Through a Scientific Lens. At the ‘origins’ of theatre anthropology

This essay is based on the broad network of interests established by Eugenio Barba in the first decade of ISTA with the world of science: a fertile, lively relationship with figures inside and outside the world of theatre. With the contribution of archival documents preserved in the Odin Teatret Archives, the article focuses on certain artistic and intellectual episodes that exemplify the relational dialectics of interpenetration, exercised in two opposing tensions (one of approach outwards, the other of attraction inwards), implemented by Barba in a vast knowledge-seeking project, unprecedented in the history of the theatre. It was also based on these premises that Barba promoted the concept of theatre anthropology as a plural, interdisciplinary and intercultural living discipline: a discipline founded on the study of human beings and the history of cultures, combining a purely humanistic approach with new research from the so-called hard sciences. The impact and wide range of interaction of theatre anthropology as a new subject in the field of knowledge subsequently gave rise, over following decades, to ample literature hosting a lively and constructive debate.