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Of Crossroads and Undercurrents: Ingemar Lindh's Practice of Collective Improvisation and Jerzy Grotowski

Frank Camilleri

New Theatre Quarterly / Volume 27 / Issue 04 / November 2011, pp 299 ­ 312DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X11000637, Published online: 08 November 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266464X11000637

How to cite this article:Frank Camilleri (2011). Of Crossroads and Undercurrents: Ingemar Lindh's Practice of Collective Improvisation and Jerzy Grotowski. New Theatre Quarterly,27, pp 299­312 doi:10.1017/S0266464X11000637

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THIS ARTICLE deals with Ingemar Lindh’stheatre practice. It adopts a comparativeperspective that tackles links, overlappingconcerns, and differences between Lindhand Jerzy Grotowski, with a specific focus onthe nature and implications of their work onphysical action. Lindh’s practice of collectiveimprovisation, particularly his work on thedisinterested act which sought to accomplishaction irrespective of the psychological needfor it, is read in the light of Grotowski’s doingin Art as Vehicle during his lifetime.1

The discussion will be informed by thesep arate investigations of Lindh and Grotow -ski on voice work and vibration techniquesas integral aspects of their research. Sincelittle is known or has been written aboutLindh’s work, and much has been narrated,discussed, and critiqued about Grotowski’s,this article’s primary concern is with theformer. Grotowski will thus be invoked toplace Lindh’s practice within a more familiarcontext.

This comparative approach emerged frommy endeavour to account for a number ofhistorical gaps in Lindh’s practice wherehard information is either sketchy or non-existent. It also emerged from the attempt toreconstruct a few conceptual blind spots inour knowledge of his work. Furthermore,

this approach hopes to shed light on thenature of the undercurrents (implicit orindirect links) which characterized theatrelaboratory explorations in the second half ofthe twentieth century.

Crossroads and Trajectories

The contribution of Swedish theatre makerIngemar Lindh (1945–97) to twentieth-century theatre involves his research on theprinciples of collective improvisation asperformance.2 He situates his professionallineage in what he calls the ‘crossroads’between the via positiva of the corporealmime of Étienne Decroux (with whom hestudied and then assisted in Paris in 1966–68) and the via negativa in the ‘poor theatre’of Jerzy Grotowski (with whom he had vari -ous collaborative encounters in Holstebroand Wrocław in the late 1960s and the early1970s).3 From this angle, Lindh occupies astrategic place in the study of laboratorytheatre in Europe in providing a possible con-nection or halfway house between Decrouxand Grotowski.4

Lindh came upon this crossroads in 1968,when his desire and that of three otherstudents of Decroux (including Yves Lebreton)to visit Grotowski in Poland for some

ntq 27:4 (november 2011) © cambridge university press doi:10.1017/S0266464X11000637 299

Frank Camilleri

Of Crossroads and Undercurrents:Ingemar Lindh’s Practice of CollectiveImprovisation and Jerzy GrotowskiIn this article Frank Camilleri discusses the historical and professional links betweenIngemar Lindh and Jerzy Grotowski, with a specific focus on the nature and implicationsof their separate work on physical action. Lindh’s practice, particularly his research on the‘disinterested act’, is read in the context of Grotowski’s ‘doing’ in Art as Vehicle. Theindividual work of the two practitioners on vocal and vibration techniques is seen asintegral to their research on physical action. Frank Camilleri is Senior Lecturer in Dramaand Theatre Studies at the University of Kent and Artistic Director of Icarus PerformanceProject (Malta). He served as Academic Coordinator of Theatre Studies at the Universityof Malta from 2004 to 2008, and in 2007 co-founded Icarus Publishing Enterprise withOdin Teatret and the Grotowski Institute.

months in 1969 led to Decroux expelling allfour of them from his school.5

Lindh and his companions’ visit toGrotowski would have rendered impossibleany further work on the demonstration-performance that Decroux had been devel -oping with his core group of collaborators.When the French mime participated in aweek-long seminar on ‘scenic language’ withJacques Lecoq and Dario Fo at EugenioBarba’s Odin Teatret in Holstebro in 1969, itwas Lindh who translated from French andSwedish for Decroux.6 It was also at this loca -tion that Decroux’s former students werenow based after founding Studio 2 – the firstprofessional mime troupe in Scandinavia.7

Decroux tried to salvage the situation byinviting Lindh and two of the others toreturn to Paris, but they all stuck byLebreton, whom Decroux refused to takeback.8 So in a sense Lindh’s desire to knowmore about and experience Grotowski’swork in 1969 came at the expense of his pro -fessional association with Decroux.

