On Training and Performance

Traces of an Odin Teatret Actress

Roberta Carreri, Frank Camilleri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317669395
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

"Outstanding … a technical manual (for actors and directors), an historical document of importance, and a volume that is a delight to read." Ian Watson, Rutgers

"An extremely valuable personal account of Roberta Carreri's process as an actor." Alison Hodge, Artistic Director, The Quick and the Dead

"An excellent book with a unique voice." Ben Spatz, University of Huddersfield

Roberta Carreri is one of acclaimed theatre company Odin Teatret's longest-serving actors, and the last to be trained by Eugenio Barba himself. In this book, she relives the milestones of her professional journey, including:

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• her first experiences of street theatre

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• the discovery of Asian performance traditions

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• pedagogical activities and character creation

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• encounters with artists and spectators

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• the inception of her solo performances, Judith and Salt

Interwoven with rich photographic documentation and a wealth of biographical information, this inspiring handbook reveals the professional secrets of an Odin Teatret actor as well as the story of a life of work, research, and passion.

Part I

The story and the training

1 Introduction

Ingemar Lindh once told me: ‘Technique is like an iron staircase, cold and hard but necessary. When it snows it becomes white, soft, and shining. In performances, spectators should see the snow and not the staircase’.¹

This is the reason why I called the work demonstration which I created in 1988 Traces in the Snow. Traces stand for technical signs (a way of training which others can follow), and snow represents my scenic presence in the situations where I manifest those signs.

In 2004 Vanessa Chizzini and Valeria Ravera from the publishing house Il Principe Costante saw my work demonstration at the Teatro della Madrugada in Milan. A year later they asked me to transpose Traces in the Snow into a written text. They were willing to publish it accompanied by photographs.

In Traces in the Snow I narrate my artistic biography from 1974 to 1987. I follow a chronological thread, tracing the development of my training and the creation of some of my characters. I narrate the story by highlighting the salient points, illustrating it with practical examples. My demonstration lasts only two hours, but in this book I can enrich it with new details, examples and episodes, as well as update it to 2012.

There will be moments in my narrative when, for the sake of chronology, I skip from training situations to the birth of a character. In other instances I will leap back and forth in time because different events occurring simultaneously and along parallel paths are obliged to follow a linear progression once they are transcribed onto paper.

When I decided to abandon my life in Milan to join Odin Teatret, I chose also to flee from the ambiguity of words. I preferred to confront myself through action in silence rather than rely on words that were not backed by deeds.

Now, thirty-eight years later, I find myself once again confronting words in an endeavour to translate my experiences into written signs, in the process engaging with the difficulty of having to describe effectively what I now know how to do in practice.

Theatre is a craft and as such it cannot simply be learnt in books. Technique is transmitted by means of practical examples. However, books can be a source of inspiration. I know of people who have built their individual work practice after reading and interpreting written works.

For over forty years Odin Teatret has grown like a medieval city, in various directions according to the needs of the moment. Thus there will be many aspects that will not be covered in this book, such as the story of Odin Teatret in its historical context, its economic structure, descriptions of its performances, the barter exchanges, the tours, the Festuger in Holstebro and all the other activity in the community that emerges from it,² the workshops, Odin Week, the publication of books and journals, the production of films and audio-video material, and the network of contacts that generates the microcosm in which we move with our activities.

I will not attempt to reconstruct Eugenio Barba’s method of creating performances, if there is such a method. In this book you will not find any portraits of my fellow actors. There is a simple reason for this. The theme of Traces is the actor’s training as I have experienced it, and its influence on the creation of characters in performances.

I have agreed to write this book so that my experience can serve as an inspiration for those people (now and in the future) who are drawn to this way of living the theatre, and to make some of those who are already living it in this way feel less alone.

This text is another step in the tradition of transmission of experience that has characterised the story of Odin Teatret ever since the beginning, and of which the work demonstrations are a key factor.

Notes

1 Ingemar Lindh was a Swedish actor, director, pedagogue and mime. In 1972 he founded the Institutet för Scenkonst in Storhögen, Sweden. From 1966 to 1968 he was a pupil of Étienne Decroux at his school in Boulogne-Billancourt. From 1968 to 1970 he formed part of the atelier Studio 2 founded by Yves Lebreton in 1968 and hosted, as an independent entity, by Odin Teatret until 1973. Lindh was also one of the founders of ISTA, and he participated, as a pedagogue, in the second session held in Volterra in 1981. In 1995 he cofounded the research programme xHCA (questioning Human Creativity as Acting) at the University of Malta. Ingemar Lindh died in 1997.

2 ‘Festuger’ is the Danish word for ‘celebration week’. Every three years since 1991 Odin Teatret organises a Festuge in Holstebro. For seven days and nights the town is ‘invaded’ by local and visiting groups and artists who, in association with the local cultural institutions, hold theatre and dance performances (inside and outdoors), concerts, barters, conferences and exhibitions, as well as visiting schools, old people’s homes, shops and government buildings.

2 Milan and some dates

Milan, 1944: Fausto Carreri and Ada Papotti meet on tram 23 which still runs from the neighbourhood of Città Studi to Piazza Fontana to this day. Both of them were living with their families in Città Studi after moving from the Mantovan countryside before the outbreak of war. They were married in 1946 and seven years later, on the 29th of June 1953, I, Roberta Barbara Carreri, was born.

