4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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from ritual to theater and back
them. I was still expecting to go to Paris, and so had told everyone that
I was going to assist Brook in the Mahabharata.
The young Chhau dancer, Dohonda, was also expecting to go...
Then suddenly, Brook wrote me to come to Paris. I didn’t know what
to do about the boy because he was not mentioned. . . . As the time
got near [to go] I wondered what to do. So I wrote personally to Peter
about the situation and asked him to inform me what to do about the
boy. He wrote back personally and said everything had completely
changed. He had previously thought the production would be very
much a physical thing. . . . But now it had become a hard speaking
French text, and so they would not need us.
(Zarrilli 1986: 93–5)
Brook unintentionally created problems for Guha and Dohonda.
Among the villagers where they worked, great excitement turned sour.
The Bengalis did not understand that production plans change – that
change is the essence of the western experimental theater. As Guha
commented, “It’s not a personal thing with Peter Brook and I don’t
take it personally. But people have to consider how to accept the culture
into which they are coming” (Zarrilli 1986: 95). Guha’s bitterness, in
fact, is palpable:
If Brook brings this Mahabharata to India and goes to the villages
where he worked and shows people what he has done with their
materials, then he is really being honest. And if he doesn’t do it, then I
would call it cultural piracy. We don’t want to be exploited culturally,
we don’t want to be guinea pigs for experiments.
(Zarrilli 1986: 98)
Barba served his apprenticeship with Grotowski and then went on in
1964 to found what has become the Odin Teatret/Teaterlaboratorium
of Holstebro, Denmark. Among the several important operations of
Barba’s lab are the journeys called “barter” which members of the
Odin have made in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Barba defines
barter thus:
Imagine two very different tribes, each on their own side of the river.