Such crossing of paths was symptomaticof the indirect, implicit cross-fertilizationthrough undercurrents of via positiva and vianegativa roads which continued to charac -terize and inform Lindh’s individual prac -tice.9 Considering the pioneering quality ofthe individuals researching at the time, wheneven a brief meeting could lead to a minoradjustment that developed into a majorinsight, the significance of the impact of suchencounters is not necessarily proportionateto the duration of contact. One such instance,which involved an exchange between Lindhand Ryszard Cieślak, will be describedshortly.

Lindh, Grotowski, and Barba

Lindh left Studio 2 and Holstebro in 1970,and in 1971 he set up the first laboratorytheatre in Sweden, the Institutet för Scen -konst (Institute for Scenic Art). This markedthe beginning of a research laboratory on theart of the actor that, though influenced bythose whom Lindh called ‘his Master’(Decroux) and ‘the Master’ (Grotowski),moved beyond both to announce an

individual path.10 Lindh’s need to set up hisown laboratory must have been informed byhis various encounters with Grotowski and,especially, with Cieślak with whom heshared a friendship. Factual details about thenature and extent of this collaboration aresketchy, but Magdalena Pietruska, one ofLindh’s closest collaborators and current co-director of the Institutet, sheds some light onthe matter:

Ingemar met Grotowski in Paris (when Ingemarwas still at Decroux’s school) and was afterwardscollaborating with him in stages, following thework and tours from time to time for a couple ofyears. So the meeting with Grotowski and thework of his Teatr Laboratorium, as well as thefriendship with Ryszard Cie lak, did not consistof, nor was it the result of, a specific workingperiod together; it was more of a dynamic rela -tion ship that developed over a number of yearswith discussions, observation of work, and collab -or ation in workshops in which Ingemar practisedthe work of his master Decroux.11

The picture that Pietruska outlines heretallies with the interest in Decroux thatEugenio Barba, one of Grotowski’s closestcollaborators, had at the time. It was actuallythrough Lindh that Barba got to know aboutthe French mime.12 Barba continued to pur -sue his interest in Decroux down the years,inviting Lindh as the first corporeal mimeteacher in the early sessions of the Inter -national School of Theatre Anthropology(ISTA) in Porsgrunn/Stockholm (1980) andVolterra (1981).13

If a trajectory were to be drawn linkingDecroux and Grotowski, Barba wouldoccupy an important position in it. Thestrong connection between Barba and Lindhwould provide the keystone in an arch thatlinks the two masters. If Lindh embodied theinfluential crossing of paths of Decroux andGrotowski, Barba was its facilitator. It isthrough Barba’s interest in Decroux and hisclose collaboration with Grotowski that wecan identify another link between Lindh andGrotowski.14

Lindh’s narration of an investigation heonce held with Cieślak is indicative of thequality of the collaborative exchanges men -tioned by Pietruska.15 Though it is not pos -

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sible to ascertain the exact dates and natureof this exchange, Lindh’s account of Cieślak’sdevelopment of the plastiques walk that canstill be seen in the 1972 film on the trainingof the Wrocław laboratory, indicates that theencounter happened before that year.16

Lindh describes how, during this instance, heinvestigated with Cieślak the possibility ofrepeating an action identically. Lindh workedon a mime sequence derived from Decroux,whereas Cieślak developed his plastiqueswalk which in itself is reminiscent of a mimestudy.17

After working on their scores, repeatingthem over and over again, it became clearthat there was something that always ‘mut -ated’.18 For Lindh, to resist this differencemeant to resist something that is alive:

Lindh’s recognition, however unformulated it mayhave been at the beginning of the seventies,announces the drive that was to lead him to resistpredetermined structures such as fixed scores,directorial montage, and choreography as prin -ciples of organization in the composition and per -

formance of theatre. His research on the principlesof collective improvisation may be viewed as theresult of his endeavour to give space to the‘mutation’ which makes its presence felt in thehere and now of occurrence, in theatre as in life.19

It was this recognition, partly the result of anexchange with Grotowski’s main actor at thetime, that pushed Lindh to found his ownlaboratory (Institutet för Scenkonst). Herehe could research a performative conditionwhich had not been resolved through thepractice of Decroux or, as it turned out, bythat of Grotowski. Influenced by both, hedeveloped an individual practice that foundexpression in collective improvisation as per -formance within a laboratory-based context.This intersection of influences from Decrouxand Grotowski, leading to Lindh’s thirdpath, is an example of the undercurrent ofconnections explored in this article.

