The journal is an open-access platform for research on Theatre Anthropology. It focuses on two main fields of investigation: the rediscovery of the fundamental aspects and the main theoretical issues in this field; the enhancing of new research into the pivotal study of the “performer’s pre-expressive scenic behaviour”, according to Eugenio Barba’s definition. Each issue of the Journal includes both a thematic section on a proposed topic and a varia section of different contributors. The Journal of Theatre Anthropology accepts submissions in the main European languages and uses double-blind peer-review.
Three articles are dedicated to Natsu Nakajima, a Japanese dancer who has partici- pated in various ISTA sessions, representing butoh dance technique. Nourit Masson-Sékiné’s article on Natsu Nakajima, and Eugenio Barba’s text Words Hiding Love have both been published in Toward Heart of Dream, Collection and Document of Natsu Nakajima and Mutekisha Dance, Tokyo, 2024. Some words by Natsu herself complete this section.
Recurring principles: actors/dancers explain
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This article was first published in Italian in “Teatro e Storia”, n. 45/2025, pp. 409-21 as part of a dossier about Nicola Savarese, a scholar whose research was both practical and theoretical. His main publications are listed here, together with his fields of interest that ranged from Asian theatre to ancient Greek and Roman theatre. Nicola was part of ISTA since the first session in Bonn in 1980 and the collaboration with Eugenio Barba has produced two fundamental books for theatre anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer and The Five Continents of Theatre.
This article presents the preparation, intentions, realisation and effects of ISTA 9 and Festival Crossroad Umeå, Sweden, in dates 2-21 May 1995. Chris Torch, who organised the ISTA session with Sven Sahlström, here discusses questions of multiculturalism and interculturalism in countries that have been radically changed by immigration; what is to be considered ‘exotic’ and ‘original’ in realties in continuous transformation.
Cristina Wistari describes vocal work in Balinese dance theatre with examples of her training with I Made Djimat and Ni Nyoman Candri, confronting questions of song and spoken text, of ancient and contemporary language in arja, topeng and gambuh.
Extract of the article “The Pre-Expressive Famil” by Julia Varley published in The Performers’ Village (Drama, Copenhagen), pp. 122-124, giving some information about the everyday life at the ISTA session in Umeå, Sweden.
Augusto Omolú joined the artistic staff of ISTA for the Londrina session in 1994 and was present at all ISTA sessions after that until the Bielefeld session in 2000. In 2013, Augusto Omolú was killed in his home in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. This article presents his contribution to theatre anthropology, ISTA, Theatrum Mundi and Odin Teatret with the Afro-Brazilian dance of the orixás from the Candomblé rituals. With Odin Teatret, Augusto Omolú performed in Andersen’s Dream, Great Cities Under the Moon, Ode to Progress and in the demonstration created after the ISTA session in Copenhagen in 1996, The Whispering Winds.
A Retrospective on "Anástasis" directed by Eugenio Barba
The performance Anástasis (Resurrection) directed by Eugenio Barba, as part of the 9th Madách International Theatre Meeting (MITEM) and the 10th Theatre Olympics, was presented on 20 May 2023 at the National Theatre of Hungary. The production brought together the results of the 17th ISTA session. The text below summarises the event and gives a retrospective through an interview with Julia Varley and Eugenio Barba, and focuses on Anástasis, a Theatrum Mundi performance in dialogue with the main stage of the National Theatre of Hungary. Analysis of the performance leads towards an interpretation of the Third Theatre movement.
This article goes into the details of the process of creation of Theatrum Mundi performances, making examples from the earliest production in 1987 to the most recent in 2016. Eugenio Barba’s task as a director of performers coming from different traditions is to find a coherence in the music, costumes, text, physical scores and narrative through a complex montage. Only a very close collaboration over the years allows such a process to occur resulting in performances presented in open air spaces and on traditional indoor stages.
