Performance(s)
Venue and date:
National Theatre of Hungary, Budapest
2023. 05. 20., 19:00
Company:
International participants of the 17th ISTA/NG
Eugenio Barba / Fondazione Barba Varley
Eugenio Barba / Fondazione Barba Varley
Theatre

Anastasis (Resurrection)

Performance(s)
Venue and date:
National Theatre of Hungary, Budapest
2023. 05. 20., 19:00
Company:
International participants of the 17th ISTA/NG
Author:
Eugenio Barba
Director:
Eugenio Barba
Soundscape: 
Mirto Baliani
Digital scenography and light design: 
Stefano di Buduo
Director assistants: 
Rina Skeel, Julia Varley, Ana Woolf
Assistants: 
Francesca Romana Rietti, Leonardo Mancini, Jakob Nielsen, Antonia Cezara Cioaza, Gregorio Amicuzi, Viviana Bovino, Ricardo Gomes
Film-maker: 
Claudio Coloberti
Photographer: 
Francesco Galli 
Design: 
Rina Skeel
Synopsis

Anástasis depicts Life’s different phases and realities from birth to death and again re-birth in the world of nature, animals and humans. Anástasis is a hymn to the power of Life and an homage to the performer’s art with its splendour of styles and expressions. It is enacted by performers from different countries and traditions: Japanese Noh, Chinese Nanguan Opera, Balinese Topeng, Indian Baul and Kathakali, Brazilian Cavalo Marinho and Bumba Meu Boi, Flamenco and western contemporary styles.

Synopsis

1. Welcoming the spectators
Two clowns, Mr. Peanut and the Balinese Penasar, lead the spectators to their places.

2. Introduction
A Transylvanian song in darkness.

3. Presentation of the performance

Two storytellers, an Indian Baul and a Brazilian folk singer, inform the spectators about the events to happen.

4. The power of nature
A Japanese woman admires the beauty of the landscape, while Death looms.

5. The family
A father (Pulcinella), a mother (Nanguan Opera) and a Brazilian child (Cavalo Marinho) play in the intimacy of domestic life.

6. Human weakness

The Baul storyteller shows the greed of an old man (Balinese Topeng).

7. Brazilian feast
A group of joyful people celebrates the vitality of a bull.

8. Showing off bravery
The Brazilian singer and a Hungarian traditional dancer display their virtuosity.

9. The feast ends
The bull is killed, while the family admires the landscape.

10. People are hungry…
Two clowns (Bali and Brazil) find the dead bull and carry it out to have a good meal.

11. … and rich people dance
An elegant couple on stilts waltzes to Johann Strauss’ music.

12. The boy’s funeral
The parents mourn the dead son.

13. The face of darkness
An Indian Kathakali demon attempts to annihilate the child’s corpse.

14. The transformation of Death into Life
The bull and the child resurrect and the performance ends with Death becoming Life, among the actors singing a traditional Hungarian song (“By the river of Tisza under an almond tree / two lovers embrace each other”).

Cast
Keiin Yoshimura
So Sugiura
Parvathy Baul
I Wayan Bawa
Yalan Lin
Alício Amaral
Juliana Pardo
Rodrigo Lopes dos Reis
Matheus de Aquino
Alessandro Rigoletti
Caterina Scotti
Julia Varley
Jakob Nielsen
Antonia Cezara Cioaza
Ana Woolf
István Berecz
Ibolya Páll
Annada Prasanna Pattanaik
Lorenzo Gleijeses
Manolo Muoio
all 17th ISTA/NG participants
Infos
The Director
Eugenio Barba / Fondazione Barba Varley
Eugenio Barba / Fondazione Barba Varley

Eugenio Barba was born in 1936 in Italy and grew up in the village of Gallipoli. His family’s socio-economic situation changed drastically when his father, a military officer, was a victim of World War II.

Upon completing high school at the Naples military college (1954) he abandoned the idea of embarking on a military career following in his father’s footsteps. Instead, in 1954, he emigrated to Norway to work as a welder and a sailor. At the same time he took a degree in French, Norwegian Literature and History of Religions at Oslo University.

In 1961 he went to Poland to learn directing at the State Theatre School in Warsaw, but left one year later to join Jerzy Grotowski, who at that time was the director of the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole. Barba stayed with Grotowski for three years. In 1963 he traveled to India where he studied Kathakali, a theatre form which was unknown in the West at that time. Barba wrote an essay on Kathakali which was immediately published in Italy, France, the USA and Denmark. His first book about Grotowski, In Search of a Lost Theatre, appeared in 1965 in Italy and Hungary.

When Barba returned to Oslo in 1964, he wanted to become a professional theatre director but, being a foreigner, he was unable to find work. He gathered together a few young people who had not been accepted by the State Theatre School, and created Odin Teatret in October 1964. As the first theatre group in Europe, they worked out the new practice of training as a total apprenticeship. They rehearsed in an air-raid shelter their first production, Ornitofilene, by the Norwegian author Jens Bjørneboe, which was shown in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. They were subsequently invited by the Danish municipality of Holstebro, a small town in north-west Jutland, to create a theatre laboratory there. To start with, they were offered an old farm and a small sum of money. Since then Barba and his collaborators have made Holstebro the base for their multiple activities.

During the past fifty-six years Eugenio Barba has directed 79 productions with Odin Teatret and with the intercultural Theatrum Mundi Ensemble, some of which have required up to two years of preparation. Among the best known are Ferai (1969), My Father’s House (1972), Brecht’s Ashes (1980), The Gospel according to Oxyrhincus (1985), Talabot (1988), Kaosmos (1993), Mythos (1998), Andersen’s Dream (2004), Ur-Hamlet (2006), Don Giovanni all’Inferno (2006), The Marriage of Medea (2008), The Chronic Life (2012) and The Tree (2016).

Since 1974, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret have devised their own way of being present in diverse social contexts through the practice of the “barter”, an exchange of cultural expressions with a community or an institution, structured as a common performance.

Inviting Theater
National Theatre of Hungary, Budapest