Eugenio Barba (1936–) is an Italian theatre director, based in Denmark. He founded the International School of Theatre Anthropology, the Odin Teatret/ Theatre, sat on several advisory boards of scholarly journals, in addition to founding the open access Journal of Theatre of Anthropology. His views are deemed controversial by some, as Barba has been critical of western theatre and eastern theatrical traditions for seemingly opposing reasons. Instead, his theatre of anthropology is described as a means of exploring cultural techniques inherently embedded in a performer.
The Kaosmos theatre production was staged by Odin Teatret between 1993-1997, in Denmark. The filmed production was a stage play from 1998. According to the Odin Teatret website, the play is set in an unnamed European village where every spring, the villagers perform The Ritual of the Door — a common theme in European mythology and folklore, where one character asks permission to enter the Realm of Happiness/ Salvation and the doorkeeper tells them to wait, but are then left waiting for a lifetime. The play is meant to illustrate a polarization on the richness of life versus the waste of a human existence (“Kaosmos”). The work is rich in the use of props as metaphors, illuminating how material culture can intersect with folklore. For this analysis, I will focus mainly on these.
The outdoor stage is (an almost square-shaped) rectangular stage. Two piles of firewood on either end of the stage create a wall where two long white benches sit in front for the actors throughout. Lit lanterns sit atop the walls of firewood. Audience seating is along the remaining (longer) sides of the rectangular stage. A doorkeeper and his sister carry a door with an attached doorframe around the stage, sometimes sitting on it, sometimes portraying it as a boat, sailing it. The doorkeeper has an oppressive authority the other cast of characters must comply with, as conveyed through various idiosyncratic behaviours and actions that result from the barrier posed. The door in the door frame, pivots within the frame to create a cross, and is moved around the stage, opened for entrances, put on the ground and used like a coffin, where the doorkeeper lying inside, was awakened as if in a tomb when the door was opened. For much of the play, it sits in the middle of the stage with people crawling, lying or sitting on it. At one point, two people sit on each side of the door, as it rocks on the frame, with a set of flags held up by a branch (denoting a mast and sail). The door initially has old hardcover books attached to the door, one of which has another book embedded, removed and read from by performers in their respective languages. English is used sporadically (amongst Danish, Italian and Norwegian), making the narrative somewhat more intelligible. According to Sykes, Kaosmos’ narrative structure is an abstract montage, where the stories and themes “are so fragmented and elusive that … the spectator is not held by a desire to know ‘what happens next.’ Rather the rhythm of the montage plays on their senses in such a way as to engage their ‘kinaesthetic curiosity.’” Sykes goes on to describe Barba’s texts as based on an apparent opposition: narrative fragmentation (no conventional unifying devices) versus visual/aural cohesion (32). It is clear, even without the translation or knowledge of the underlying folktale, the narrative revolves around a folk ritual seeming to summon spirits who can open a doorway to somewhere otherworldly.
There are nine performers (four men and five women) who together create a strange cast of characters. Performers are wearing traditional clothes in layers, which they begin to take off throughout the ritual, particularly the men. A butterfly is a consistent motif throughout. The Dona Musica character (clad in a striking long white blonde wig) transforms a handkerchief into a butterfly, connoting her shamanic or witch-type figure, who according to Sykes, “comforts those who laugh until they cry.” The use of old tools that could potentially be weaponized (scythes, shovels, etc) evoke farming rituals, connoting a community praying for a harvest, or the sacrifice of something to the gods to benefit the community — dried reeds (representing corn stalks/ husks) embedded upright in the door frame lying on the stage at the end of the play, that performers walk over, cut down with their scythes, while singing/ shouting about how it will rain and the need to take shelter in an ark, is a biblical reference to Noah’s Ark. Other props include a violin, an accordion, a pocket watch, a torn wedding veil, glass eyeballs, a blindfold, a framed picture of two swans on a lake (symbolizing a lake one character must cross to find her lost/ dead child, but cannot, so she tries to drink the lake instead, until she is offerred a deal); also a tray on which the doorkeeper’s sister collects tears, and where another character places her glass eyes alongside the picture of the lake. All the props seem to have layered symbolism — the door in the doorframe is later revealed to potentially be interpreted as a doorway of death if one crosses its threshold. The shapeshifting handkerchief turned into a butterfly (caterpillar), with its use relating to the collection of tears on the tray, removal of one’s eyes (glass eyeballs) and the attempts to gain access to the Realm of Happiness, can be correlated to the Village Bride’s pursuits, the characters’ rejections and failures to obtain what they want. Later the handkerchief is turned into a moneybag, which is offerred to the doorkeeper as a bribe. Notions of time, doors as a means of preventing progress, then shapeshifting to a boat and other various pursuits of what one desires but cannot access, all provides a meditation on notions of fate and the human need for control.
Works Cited
“Kaosmos.” Odin Teatre, https://odinteatret.dk/shop/dvd-cd/kaosmos/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2022.
Sykes, Leo. “Directing through Montage: A Chronological Look at the Construction of Performance through the Creation and Combination of Its Various Elements.” 1995. University of Warwick. PhD Thesis.
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