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THE RENZO VESCOVI LIBRARY Of particular importance is the creation of the “Renzo Vescovi Library”. Hundreds of volumes on western and eastern...
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theater, some of which very rare and never translated into Italian, owned by TTB founder Renzo Vescovi, are made available to students and researchers, thanks to the partnership with Università di Bergamo. This material can be consulted at the TTB and volumes can be retrieved in the Università di Bergamo mutimedia library catalogue. «It is a remarkable and original, one of a kind book collection […] that features bibliographic materials in their original language that cannot be found in conventional libraries. It has been made available for quite some time now to researchers, professors and students even if not only interested in theatrical studies but in the multidisciplinarity of subjects and scientific approaches that such collections are able to offer.» Prof.ssa AnnaMariaTestaverde - Università degli Studi di Bergamo.
THE THEATRE SCHOOL TTB Teatro tascabile di Bergamo - Accademia delle Forme Sceniche organizes in its base a three-month theatre school dedicated to...
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young people (regardless their experience in the field).The school is based on the techniques and methods on the acting art created by TTB during its artistic career. The course is inspired by Vico for his way of understanding the psychophysical world of theatre in its different aspects through direct practice. We alternate and compose experiences of participation, analysis, demonstration and documentation in order to create a form, more or less wide or deep, of “collective mind” to define sense and perspective of the work while it’s being created. Participants are taken to the direct experience of the actor’s work through a series of exercises and experiences: - General body technique (training) - Elementary acrobatics - Improvisation - Eastern dance-theatre technique elements - Outdoor theatre technique (the space, the actor-musician, outdoor theatre dramaturgy and other specifications: form stilts to fire eating, use of the accessories) - Vocal techniques (singing and the use of the voice). The school can be completed by meetings with guests, accounts (video or live), performances or lectures cum demonstration, and it’s for anyone who’s interested in the art of acting. No specific qualification needed.
LECTURES CUM DEMONSTRATION Contemporary theatre is not (anymore) just a performance. In this section you’ll find, from a trans-cultural point of view,...
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lectures cum demonstration on eastern dance-theatre and on working techniques developed by TTB:FIREWORKS: a performance-demonstration with a reflection on the art of acting: art and techniques in contemporary theatre.UNA ROSA BIANCA. I COLORI DELLA VOCE: a lecture com demonstration on TTB’s vocal techniques.IL LAVORO DELL’ATTORE TRA ORIENTE ED OCCIDENTE: ways and intersections: from the jester to the lyrical actor through the experience of outdoor theatre and Indian dance.KONARAK. LA PAGODA NERA: Orissi style classical indian dance-theatre.IL RAJA DI KOTTARAKKARA: Kathakali style classical indian dance-theatre.CANTI D`AMORE: Bharata Natyam style classical indian dance-theatre.
GROUP THEATRE DRAMATURGY TTB plans its actor to plan its theatre and elaborates tools and guidelines of the project in the making: it’s pure ...
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research, at the crossroads of, enterprise, initiation process, knowledge itinerary. The actor’s pedagogy is its tool and at the same time its purpose. Education is one with the production. The process circularity of the Group’s activity allows learning to be conceived as in the old times art workshops, something that involves, at different levels but with the same passion, teachers and students. The so called studentship thus becomes a process of reciprocal knowledge,integration and adaptation, more than simply sharing knowledge, with a huge (emotional, human, professional) investment towards the new students. An experience that challenges the Group and its members every time. And every other time it redefines their identity.
MASTERS AND TECHNIQUES Through the years different techniques and masters joined: after Eugenio Barba and Jerzy Grotowsky we started working with...
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the Colombaioni brothers on clowerie and acrobatics, singing with Giovanna Marini, voice with Gabriella Bartolomei, Indian dance with Kalamandalam John, Usha Raghavan, Aloka Panikar, Pei Yan Ling for the Beijing Opera, Made Djimat for Balinese dance and many more. Then we developed self-learning techniques for improvisation methods based on “pure dance” or on “tasks” for musical instruments and voice and for the use of stilts in street theatre, through which TTB bent the open space to a dramaturgic function: another mix of cultured and popular, high and low, and play “for everyone”.
RECENT ACTIVITIES Alongside the historical activities of the IXO - Istituto di Cultura Scenica Orientale, TTB continues its research with study...
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travels of its members in India (Delhi e Kerala, 2011 e 2012). In 2011 we produced a new Kathakali show called “Il dono di Arjuna”. In 2011 and 2012 we organized a series of meetings, seminars and shows for the festival “Il teatro vivo” at the presence of field scholars and of the dancers Praveen Kumar (Bharata Natyam) e Madhu Natraj(Kathak), winners of the prestigious Mohan Khokar Award.
