Abstract

Toward a “Human Theatre”: an analysis of the use of Energy in the practice of Todd

Farley, Gilda Navarra, Fabio Mangolini, Scott Putman, Arthur Lessac, and Eugenio

Barba.

by

Richard Martínez, MFA


The Mississippi University for Women, 2018
Supervisor: Fabio Mangolini

The love, interest, and curiosity in following the creative-theatre-dance steps of Gilda
Navarra were born after years of training in different areas of art: acting, modern dance,
ballet, flamenco, clowning, and mime. As an artist, my goal is to fuse these styles to create
a performance composed of the necessary elements derived from this fusion and not by a
specific style. Therefore, I am to establish a connecting line between different styles of art
departing from the study of energy from a conceptual point of view, using Aristotle’s work,
to a practical and scientific use, with Alexander Lowen’s work, getting closer to a hybrid
context between theatre and science, with Arthur Lessac’s work, and finally, getting fully
into the Theatrical context using the work of Todd Farley, Gilda Navarra, Fabio Mangolini
and Scott Putman, a group of practitioners, researchers and performers. I will continue
with a juxtaposition of this analysis with one of the most famous, translated and recognized
books by theatre academics, L’arte segreta dell’attore (The secret art of the performer),
written by the theorist and theatre director Eugenio Barba. In the search for the connecting
line between different arts, I find the principal obstacle for the actor nowadays: muscular
tension, the marks left by different kinds of experiences during our life. Tension is also
seen as an important aspect of the equilibrium of forces which gives to the actor the
maximum control of his/her own body. I will argue that identification and control of these
two types of tension are what the creator has to dominate, to gain versatility, and fuse
different types of art. This allows the performer to connect and send clear messages to the
audience, getting back the audience openness, resulting in a communication that exceeds
the level of words. This research arises in a moment when, in my opinion, the Theatre is
going through another crisis in which it is losing its audience due to difficulties in the
connection between actor and himself and topics and audience. The search for that
reconnection within the triangle topic-audience-actor is what motivates this project.

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 Introduction

The concept of Human Theatre that I develop with my research, is expressly named

“human” for three reasons. First, humanistic, which would sound more appropriate, refers

to the huge artistic, literary concept of Humanism. This concept, already pregnant with

significance, could turn people aside from the originality of my definition and bring people

to join my concept to the well-known concept of Humanistic Theatre. The choice of this

term, which seems to be connected to Stanislavski’s and many other’s work, does not have

the goal to introduce the concept of a new theatrical style, or to give a new meaning to the

word Humanistic, or to add something new to the interpretation of Stanislavsky’s or

somebody else’s thoughts. My intention is to go deeper into the versatility of an actor,

which joins all theatrical styles, even thanks to the concept of “organic acting” created by

Stanislavsky, by going over his work and the work of many others, to define a common

point throughout all theatrical styles to reach the concept of versatility. Second, “human”

wants to persuade people to understand that the meaning expressly refers to the human

ability to control, express, spread the energy out, and it’s not meant to remind the

dichotomy human/not-human which mainly would concern the literal sense of the word.

Third, above all, “human” wants to induce people to see themselves as a “dynamis”, to put

their intentions inside of the energeia, traveling throughout their channels of

communications, to create an effective entelecheia, and to use all the techniques learned as

an instrument to amplify it. In the end, we can define the choice of “human” as the intention

to join and summarize the reserch of performers, critics, professors, researchers, theorists

and people passionate about art, with the purpose of bringing to the stage another reality:

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the human one.

This human reality is present from antique traditions of art to our days. Through

my experiences as part of an audience of physical theatre, and later as a student, this human

reality has been “codified” into various sets of postures and movements relevant to each

style. In my theatre path, I had the opportunity to study some of those sets, the same ones

I refer to when I speak about highly stylized movements. At the end of each course, what

makes each style beautiful is the capacity of the actor to express his/her human reality by

using them. The difference between actors lies at their own capacity to communicate this

“human reality”. Those movements can be reached technically, but a good technical

preparation does not imply that the actor is communicating effectively; instead the

preparation only lets the actor manipulate his/her own body to “hit” certain postures in a

functional way. The concept “codification” refers to the ability of the coder (the creator of

the style) to find his own way to express his/her human reality with his/her own particular

set, creating what we called a theatre style. The aim of this research is to understand how

that expression works and to define how we can liberate it from those stylized movements,

in order to let the naked human expression to communicate with the audience.

My interest in the study of some of the Eastern theatre traditions arises from my

journey as a university student. As an undergrad student, I had the opportunity to be

introduced to some antique traditions from the mime’s point of view. As a master’s student,

I specifically got to study the History of some Asian Theatre Styles: Kathakali and Kunqu

Theatre. Not having direct contact with them, I was introduced to them using videos

published on YouTube during my History class on my MFA. Since then, I started to

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analyze the similarities I found between the way those theatre styles were performed on

those videos with my past training. These similarities started to motivate this research

which is aimed at understanding how these antique traditions are related to my

contemporary training. The result of these observations guided this research to the word

energy: how its meaning has been used out of the context of theatre, and how it is employed

in practical fields such as Bioenergetics, and in my theatre practice through the work of

Todd Farley, Gilda Navarra, Arthur Lessac, Fabio Mangolini and Eugenio Barba.

This research is articulated in three Chapters. Chapter I Section I, discusses the

origins of the word energy using its Grecian root Energeia, created by Aristotle. Its

discussion sets the bases to develop the cycle of energy composed by Dynamis, Energeia

and Entelecheia, and how we can activate it. Section II and III establishes the employment

of this cycle from a practical area to the theatrical context.

Chapter II, goes inside the theatre work of Todd Farley, Gilda Navarra, Arthur

Lessac and Fabio Mangolini, to establish the evolution of their theatre practices, based,

some unconsciously and some consciously, on the human reality we are looking for. This

evolution gives us koshi and tamé as the keys to reaching the perfect balance called yugen.

The last section of this Chapter, Section 2.02.F confronts the research done on this group

of performers, researchers, and academics with the work of Eugenio Barba, showing a clear

incongruence with the way energy is employed in Barba’s work. Moreover, it shows a case

of Orientalism made by Barba and Alessia Sini. Chapter III discusses the evolution of

theatre towards the concept proposed by the author of this thesis, called Human Theatre,

and the new challenge for the actor: the identification, control and use of the tension. The

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last section, titled Towards the theatre inside of you, shows an example of a performance,

created by the author on the search of the human reality, and the reestablishment of the

connection between theatre and audience.

These three chapters clarify the employment of the word energy in theatre, its

importance for the actor, as well as its important interrelationship with tension. They open

a new possibility to recover the communication of the theatre art through the flow of the

energy on the actor’s body.

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