The two laboratory processes highlightedin this article share a number of historical,geographical, and biographical similarities.In both, we find the case of non-Italian

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From left to right: Eugenio Barba, Ingemar Lindh, and Sanjukta Panigrahi at the ISTA 1981 session in Volterra. Photo: Massimo Agus.

practitioners moving to Italy in the mid-1980s to pursue their research practice, thepractitioners being no more than seventy-seven miles apart from each other. Lindh’spractice with the Institutet in Pontremoli(1984–97) was almost contemporary withGrotowski’s Art as Vehicle phase in Pontedera(1986–99). In both cases, the Italian sojournproved to be their final one, and thoughLindh died at the age of fifty-two comparedto Grotowski’s sixty-five, their then currentwork could be seen as bringing to a close along-term important phase (in the case of theformer) and a lifelong process (in the case ofthe latter). The differences between the twoare also indicative. By the time that Lindhmoved to Pontremoli in 1984, MagdalenaPietruska and Roger Rolin had already beenworking with him for a number of years. Onthe other hand, although the Polish mastertook people with him to Pontedera in 1986,the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski marked anew chapter.

Historically speaking, though Lindh’s workwith Rolin on the disinterested act (whichresisted action filtered by psychologicalmechanisms)20 was contemporaneous withGrotowski and Thomas Richards’s work inArt as Vehicle, Lindh had been working withRolin since 1978.21 This was six years beforeRichards’s first contact with Grotowski’swork in a two-week workshop with RyszardCieślak at Yale University in 1984.22

This brings me to the issue of influence.The subsequent diffusion and reception ofGrotowski’s work places it in a primaryposition and can lead to the perception thatLindh was following in the footsteps of theformer, but this influence is not so clear cut.Like other practitioners at the time, Lindhwas aware of and influenced by the revo -lution that Grotowski brought about in the1960s and 1970s, first with ‘poor theatre’and then with paratheatre, but the contem -poraneous occurrence and parallel develop -ment of the work during the Italian period ofboth practitioners is more difficult to map.

At the time of Lindh and Rolin’s work onthe disinterested act in the late 1980s andearly 1990s, Grotowski’s research on Art asVehicle in Pontedera was shrouded in mys -

tery, since few were aware of the nature ofhis research and even fewer had seen itspractice. Answering a question I posed onthe matter of influence, Rolin commentedthat: ‘We never had contact with the work ofGrotowski at the time. We knew of coursethat he was in Pontedera but we never triedto be in contact.’23 The statement confirmsthat there was no direct link between Lindhand Grotowski during their Italian period.And yet they inhabited the same milieu andoperated in a context of shared contacts.

The Italian Connections

The extent of connections shared by researchtheatre practitioners in Italy at the time ismade evident by the fact that the officialpremiere of Popolo (1992–7), Rolin’s soloperformance that emerged from the work onthe disinterested act,24 took place in Ponte -dera in a festival organized by the Centro perLa Sperimentazione e la Ricerca Teatrale (Centrefor Theatre Experimentation and Research),the same organization which had beenhosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowskisince 1986.25 Another instance of theoverlapping con texts of the Pontremoli andPontedera practices concerns one of the mainphotographers of the Institutet, MaurizioBuscarino, who had photographed Apocaly p -sis cum Figuris in 1979 and is also credited forthe 1994 photographs of Grotowski andRichards on the cover of the latter’s At Workwith Grotowski on Physical Actions (1995).26

Although these historical details hardlyamount to evidence of a link between Lindh’sand Grotowski’s work, they are symp tom -atic of a milieu that fed and was fed by anetwork of practices and contacts that oper -ated, however isolated and insul ated, in ashared time and geographical context.

In 1996, the theatre group from Malta Iwas working with at the time (Groups forHuman Encounter, directed by John Schranz)was invited for a two-day work exchange inPontedera with the Workcenter of JerzyGrotowski and Thomas Richards (as it wasrenamed that year). I remember the interestwith which Richards and Mario Biaginiasked about what we were up to in Malta,

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especially since Schranz had recently set up aresearch programme at the University ofMalta with Lindh and a group of neuro -scientists to investigate human creativity andmental precision (a touchstone in theInstitutet’s work).27

Although this was never spelled out, evenby Grotowski during our conversation withhim, we had the impression that we wereinvited to Pontedera (at least in part) due toour connection with Lindh and the esteem inwhich his work was held. Again, althoughthis episode does not amount to much, itconfirms the supposition that despite a lackof direct contact between the Pontremoli andPontedera practices, each was aware of themain strands and major developments in theother’s research. In the final years of thecentury, before the advent of websites andpredominant internet usage took diffusion ofknowledge to another dimension, the sharedmilieu and interests of the Institutet and theWorkcenter served as some kind of deep-water conduit linking them together, even ifthis involved minimal ideas about whatothers in the field were doing at the time.

