degli attori, e poi seguendo la sua logica creativa per guidare il viaggio sensoriale dello spettatore." (1)

I like to get some definitions this way, because it always refers me back to my own creative interests, it works for my own growth; these are points of reference coming from others' experiences, from others who are the masters of my theatrical world.

(1) "Tracce. Training e storia di un'attrice dell'Odin Teatret." Roberta Carreri. Il Principe Costante Edizioni. Milano, 2007.

The Odin Teatret Archives channel in Youtube

I dreamed with the day Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba open their archives to the Internet. Grotowski died and we don't know exactly what his heirs (as closed as Grotowski was with social contact) think about it, but Eugenio and the Odin Teatret have opened (since Septmeber 2009) their visual archives and built a Youtube channel. Fantastic!

Now we can go to Youtube and watch historic images of their performances, researches and friends, videos of their different trainings, of their evolution through 35 years, videos about the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) and so on. They upload videos almost every day (till now the channel has 73 videos), so you can subscribe to the channel and be up to the day on Odin archives.

Here some videos from the Odin Theatre Archives channel:

I, as theatre practitioner and follower of new kinds of theatre, appreciate this tremendous gesture of kindness and partnership with all the art world.

So, go and visit this channel, it will be a good idea to expand the news.

odinteatretarchives1

http://www.youtube.com/user/odinteatretarchives1#p/a