Gledališče Glej in Maskin Seminar sodobnih scenskih umetnosti z velikim veseljem vabita na predavanje dr. Setha Baumrina, gledališkega teoretika iz John Jay College of Criminal Justice, iz New Yorka (ZDA).

Predavanje z naslovom Gledališče 21. stoletja: Jerzy Grotowski in Eugenio Barba bo v Gledališču Glej, v sredo, 16. junija, ob 17h.

Predavanje o Grotovskem in Barbi v razmerju do aktualnega gledališča 21. stoletja je namenjeno praktikom in teoretikom gledališča in bo v angleškem jeziku.

“The Relevance of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba’s Search for Meaning Through the Total Actor in the Face of Twenty-First Century Hopelessness”

Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba’s careers demonstrate an admiration and devotion to work with successive younger generations who from the late 1950s onward grew up in a world increasingly bereft of hope. With every youth movement subsequent right wing conservative movements swept in and repressed youthful exuberation and experimentation with various versions of intellectual sobriety such that the system in virtually every nation induced dullness and obedience to the extent that young people increasingly find no incentive, other than cash, to pursue dreams, high ideals, service to humankind, and in most cases art.

I propose that theatrical work grounded in the training techniques constructed by Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba—in particular techniques their actors Ryszard Cieslak, Rena Mirecka, Roberta Carreri, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, and Torgeir Wethal—used techniques in which childhood memory is coupled with physical improvisation which actuates meaning in the human in a way that it manifests itself for a lifetime in creative work that is both healing to the doer and service to the forgotten for whom life itself is an un-stimulating barrage of media-based hypnosis on which they have only passing interest while yearning for some undefined freedom—freedom that they cannot imagine because they can’t recognize it in themselves.

In the 21st Century a climate of inherent lethargy, grandfathered by successive post-War generations from the multiple conflicts throughout the second half of the 20th century has inoculated the young against basic understanding of human compassion, dignity, and their own potential to be leaders of a more just society. My belief is that this lethargy can be overcome through a kind of theatrical intervention in which we who use theatre as an educational medium partner with young people of every background to create psycho-physiological theatrical etudes, not necessarily designed to make new actors, new stars, but to use as mechanisms to free inner healing through community-based performances whereby the extremely personal nature of the work, its private core, is preserved and protected such that young people can experience themselves and their peers as meaningful. The work is a step toward assuring young people will come to understand that life itself will take on a meaning when they create rather than live lives created for them by the faceless systems surrounding them.

The approach (inspired by Grotowski and Barba) is not spontaneous combustion improvisation but the observance of levels of organization of the creative process that is slow and enjoyable, without the pressure of product but the joy of process.
Seth Baumrin