The historical backdrop to this article thusconsists of two laboratory practices, isolated

from the main circuit of festivals and fromeach other but operating in the same periodand in bases not more than seventy-sevenmiles apart, both working on a specific habi -tation and quality of action that, althoughdifferent in exploration and outcome, shareda research vision that included work on thevoice and on the vibrational qualities of thehuman body.

Grotowski’s work on Afro-Caribbean vib -rat ory songs linked to ritual traditions, andthe crucial place it occupied in the habitationof action marked by ‘doing’ in Art as Vehicle,is well known and documented.28 Lindh’sinvestigation of the phenomenon marked bythe disinterested act also coincided withspecific work on the voice that was related tovibration techniques, mainly as inspired bycontact with the therapeutic practice of BabaBedi (1909–93), which will be discussed inmore detail later on.

Due to Lindh’s relative lack of biblio -graphical visibility, it is important now toshed some light on these aspects of his prac -tice and, where appropriate, to compare andcontrast them with Grotowski’s in order toplace the former’s contribution within themore recognizable context of the latter. In

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Ingemar Lindh during an intercultural improvisation at the ISTA 1981 session in Volterra. Photo: Massimo Agus.

this way this article provides some initialclues regarding the possibility of these his -tori cal, geographical, and research labora -tory similarities sharing deeper and indirectconnections.

Mental Precision

Lindh’s research on the disinterested act andits implications for action and intention inthe performer’s work recalls Grotowski’sinvestigations in Art as Vehicle. Before dis -cussing the disinterested act in any detail, itis essential to give an account of the contextfrom which it emerged.

The keystone in Lindh’s research on theprinciples of collective improvisation, whicheschewed fixed scores of physical action andwhich he considered to be the quality thatdistinguished his research from Decroux andGrotowski, concerned ‘mental precision’ or‘mental action’, by which he meant thequality of the movement of the mind that pre-cedes the physical manifestation of action.29

Such precision did not require or result infixed or predetermined or montaged sequ -ences of physical action. Mental precision inthe Institutet’s context does not imply apredominance of mind over body. The statusof action-in-the-mind implied by ‘mentalprecision’ is indeed that of physical action.

In Lindh’s research, mental precision isrelated to ‘intention’, which, in the Insti -tutet’s vocabulary, is a composite of ‘to tendtoward’ (to project and place oneself in thedirection of) and ‘tension’ (to mobilize one’senergy in a specific direction). Intention thusunderstood refers to the movement of themind at the beginning of every act and indic -ates an act’s mental direction, which can beconcretized both through stillness (non-movement) and movement.

This recalls Grotowski’s view of intentionwhen, in his 1986 conference in Liège, helinked the inside/outside quality of impulses:

In/tension – intention. There is no intention ifthere is not a proper muscular mobilization. Thisis also part of the intention. The intention existseven at a muscular level in the body, and is linkedto some objective outside you. . . . Intentions arerelated to physical memories, to associations, to

wishes, to contact with the others, but also tomuscular in/tensions.30

A clue to the difference between Lindh’s andGrotowski’s positions can be found in thelatter’s reference to intentions being relatedto ‘physical memories, to associations’. In anearly text, the Skara Speech from 1966,Grotowski gives an account of what heunderstands by associations:

I have spoken much about personal associations,but these associations are not thoughts. Theycannot be calculated. Now I make a movementwith my hand, then I look for associations. Whatassociations? Perhaps the association that I amtouching someone, but this is merely a thought.What is an association in our profession? It issomething that springs not only from the mindbut also from the body. It is a return towards aprecise memory. Do not analyze this intellectually.Memories are always physical reactions. It is ourskin which has not forgotten, our eyes which havenot forgotten. What we have heard can stillresound within us. It is to perform a concrete act,not a movement such as caressing in general but,for example, stroking a cat. Not an abstract cat buta cat which I have seen, with which I have contact.A cat with a specific name – Napoleon, if you like.And it is this particular cat you now caress. Theseare associations.31