MASTERS AND TECHNIQUES KALAMANDALAM M.K. JOHN, Kathakali styleHe graduated from the Kerala Kalamandalam in Cheruthuruthy, the most important school for...
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this classic style and is currently manager of the Kalatharamgini Centre for Performing Arts and Culture. Pupil of the famous gurus C. Padamanabhan Nair and Vijaya Kumar, Kalamandalam K.M. John presented his shows in India and abroad during various tours since 1981. In collaboration with TTB he managed the European tours of Kerala Kathakali Troupe (1991), Kerala Kathakali Sangam (1992) and Kalatharamgini Troupe, with the best masters of this dance. ALOKA PANIKAR, Orissi styleShe comes from a well known Bengalese family of movie and theatre artists. She was taught to dance by the great master of Kathakali Guru Gopinath, she soon found out that her delicate appearance and seductive personality were perfect for the Orissi dance. She was then the favorite pupil of notable Guru Maya Dhar Raut, known as one of the four refounders of the Orissi dance. Aloka Panikar, for the perfection of her style and the pathos of her performances, was considered one of the best interpreters of the classical Orissi dance. She currently works in Delhi, where she opened a dance school. USHA RAGHAVAN, Bharata Natyam styleDisciple of the famous guru guru Sri Adyar Laksmann, Smt. Usha Raghavan is one of the best interpreters of Madras (Chennai) Bharata Natyam classical tradition. Usha toured abroad many times, in Asia and Europe, where she was sent by Unesco. International critics pointed out her skills with unanimous appreciation. Above all we can quote the review that appeared in many newspapers in Paris about this “delightful representative” of del Bharata Natyam: «Her style is so pure and clear that you don’t need much effort to understand the meaning of this art [...]. She’s one of the best and most beautiful Indian dancers ever seen in France». She currently works and lives in London where she founded the Kalasagara U.K. school.
STYLES Indian dance shows, demonstration shows and laboratories offered by TTB belong to the three disciplines practiced by the...
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Group.KATHAKALI: native to Kerala, the green south-west Indian region, Kathakali in its actual form dates back to the second half of the XVII century. Since the second half of the 19th century and through the first decades of the 20th century, Kathakali fell into the general decay that affected Indian culture under the British Empire. After the independence, Kathakali came back to its ancient glory with an always growing vitality and popularity. Kathakali’s fame, a real myth to the western scenic practice, essentially consists of its technical rigor and its actors’ legendary preparation.ORISSI: Orissi dance owes its name to the Orissa state in north-east India and has ancient origins. In the tradition it was a cultural practice allowed only to some priestesses, mahari, performed in the daily bhara singar ceremony. At the end of the 1950s, four of the most respected gurus in Orissa set the very rich tradition’s vocabulary. As every classical Indian dance, Orissa is now essentially an artistic fact, but still maintains it religious imprint.BHARATA NATYAM: is the par excellence classic Indian dance. It was once performed in temples by sacred dancers, devadasi, who were raised and taught in art and music for this sole purpose. This love lyric fell into disfavor because of the Victorian censorship during the British domination, and was brought back to its cultural and artistic reputation only in modern times.
DIVERSE DRAMATURGIES The outdoor performances and Festivals produced and organized by TTB sum up the interdisciplinarity that characterizes the...
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group’s work; the deriving stream of artistic density allowed it to present plays with different dramaturgies and the dislocation of the scene/audience/actors relationship. For TTB a simple need underlies the research for an outdoor performance: surprise. The first aim of a outdoor performance is to transform an ordinary reality into a different world for the audience, with impossible figures (for example walking on stilts). A space can be transformed by ornaments that twist its sense, or (even more effectively) through the actors’ “ambushes”, who appear and disappear from street corners, rooftops, from the end of a road, guiding and confusing the audience.Through the years TTB organized parades (Grande parata d`apertura, 1985), “a stazioni” moving performance (Albatri 1977, Alla luna 1981, Storie del giardino dei peri 1995, Corteo Manzoniano 2004-2005) "a pianta fissa e centrale" (Valse 1994, Amor mai non s’addorme-Storie di Montecchi e Capuleti 2009), outdoor programs (Arlecchino d’Oriente 2006, L’Aria infinita 1986).There are productions only or mainly characterized by “cordial parties” explicitly inspired by the spectacular model of the reception (Sogni vagabondi 1987, Con suoni e con canti 2005) and, on the other side, more dramatic plays (Sonja 1979, Alla luna 1984). The last production of the group, Amor mai non s’addorme. Storie di Montecchi e Capuleti, joins all those productions with a complex system of loans and “translations”. It’s a new reading of the popular Shakespearean myth of Romeo and Juliet, an epitomy of all the elements forming TTB’s poetics.