This article traces the history of theatre anthropology in Brazil from the first meetings with Eugenio Barba to the most recent productions of theatre groups. It discusses questions of identity in the craft and how to deal with colonisation in the search of an autonomous theatrical expression. Examples of choices made by Brazilian artists include Cia. YinsPiração, Cia. Mundu Rodá, Grupo Piollin, Grupo Teatral Moitará, Lume Teatro and Teatro Diadokai.
Ralf Raüker shares his apprenticeship journey from meeting Jerzy Grotowski’s collaborator and actor Zygmunt Molik, participating in ISTA sessions in 1986 and 1995 and 1996, studying Meyerhold’s biomechanics with Gennadi Bogdanov, getting to know Odin Teatret’s actor training, and visiting Cristina Wistari in Bali. He shares the consequences of this journey in his work as a director in Berlin and a lecturer in Australia dealing with questions of multicultural societies.
This text is a personal testimony in which Theatre Anthropology emerges not only as a theory of the actor, but as a way of being in the world. Through the account of a journey – from the first steps in the profession to the transformative experience of the ISTA in 1994 in Londrina, Brazil – it weaves a path of discovery that finds in Teatro de Los Andes in Bolivia a fertile ground for dialogue between technique and culture, body and landscape, memory and creation.
Japanese noh is conventionally understood as a solemn, highly formalised art ground- ed in religious sacrality, aesthetic austerity, and strict role specialisation. This article examines ran noh (chaos noh), an unusual yet culturally significant performance practice in which performers deliberately transgress these norms by acting outside their customary roles and introducing parody and humour. Focusing on the case study in Kyoto, the paper argues that ran noh functions as a form of ritualised, conservative transgression. Rather than undermining noh’s authority, such performances depend on deep communal knowledge, reinforcing social bonds and reaffirming the technical, spiritual, and hierarchical foundations of n?gaku through moments of carefully circumscribed play.
Illustrated by many photographs, this article aims to identify the stage presence principles used by Claire Heggen in the creation of her solo performance Ombre Claire with particular attention given to the relationship between the performer and the puppet she gives life to. As a pupil of Etienne Decroux, Claire Heggen remembers and transforms the terminology of Corporeal Mime maintaining its rigorous technical references within a poetical context.
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In the Kitchen. Franca Rame and Her Theatre Technique
Franca Rame belonged to a family with a theatre tradition going back to the 17th century. Franca Rame's words are edited in this article to tell her story and give space to her technical advice, besides presenting the original text of The Rape with its English translation.
The creation in Lecce (Italy) in October 2023 of the LAFLIS, Living Archive Floating Islands, on the initiative of the Fondazione Barba Varley and the Regione Puglia is discussed in relation to the sessions of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), founded and directed by Eugenio Barba in 1980, and their role as fertile ground for the ethnoscenology manifesto (1995). Dedicated to Barba's work, Odin Teatret and Third Theatre, LAFLIS is a dynamic, original and stimulating installation artwork dedicated to memory, transmission and creation for researchers and artists alike. As a corollary, the lesson that emerges encourages us to reconsider the field diaries of ethnologists and anthropologists, which often give rise to infertile and revealing misunderstandings, as was the case for Bronis?aw Malinowski.
The essay was published in Italian in Tecniche della rappresentazione e storiografia (1992), which collected material from the 6th session of ISTA held in Bologna in 1990. This text by Cruciani in the year of his death (1992) can be considered a summa of his continuous questioning on the not ephemeral nature of theatre and on the system of symmetries that he established existed between theatre practices and historiographic research. The author reflects how theatre is a field of investigation and argues why, from his point of view, theatre studies should be in a dialectical relationship with social, pedagogical, artistic, anthropological and historical studies. He identifies one of the values of theatre in its being a long-lasting category owing "its continuity and persistence in history because it does not produce works, but rather ways of operating".