Associations were a central point throughoutGrotowski’s professional work and can betraced from the ‘poor theatre’ of the 1960s(with which Lindh was familiar) to Art asVehicle.32 Though Lindh accepted the pre -mise and importance of ‘physical memories’and ‘associations’, in the sense that they werenot something to be resisted in hisinvestigations, he did not privilege them atthe expense of association-free movements.Lindh asserts that in a context of mentalprecision ‘empty gestures’ do not exist:

A gesture could initially seem ‘empty’, but it is notso. Emptiness does not exist. A gesture can bemore or less clear and eloquent, or one can bemore or less aware of it, but deep down there isalways a meaning which can be rediscovered. Aslong as one does not fall into the trap of beingabstruse or bizarre, it is only a matter of evalu -ation: Is it something we want? Is it interesting forour present work? Is the sense too hidden or tooesoteric? Is it only an actor ‘play-acting’? Thesituation is constantly changing, and then it canhappen that one unexpectedly accomplishes a

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gesture or an action which one had alreadyaccom plished countless times before but whichnow has a resonance, a consequence in the actorand his colleagues. This is the moment when asense is found and the actor’s actions merge withhis mental themes.33

It is difficult to find a major difference bet -ween the objectives of Lindh and Grotowski(both aimed at generating concrete acts), butthe paths they adopted to reach theirobjectives are slightly but crucially different.Grotowski makes links between intentionsand associations, where the ‘meaning’ thatcan appear or is rediscovered in ‘empty’gestures can be a physical memory. His linksare not rejected or resisted in Lindh’s work –but are seen as only one possible optionavailable to the actor trained in mental pre ci -sion. Such training by the Institutet included,for example, the isometric exercises foractors they developed in the late 1970s.34

The isometric approach involved theisolation of the instant immediately pre ced -ing the most dynamic moment of a specificaction. Later, the focus shifted to stops at anypoint in mid-action, which are then com -pleted without having to generate a newimpulse. In these cases, it is necessary toretain intensity in the stillness in order toensure that the continuation of a particularaction is not a new beginning. In the stopsthus generated, the action must be ‘con -tinued mentally’.35

The Disinterested Act

The continuation announced by an iso metricstop in the shift of intention from a physicalto a mental plane functioned as aconstitutive element of the Institute’s workon intentions, which in turn marked anintegral aspect of mental precision. In such acontext, ‘physical memories’ and ‘associ -ations’, albeit important, are only one aspectof what Lindh understood by mental preci -sion and action. It is from within this frame -work that Lindh developed his research onthe disinterested act in Pontremoli in the late1980s.

The disinterested act pushes the limits ofthe work on mental precision by attempting

to accomplish action irrespective of thepsycho logical need for it.36 The objective ofthis technical aspiration is to tap into a formof awareness that is perceptible on a moreprofound level than that filtered by psycho -logical mechanisms (for example, desire,need, and motivation).

One way to under stand the basis of thedisinterested act is through the active-passivity/passive-activity coordinates thatmark Lindh’s work on ‘active immobility’.37

Just as the disinterested act seeks to effectaction without a psychological mechanismthat hinders its flow, active immobility seeks(internal) motion irrespective of (external)movement. This specific element of theactor’s habitation of action is perceptible onan organic level and can only be described interms of dynamics and textures.

Rolin’s performance in Popolo was madeup of sequences of actions, all linked by aconstant flow of energy, but the actions them-selves were characterized by what I term asense of ‘an action that is withheld’. The actorwas performing a ‘holding back’ that was,paradoxically (that is, ‘irrespective of the psy -chological need’), propelling him forward. Itwas as if Rolin’s source of energy derivedfrom the retention of that same energy.

It is possible to trace the technical genea -logy of this phenomenon to the Institutet’swork on Decroux’s mime, Tai Chi, andempirical modes of training, but the conceptmarked by the disinterested act and its mani -festation in performance is unique to theresearch of the Institutet.38 Pietruska notesNovember 1990 as the beginning of thework on Popolo, and adds that:

The research on the disinterested act is a furtherdevelopment and a new aspect of the work onsense and signification. The text of a sutra in archaicJapanese is chosen as the starting point for workwith and for the voice. This is also the first timeLindh tests vibrational techniques in the work ofthe actor.39

The intersection that the disinterested actshares with voice work and vibration tech -niques recalls the vibratory songs at the heartof the doer’s work in Art as Vehicle. Thesignificant point about this similarity, how -

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ever superficial or otherwise it may be, is notthat the work of Lindh and Grotowski wasidentical or related, but rather that theirresearch investigations led them both toinves tigate specific ways of inhabiting physi -cal action by means of voice and vibrationtechniques.