At the moment (fall of 2012) TTB is working on the production of a new outdoor performance.
IN THE WORLD’S STREETS Since 1976, when Albatri was first presented (it was the first example of Italian street theatre with a dramaturgy), TTB produced...
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seventeen outdoor plays brought to over forty countries: from the squares of Vienna and Mexico City, to the cliffs of New Delhi, form the skyscrapers in Houston and the streets of Lisbon to the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta and the new library in Alexandria, from the mountains in Trentino and the Sicilian villas to the gardens in Madrid and the Acropolis in Athens, from the districts of Beijing and the small villages in southern India to the favelas in Rio and the streets of Quito. Here’s some accounts and opinions on TTB’s outdoor plays.«From Europe to Latin America, TTB is a model for outdoor performances» Eugenio Barba “L’Eco di Bergamo” 2005«[...] In TTB’s street theatre there is everything that worried and satisfied theatre in the last thirty years. You can sense, not without a thrill, the lesson of great masters, from Jerzy Grotowsky to Peter Brook, from Tadzeus Kantor to Eugenio Barba and the oriental theatre, finally intended in the right way» “Il Resto del Carlino”“Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo is a Group specialized in street theatre and you can see that very well. [...] it’s a way to revisit or discover Shakespeare in an original way, a dream within a dream. [...] Getting rid of prejudices is the main lesson for the audience.» “La Segunda” Santiago, Chile
SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES SEMINARS Work meetings about the art of acting that basically aim to the knowledge and control of the body (-mind) as the main...
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expressive medium.THE NAMELESS ACTOR: topics: socializing games, general body technique, acrobatics, eastern dance-theatre technical elements, clowning technique, physical and vocal improvisation, formalization and montage techniques, unconventional places theatre techniques, introduction to the use of stilts and musical instruments for a performance.THE BODY-ORCHESTRA VOICE: laboratory on vocal techniques. The free voice, resonators, diction, improvisation and formalization, building of the text’s vocal melody.THE DANCING ACTOR: a laboratory on the art of acting between East and West. We offer our students an introduction to Indian dance through the exercise and the practice of the fundamental steps, the analysis and study of possible “translations” for the western actor.When the eastern masters from IXO - Istituto di Cultura Scenica Orientale are in Italy, TTB organizes intensive seminars open to whoever is interested in knowing directly the eastern stage culture.
CONFERENCES TTB organized conferences (sometimes integrated by videos or visual documents) on various topics:LA COPPA E LA GRAZIA: eastern theatre technique and poetry.LO SPAZIO DEL TEATRO: the evolution of the stage space and its dramaturgical relevance in contemporary theatre.
Domande Interna
IXO The current moment in theatrical research helped the rediscovery of the classical tradition of south Asian dance-theatre and its...
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huge influence on the contemporary western scene. The institute, founded in 1981 by guru Maya Dhar Raut from Bharatiya Kala Kendra and Renzo Vescovi, promotes various initiatives to spread the knowledge of theatre, music and dance in the eastern tradition. It collaborates with an International Scientific Committee formed by artists, researchers and oriental and occidental institutions the guarantee the cultural and artistic-spectacular value of the shows. Since 2011 the institute collaborates steadily with the Mohan Khokar Award (Bangalore) that every year awards the best young emerging dancer in the various forms of Indian dance-theatre. So far, IXO promoted hundreds of oriental scenic culture events: single shows and monographic retrospectives, special projects, concerts, exhibitions, movies, videos, publications for meetings, inter-university laboratories, congresses. Between all of IXO’s activities we can list the pedagogical ones (stage, courses, seminars), lectures cum demonstration and the actual classic eastern dance performances presented by TTB actors who run the organizational side of IXO.
RETROSPECTIVES The self-learning processes in the Group’s structure and the pedagogy work that TTB does with the audience and schools in...
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its reference area integrate in the organization of activities and retrospectives that aim at putting in contact qualified personalities of the theatrical culture with different groups of users in Bergamo and its province: real producers, non-specialized ones and the young audience.
Festival TTB’s festivals delve into the tendencies and aesthetic-formal reasons that we feel close to our idea, open new...