My father was a specialised worker at the Alfa Romeo factory and my mother a housewife. At home we spoke Mantovan dialect. When I started school my mother assisted some relatives who had a shop. I spent the afternoons playing with other children in the streets.

The Leonardo da Vinci primary school, in the square of the same name, had an underground swimming pool where we learnt to swim. In the third year of primary school we were offered the opportunity to learn English after school hours. Our teacher was a native speaker and she took great pains to make us pronounce the English th and t sounds properly. My father’s dream was that one day I would become an air hostess, speaking many languages and travelling around the world. My dream was to become a dancer.

When I received a pair of red silk ballet shoes as a gift, I tiptoed all over the apartment. I fantasised about being accepted at the ballet school of Teatro Alla Scala. I was told that even girls from a poor background could make it: the famous ballerina Carla Fracci was a tram driver’s daughter, after all. In the meantime, my father had been promoted to section foreman.

In photographs from those days I am as skinny as a stick, dressed in shorts and with my hair cut like a boy. My nickname was Biafra. Healthwise, I was delicate, anaemic and lymphatic. Every spring the family doctor prescribed a dose of vitamin B, and every summer the sea was obligatory.

After having regularly saved up from a meagre salary, the summer holidays in rented rooms with shared kitchens were my mother’s coveted reward. I spent the other two months of the holidays with my relatives in the Mantovan countryside, where in the mornings I was given roasted quails and egg yolk laced with a spot of China Martini.¹ At five years of age I was given my first ronchinin with which I could join in the grape harvest.²

When I was eleven years old my father was diagnosed with tuberculosis and had to spend a year in hospital. To make up for my father’s reduced salary my mother rented my room to an engineering student and I slept in her room.

On his return from hospital, my father was re-trained by Alfa Romeo and was then transferred to an office job. My family moved to another house in Città Studi that had a lift, because after his illness my father was frequently out of breath from climbing five flights of stairs. The new house had one room missing compared with the previous one: mine.

At the end of secondary school I had to choose between art or graphic design. We chose the latter because it meant that I could find a job earlier. This is how I ended up at the Caterina da Siena professional state institute for girls, where I was fortunate enough to have Renzo Vescovi as a lecturer of Italian and history as well as a life teacher.³ In class he instilled in us a love for Manzoni, and we discussed articles from L’Espresso.⁴ He introduced us to Molière and had us read Heidegger, Kant, Sartre and Camus. Although he was always formal in his manners, he taught us to think for ourselves and to take responsibility for our choices.

The student revolts of 1968 were also felt in our institute of 1200 girls between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. I soon became one of the most militant activists of the student movement. Demonstrations, protest marches, and tear gas.

Saturday afternoons were passed at the discotheque and Sundays at the art house cinema or at the theatre. At the Teatro Lirico, during the interval of Saint Joan of the Stockyards directed by Giorgio Strehler I met Beppe Chierichetti, a chemical engineering student who became my boyfriend and later an actor of the Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo.

I received my diploma in graphic design and a year later I sat for my final examination. If I passed I would become the first person in my family ever to enter university. During the day I answered the telephone for a little firm. At night I studied.

In 1972 I registered at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the Università Statale di Milano. My parents beamed with pride. In the mornings I worked as a page-setter for a financial magazine, and in the afternoons I attended classes and reading groups. The evenings were passed either taking part in the meetings of the Comitati Unitari di Base (part of the far left-wing organisation Avanguardia Operaia) or studying Hindi.

My aim was to graduate in Art Criticism, but destiny had a surprise in store.

In the spring of 1973 Renzo Vescovi hosted Min Fars Hus, an Odin Teatret performance by Eugenio Barba, at the Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo.⁵ ‘An occasion not to be missed,’ said Renzo when I bumped into him in the cloister of the University where I was studying and he was lecturing in the history of Italian literature. It was a fortunate coincidence, because at the time I was preparing for an examination that included texts by Artaud, Grotowski and Barba.

I had been frequenting the Milan theatres for the previous four years, and on that May evening, as our car clambered up towards Bergamo, I was convinced that I was about to see a good performance. We parked the car at the entrance of the beautiful medieval piazza where the Teatro Tascabile had its base. The air was warm and gentle. The little foyer was full of people and its lights brought out the colours of our spring clothes.

The performance was limited to sixty spectators only. I was among the first to get in. The floor had been covered with wooden boards which suffused the air with an unusual smell. One metre away from the wall, a rectangle of benches was festooned with electric bulbs. My skin reacted with a shudder to the temperature, which was perceptibly lower than outside. All the spectators were seated on the benches when the actors walked in.

I remember writing the following words some days after the event:

A daisy between toes. A voice and a name: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Then the sound of an accordion playing music. Dancing. Beer flowing down the necks, falling and soaking the wood. Smell. Darkness. Silence. Voices. A little flame illuminates a flower, a glass of water, and the face of a young woman lying on the floor held up by a colleague.

And then even more music and lights and dancing, endlessly. Meetings. Clashes. Embraces. Darkness. Candle flames reveal ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by Frank Camilleri
• Preface in the form of a letter from Eugenio Barba
• Acknowledgements
• Photo credits
• PART I The story and the training
• PART II The workshop
• PART III Perspectives
• Index