The Non-Manifested Act

An important aspect of the phenomenonmarked by the disinterested act concernsPietruska’s research with Lindh on the non-manifested act, which emerged during herwork (1995–7) on her solo performanceSaffo.40 It is a work on the habitation of actionthat resists the actor’s impulse to show and,as such, is related to the disinterested act inseeking to perform an act irrespective of aneed, in this case the vanity to demon -strate.41 The research premise that underpinsthis work highlights a central paradox at thecore of the actor’s work: if an actor is an‘actor’ when she is acting, does she have toshow that she is acting in order to be an‘actor’?

Lindh and Pietruska’s attempt to answerthis question instigated the work on actswhose mechanisms (psychological, tech -nical, or otherwise) are not made explicitlymanifest. Lindh liked to use the image of theChinese juggler washing dishes to exemplifythe point about the non-manifested act: thejuggler’s skill is so ingrained that it becomespart of her ‘essence’ to such an extent thatshe does not need to show it, even though itis still possible to perceive her skill (as ajuggler) in the daily action of washingdishes.

The specific context from which the non-manifested act emerged – that is, the work onSaffo – was also influential. The poetic andfragmentary quality of Sappho’s texts onwhich Pietruska and Lindh were workingconditioned the concept of a ‘poem-perform -ance’ that is not geared at a logical and linearnarrative, but rather at ‘being poetry’.

The question of being thus influencedPietruska’s habitation of actions: ‘nothing’(theatrical) should happen except what ishappening in the here and now. This was a

consideration that linked being (includingscenic presence) and invisible virtuosity.

Viewed from a specific angle, this aspectof Lindh’s work on acts recalls Grotowski’sendeavour in Art as Vehicle to tap into amode that, though based on laboratory pro -cess and precise technique, aspires to gobeyond it, to ‘a level of energy more subtle’.42

The non-manifested act in particular, withits resistance to the actor’s impulse to showin favour of the actor’s being in the act, isreminiscent of the distinction that Grotowskidraws between ‘acting’ and doing.43 Morepertinent to our discussion is the active-passivity dynamic that underlines the dis -interested act and which, as has already beennoted, recalls Decroux’s active immobility.44

The dynamic is also strongly reminiscent of afundamental aspect of Grotowski’s ‘poortheatre’ from the mid-1960s: ‘The requisitestate of mind [in via negativa] is a passivereadiness to realize an active role, a state inwhich one does not want to do that but ratherresigns from not doing it.’45

Lindh was, of course, familiar withGrotowski’s flag-bearing article ‘Towards aPoor Theatre’, and it must have influencedhis practice in a direct manner. However,Grotowski and Lindh’s pursuit of this relatedphenomenon took different paths. Grotow -ski developed his research away from theatrein favour of other models (first para theatreand then Art as Vehicle), thus open ing newdimensions of performance; Lindh stayedwithin the domain of theatre and tried topush it to an extreme by attempting to changethe actor’s attitude, insisting on mental pre -cision and improvisation-as-per formance.

It can be argued, correctly, that Grotow -ski’s work in Art as Vehicle is traceable backto his earlier phases, especially ObjectiveDrama (1983–6) and also Theatre of Sources(1976–82).46 However, rather than a diver -gence, this marks another parallel withLindh’s laboratory research. Rolin confirmsthat though the phrase ‘disinterested act’was first used by Lindh in November 1990 atthe start of the work on Popolo, the process ofcrystallization that led to it could be traced tothe nomadic period of the Institutet in Francein 1979:47

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It is correct to say that the ‘disinterested act’ wasalways present in our work but at a certain pointwe needed to be more consequent with it in orderto be able to distinguish it – and this work wasone of the foci in Popolo.48

Such a long-term process of crystallizationis in line with Lindh’s views on ‘research’,which is also more long-term and retrospec -tive, as distinct from ‘artistic searching’,which is more immediate and forward-looking.49

The point here is that the research inPontremoli and Pontedera in the late 1980sand early 1990s went through a process ofcrystallization that dates back at least to the1970s. This can actually be pushed evenfurther to the late 1960s, when the youngSwedish mime came in contact with the Polishdirector. But already at this initial point,though inspired and influenced by Grotowski,Lindh had a sense of something that wouldtake him beyond that inspiration. Answeringa conference panel question on motivationand intention in the disinterested act (hencethe colloquial syntax of the transcript), Lindhprefers to ‘go back’ in time:

When I worked with Grotowski, he was alwaysspeaking of the impulse. I said: no, there is some -thing wrong in the word impulse. Because it isrelated to the act, and if you do not jump over thetable immediately and there was a hesitation,every thing happened: the censorship, the fear.Everything happens between the impulse and thedoing. And it was that which Grotowski tried toeliminate. But if you work only in that way, youare slave of time. Because you had to jump. Ifthere were no manifestation of your impulse, itwas not valid. So time and space were in a wayimprisoning the actor. So I said: no, the intentioncan be independent and suspended in time. Theintention is already there. I sit here, I have theintention to stand up, but I am not doing it yet.But everything has been modified. So we startedto use the word intention and now all our work isbased on it, the fundamental thing is to find theintention. But the intention has nothing to do withthinking, it is quicker than the brain.50

This quotation is indicative both of the extentof Grotowski’s influence on Lindh and of thesubtle but important difference between thetwo. The implications for physical action ofa focus on mental precision are revealing.

Lindh sought to obtain physical precision inthe actor’s work not by focusing directly onits external aspects by means of codified andformalized technique (which it was in hiscapacity to do after his apprenticeship andcollaboration with Decroux). Neither did heseek it within the framework of physicalmemories and associations within preciseand repeatable structures. Rather, physicalprecision in the Institutet’s laboratory wasachieved almost as a side-effect of the mentalprecision obtained from work on intentions. Thedisinterested act in Pontremoli at the turn ofthe 1990s was one major aspect of this work.

Encounter with Baba Bedi

Lindh’s work on the disinterested act co in -cided with a vocal laboratory processinformed by vibration technique. However,his encounter with vibration techniques didnot come via Grotowski’s work with MaudRobart and Jean-Claude (Tiga) Garoute onHaitian ritual songs and practices.51 It cameby chance through an encounter with BabaBedi’s therapeutic practice in 1991 after thelatter was recommended to Lindh, who wassuffering from a serious illness at the time.Since little, if anything at all, has been writ -ten in English on Baba Bedi and his practice,I will provide an outline here to highlight thecontext that influenced Lindh’s research onthe vibrational qualities of the voice.

Baba Pyare Lal Bedi (1909–93), also knownas Baba Bedi XVI, was an Indian princebelieved to be the sixteenth descendant ofSat Guru Baba Nanak (1469–1539), founderof Sikhism. He studied at the Universities ofOxford, Heidelberg, and Geneva, and occu -pied for a time a research post at the Univ -ersity of Berlin. He also had a long researchcollaboration with Albert Einstein. In India,he was actively involved in the liberationmovement (which led to his spending sometime in British prisons) and was a member ofthe Marxist Communist Party of India.

After India gained Independence in 1947,he occupied various official posts until 1953,when he answered a spiritual calling. It wasat this time that he developed an interest inesoteric sources and the self-healing capacity

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of the human being based on the ‘freepassage of light’. In 1955 he founded theResearch Institute of the Unknown in NewDelhi, and in 1972 he moved to Italy wherehe started diffusing his vibration therapyand dedicated himself to the holistic devel -op ment of the human being through ‘psychicsensibility’.

Baba Bedi’s activity in Italy led to theformation of various centres, including theCentre of Esoteric Studies and the Centre ofAquarian Philosophy in Milan, where Lindhcame in contact with him in the early 1990s.After following therapeutic sessions withBaba Bedi, Lindh (and later Rolin) partici -pated in a series of courses that Baba Bedigave in different steps and degrees of vibra -tion techniques.

The line that runs through Baba Bedi’scolourful life is a concern with the improve -ment of human experience, hence his earlyscientific and political endeavours, and hislater spiritual ones aimed at increasing self-harmony through an enhanced capacity ofperception and sensibility.

According to Baba Bedi, the latter isachievable through the elimination of blocksof energy (dark points) that facilitate the freepassage of light. Self-healing is one aspect ofthis practice. Another aspect concerns theenhancement of individual creative talents inan artistic context (writing, dance, and soon). Baba Bedi’s practice with the voice thatthe Institutet were interested in was notstrictly therapeutic, but an important elementof his work on talents and capacities.

Pietruska comments that Lindh’s fortui -tous encounter with Baba Bedi becameimportant for their theatre work ‘mostlybecause we found from such a different andunexpected source a confirmation . . . forsome intuitions or things we had alreadyexperienced on a working level, specificallywith voice work’.52 In other words, theability to perceive that accrued from theencounter with Baba Bedi made it possiblefor the Institutet first to recognize what theywere already doing on an intuitive level, andsecond to thus develop their vocal process.The following section provides indications ofLindh’s exploration of the vibratory quali ties

of the voice. This discussion is preceded byan outline of Grotowski’s research in thesame field by way of a contextual point ofreference.