ISTA International School of Theatre Anthropology
This dossier style essay offers a candid account of the proceedings (certainties and perplexities) and a detailed description of the genesis of the 7th session of ISTA held in Brecon and Cardiff in Wales, UK, 4 -11 April 1992: its modus operandi, form and function (including statements on underscore and scenarios for improvisations), extracts and summa- ries from the conference, and an honest appraisal of the failure to realise what was envisaged as an ambitious, longer-term, Eurasian Theatre Project. In the chronicles of ISTA an account of the 7th session has not been fully recorded, even though the ground-breaking research on sub-score and underscore has subsequently underpinned perspectives and programmes. The 7th session of ISTA was problematic on several levels especially during the practical sessions in Brecon when the predominantly British theatre directors began to question ISTA's approach and methodology, and friction arose between the 'Anglo-Saxon' artists-scholars and the Italian theatrologists.
Experiences and demands at the ISTA in Bologna 1990 concerning practical vocal activities, interpretations of compositions and improvisations as well as systematic and theoretical reflections on phonation and vocal styles resulted in a complex catalogue of vocal techniques and expressions. Scholars can use it to analyse performances. Speakers, actors, singers and vocal artists may use it as a manual for exercises and inspiration of sound colours.
This article is a chronicle on ISTA Bologna 1990 touching on different aspects of the session. It was first published in 1992 in English in Women and Theatre – Occasional Papers (Warwick University); in Spanish in Máscara, a. II, n. 9-10; and in Italian in Teatro Eurasiano, n. 2. In 1994 and 1996 the article was included in the anthologies about ISTA, The Tradition of ISTA (FILO-ISTA, Londrina 1994), and in The Performers Village (Drama, Copenhagen).
ISTA 6, Bologna, 1990 Performance Techniques and Historiography
A version of this essay appeared shortly after Victor Turner's death in Schechner's volume Between Theatre and Anthropology, with the title Points of Contact Between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought (Routledge, London and New York 1985, pp. 3-33). In this new version Schechner attempts to broaden Turner's ideas on liminality and does so by adding three more points of contact to the original list of six, a circumstance which allows him to analyze the performative qualities of the Paleolithic caveman, to reinterpret the ancient theory of Sanskrit performance in a contemporary key, to analyze the techniques through which Grotowski stimulates and brings alive the body-memory. In conclusion, referring to his notes detailing the seminar he co-led at the New York University in 1978 (with Turner, Erving Goffman, and Alexander Alland), Schechner shares memories of his collaboration with the Turners. The full version of this essay has been published in Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, edited by Pamela R. Frese and Susan Brownell (Routledge, London and New York 2020, pp. 21-37).
Richard Schechner's Anthropology of Performance
In an attempt to define what "ritual" is, Schechner denotes in ritual actions, both human and animal, a similarity with those that emerge in the artistic performance field. The American scholar identifies elements such as violence and sexuality in rituals and characterizes the ritual itself as the dynamic capable of dealing with social crises that overturn culturally recognized systems and hierarchies. Furthermore, following Turner – and reviewing ethological and neurological points of view – Schechner recognizes ritual as having a creative property, which not only contains traditional cultural behaviors but is capable of generating new images, ideas and practices. This article has been published in several versions, undergoing several transformations: it appeared firstly as the inaugural essay of the Journal of Ritual Studies 1 (1), 1987, pp. 5-34; other fragments of it appear in Victor Turner's Last Adventure, an essay published both in Anthropologica 27 (1-2), 1985, pp. 190-206 and as introduction for Turner's book The Anthropology of Performance (1986). Another full version of this writing is published in the Schechner's volume which takes up the title of the article itself: The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance (Routledge, London and New York 1993, pp. 228-265).
Taking as reference the ethno-anthropological studies given by Erving Goffman and Victor Turner, Schechner analyzes the methods and dynamics of the transition from daily behavior to restored behavior and does so by examining both different ritual traditions and the workshop-rehearsals processes that are triggered in the field of dance and theater. This article, in its full version, appeared for the first time in 1981 in the journal Studies in Visual Communication 7 (3), pp. 2-45.