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confrontation grounds with different poetics and scenic practices offering proposals often different and eccentric in approaching the scene, connected to the concrete artistic practice and at the same time to research and theoretical study. The theoretical-practical stages alternate with performances, that often are live experiments on urban space.The idea is to realize interdisciplinary festivals about performative arts like prose, figure theatre, dance, music, trying to get on the same bill highly cultural theatrical events (oriental theatre-dance shows and experiments, highly innovative productions, conferences and seminars) and more popular shows in which the audience has to do some “work”: cultural, inner, spiritual.
EVENTS ORGANIZED (1975 – 2012) TTB organized these events in the Bergamo province and other Italian areas:1975: Invito alla Festa - Una proposta teatrale per la...
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Val di Scalve1976: Invito alla Festa1977: Invito alla Festa – Atelier Internazionale sul teatro di Gruppo (promoted by the Institut International du Théâtre, a UNESCO division, in collaboration with Azienda Autonoma di Turismo di Bergamo) 28 August/6 September, 42 participating groups from 30 countries.1978: Invito alla Festa - Musica a teatro1979: Alle radici del teatro1980: Musica a teatro1981: Il Sapore della danza1982: La città in scena1983: Un Teatro per la città1984: Tre sonate al chiaro di luna1985: Alle frontiere del teatro - Verso un`antropologia della danza1985-2000: Sonavan... le vie dintorno - Festival Internazionale di teatro musica e danza (16edizioni)1998-2012: Il Teatro vivo - introduzione al teatro del ‘9002005, 2007-2009: Il Centro e la Circonferenza - Festival Internazionale di teatro musica e danza (4 edizioni)2010: Liber A Nos. I libri, il teatro, la città2009-2012: Per Amore o per ForzaWe also partially or completely organized or directed:1978: Festival Internazionale del Teatro in Piazza (S. Arcangelo di Romagna) 1979: Festival Internazionale del Teatro in Piazza (S. Arcangelo di Romagna) - L`Attore che danza (Como)1981: Festival Internazionale del Teatro in Piazza (S. Arcangelo di Romagna) - Le riserve del teatro (Lecco)1982: Festival Internazionale del Teatro in Piazza (S. Arcangelo di Romagna) - Oriente-Occidente (Rovereto) - I paesaggi del teatro (Piacenza)1983: Festival Internazionale di Madrid (Spagna) - Festival di Ajaccio (Francia) - Le Strade del teatro (Abruzzo)1984: Dolce e chiara è la notte (Brescia)1985: Chiare, fresche e dolci acque (Brescia)1987: Sonavan... le vie dintorno (Brescia) - Encuentro Internacional de Teatro Antropologico (Bahia Blanca - Argentina) - Reencuentro Ayacucho (Cuzco-Perù)1988: Sonavan... le vie dintorno (Brescia) - Festival Internazionale di Chieri (Chieri)1989: Sonavan... le vie dintorno (Brescia) - La Cultura del Teatro - Esperienze teatrali tra antropologia e ricerca (Mantova)1990: La Noche de los Reyes (Madrid-Spagna)1991-1995: Dolce e chiara è la notte (Como)1991: Un Teatro per tutte le stagioni (Chieti) - Masques et bergamasques (Bergamo)1992: Un Teatro per tutte le stagioni (Chieti) - Masques et bergamasques-il gioco delle maschere: Oriente e Occidente (Bergamo)1995: Il Mantello di Arlecchino (Riccione)1996 e 1998: Nei plenilunii sereni (Como)1997: The Discovery of India (Milano) - Il teatro vivo (Seriate, Bergamo)1999: Per le strade del mondo… (Lecco)2001: Quel ramo del lago… (Lecco)2002-2003: Odin Teatret a Bergamo2003: Ville en fête (Nyon-Svizzera) - Vinden Festival di Lemvig (Danimarca)2004: Corteo manzoniano (Lecco)2005: Corteo manzoniano (Lecco)
EVENTS The organization of events is part of TTB’s work since its beginning, as a necessary complement of our aesthetic-expressive...
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development. It’s the expression of a cultural policy, sort of a “secular arm” of artistic research: it’s about creating a network that’s alternative to the official one, find and identify a new audience, in order to create a working ecosystem and a reference community. In this field TTB’s work divides into two constants: one for the organization of events with particular regard to outdoor theatre, the other for theatrical culture activities such as stage, conferences, seminars.
TTB’S EXPERIENCE TTB’s work has a very precise cultural, political, ethical connotation. It is also the story of a technical research in...
