Verity's book review- The Paper Canoe

Eugenio Barba's "The Paper Canoe" was conceived during his silent
rehearsals, on journeys through his life and meeting people from around
the world. In the preface he questions the presence of a performer and
what makes a performer's actions believable.

A part of the book which I found interesting was Barba delving into his
memories and explaining what stuck out most in his mind and how this could
affect theatre which he later produces. The first example was as a young
boy, walking on his knees for a religious festival, the smell of incense
and rich colours around him and how it filled him with a sensation which
still stirs his senses now and can still feel the burning pain he suddenly
felt in his knees from walking for so long and seeing his mothers friend.
The other memory is that of his grandma, wearing a long white nightdress
with very long white hair. He remembers vividly the image of his
grandmother sitting at her dressing table, her withered old body looking
like a young girl in a wedding dress. He explains that these images both
contain a "moment of truth" because he believes that there are opposites
which seem to embrace each other and it's not just a visual memory, the
pain in the knee's is a physical memory.

He talks about "Transition" being a culture within itself and explaining
how a culture must have three components within it- material production,
biological reproduction, and the production of meanings, he believes that
it is very essential for a culture to have meaning, if it doesn't, it does
not exist.
Later on in the book he also notes how performers are performers- "they
are accustomed to controlling their own presence and translating their own
images into physical impulses" I found this very interesting as it related
back to the work we had been doing in class about what makes you move, how
do you move and recognising those impulses so you could surprise yourself,
making it more believable for the audience to be surprised.

The history of Theatre and Dance is mentioned and how it is confined by
the spectator and is made to be seen as superficial because there is no
logic behind the creative process, however he then goes onto say how the
history of theatre is essential in understanding new theatre, he see's
theatre from the past as "a pool of knowledge" which every once in a while
you can pick from and use in your own way, this emphasising his unique
intercultural performance.

The term Sats is explained within the book and how he started to form the
idea, it was at the Odin Teatret in which he started to see beyond the
monotonous reciting text and try to save the performance by concentrating
on just one part of the actors body either a hand or a foot or an eye. He
goes on to say that most actors held the impulse the move or "sats" when
their knees were slightly bent, it was through the realisation of of
recognising the knees importance in that he began to form the first
principles of theatre anthropology, the change of balance.