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which specific instances combine: the will of precision and strictness in the studies carried out by International School of Theatre Anthropology, founded by Eugenio Barba, and secular rules, like the Master’s tradition, for a long time ignored by western theatre. These are some of the elements that concur to one’s actor practice and extend up to the point of conceiving theatre, both indoors and outdoors, as “actor’s centrality”, whose work is the production’s rawmaterial. This theoretical-practical development got different results that traced differentiation and stratification lines in the production. The play is the product of the process style of the work more than the final act of a production cycle, modeled through the concept of training and improvising, in an endless continuum of practice and rehearsal.
EAST – WEST Soon the jester-actor proposed by Renzo Vescovi looks East and creates a possible theatricalism utopia. He looks at an ideal...
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model of actor: the one who, through the complete mastery of his body and full expressive autonomy, evokes and produces poetry on stage. Orient will teach the actor discipline, body polyphony, control, production of sign unities in time unities, energy and material organization in an encoded language, poetic freedom in a formal cage. So the “lyrical actor” and “the nameless actor” add to the “jester-actor” as an aesthetical-technical ideal: the choral dimension and the loss of “role” and “character” add up to the relevance of the physical and instinctual part. Anyways this orchestration of the single body is a figure of the ensemble body orchestration, that is of the idea of group as an orchestra and of the play as a polyphonic performance, where actors are dramaturgical function that keep on changing and interacting between them; these are all incompatible features to the strong verbal and intellectual individuality (and individualism) of the actor in conventional theatre. “To be, not to appear” as Renzo Vescovi wrote.
TTB’S EXPERIENCE TTB lived this phase of contemporary theatre since its beginning (Bitef-Belgrade 1976) making it one of the central moments in...
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its research activity and stage practice. Our challenge has always been studying the possibilities of dramaturgy in open spaces carried out with the same care and resolution of indoor theatre, aware of the fact that the environment is a constitutive element of the performance.In street theatre “unsolved tradition” TTB’s work mixes “popular” forms and “high” festive events of renaissance and baroque plays, sacred theatre and the profane one in medieval carnivals, without forgetting the underground movement of open air plays that came back in the study and practice of the twentieth century vanguard. To that we owe the knowledge of theatre out of common places’ possibilities (and social necessity), refusing to identify the theatrical performance with the theatre building.
TTB’S EXPERIENCE After meeting the oriental masters invited by Eugenio Barba to the Atelier Internazionale del Teatro di Gruppo in Bergamo (1977),...
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TTB starts its research on Indian and Balinese dance-theatre, and afterwards with the Beijing Opera. Since 1978, actors from the Tascabile theatre go regularly to the East to specialize in various Indian disciplines, specifically Bharata Natyam, Orissi, Kathakali e Kuchipudi. Contextually, in the last 40 years TTB had a remarkable role in promoting classic Indian theatre, organizing and promoting tours in Europe for great masters and dancers through the foundation of IXO - Istituto di Cultura Scenica Orientale.For TTB the relationship with India is the logical development of its need for scientific knowledge, for technical-practical acquisition, for a logical solution to the problem of the theoretical and formal basis of its work. The eastern example was recommended since the beginning of the 20th century by the great theatre masters as a way of complete renewal and as a new art. Through Indian dance TTB created what Renzo Vescovi called “the lyrical actor” and “the nameless actor”.
TTB meeting India was fundamental from the point of view of exploring a new branch of theatrical knowledge and also for creating a new mental horizon, made of shared memories, technical terms, knowledge, affection, ideals and values, as it’s documented on the working diaries of its director Renzo Vescovi and its actors.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In time TTB became a credited theatre for its specialization in Indian dance, both in India and in the West.Its activities about...
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oriental scenic culture (plays, festivals, courses and special projects with national and international institutions) are credited by numerous university thesis, about ten shows for RAI and Swiss TV, various publications, interviews on Indian newspapers and magazines and the Appendix 2000 on the Italian Encyclopedia (Treccani): entry Theatre, sub v. “Eurasian” theatre, pages 815-817 «[...] and especially the group of actors and actresses that, under R. Vescovi’s direction, gather in the Accademia delle forme sceniche in Bergamo, where in a continuous exchange between India and Europe, the classical forms of Orissi, Bharata Natyam and Kathakali have been cultivated for some time now. They’re not imitative artists or exotic genres amateurs, they’re real accepted and appreciated masters both in Europe and India. »«Italian born to Indian dance» (1989); «Their presentation could be an inspiration even for Indian dancers, [...] a communion with sublime» cfr. Stile Orissi in "Times of India", 1992; «[...] all was superb» with the title "Superbly enacted" cfr. Stile Kathakali in "Indian Express", 1990; «They master dance Kathakali to the point they’re recognized specialists even in India E. BARBA “La canoa di carta”, Bologna, 1993
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