Vibration Voice Work

In ‘From the Theatre Company to Art asVehicle’ (1995), Grotowski speaks about the‘vibratory qualities’ of ‘the ritual songs of theancient tradition’.53 Though he knows betterthan to define these qualities, Grotowski pro -vides some indications about their nature. Inessence, these qualities are a ‘sonority’ thathas a tangible impact on what is being sung:‘they become the meaning of the song’.54

This implies that it is the manner (texture,quality) rather than the matter (verbal mean -ing, melody) of the song that is crucial totheir generation. So it is not a question oflearning a specific text or a melody, but offinding the conditions of possibility for suchsonar resonance to occur. According toGrotowski, the ancient songs of tradition areone such instrument which engage the singertotally, to such an extent that the ‘song beginsto sing us’.55 It is through such total engage -ment that Grotowski links vocal vibratoryqualities to impulses:

In the work which interests me . . . the traditionalsongs (like those of the Afro-Caribbean line) arerooted in organicity. It’s always the song-body, it’snever the song dissociated from the impulses oflife that run through the body; in the song oftradition, it is no longer a question of the position ofthe body or the manipulation of the breath, but of theimpulses and the little actions. Because the impulseswhich run in the body are exactly those whichcarry the song.56

The italicized text in this quotation has im -portant implications for a comparison be t -ween Lindh’s and Grotowski’s work on thevibration qualities of the voice. It marks apotential overlap of concerns, but the pathLindh followed to pursue vocal vibrationwas different from Grotowski’s. Though theInstitutet did not work on songs of tradition,by the time they moved to Pontremoli in1986 they had done at least a decade of vocalwork aimed at exploring vocal textures and

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qualities that coincided with a physicalresonance. Much of this work was intuitive,but it was a practice they pursued as a pro -fes sional ensemble. Lindh’s encounter withBaba Bedi in 1991 helped the Institutet toarticulate what they had been investigating,even though their exploration remainedintu itive compared to Grotowski’s moresystematic work on songs in Art as Vehicle.

As early as 1976–78, during the first yearsof their nomadic period, the Institutet distin -guished between work for the voice andwork with the voice. ‘Work for the voice’refers to the exploration of the voice as aninstrument for the sake of investigating andenhancing one’s vocal possibilities. This kindof work is not related to an artistic outcome.‘Work with the voice’ refers to what can bedone with one’s vocal instrument as a toolaimed at generating performance materialand at achieving an artistic result. This clari -fication, simple as it might seem in theory,had important repercussions in the practice.

In 1979, in Lausanne (France), the Institutetdeveloped work on the linear voice.57 Stillduring their nomadic period, in VaudreuilVille Nouvelle (France, 1979–80), they devel -oped a work on vocal textures and qualitiescalled sound forest, which Pietruska describesas having

two aspects: an explorative exer cise for the voiceand, at the same time, an exercise in listening anddynamo-rhythmical collaboration – that is, workwith the voice. This is further developed in collectiveimprovis ations on the vocal themes of the per -formance.58

It was this kind of approach to voice trainingthat allowed Lindh to explore the voice on anintuitive level – an approach that was alsoinformed by the laboratory processes he hadcome in contact with, including Grotowski’sin the late 1960s, as well as Eugenio Barba’s,whose 1972 film displays work with whichLindh was familiar.59 It is mostly in theexploration of working for the voice (that is, toenhance vocal possibilities) that the Institutet’svocal practice was made clearer after theencounter with Baba Bedi. Rolin admits thatthe nature and qualities of the work crystal -lized by Baba Bedi are:

extremely difficult to put into examples, or toclarify through verbalizing or writing, since thequalities obtained from vibration technique areparticular and general at the same time andalways in a constant movement, and yet [theyserve to] concretize . . . work on awareness andconsciousness and as such focus your acts inrelation to both inner and outer space. A type oflistening that later on is not in contradiction witha work addressed to an artistic expression butinstead [becomes] one more tool that helps theactor being focused on the acting [rather than] onthe outcome.60

It is clear that the vibration techniquesreferred to here are not simply externallyoriented phenomena but, rather, are relatedto a form of awareness that combines innerand outer action, which is then manifestedand recognizable in the quality of the vocaloutput. Vibration voice work of this kindhas a life of its own that resists application totheatre exigencies such as vocal control andmanipulation. In this respect, Lindh comesclose to Grotowski in not trying to appro -priate such work as a technique for theatrebut, rather, as work upon oneself.61

Activating the Voice

Despite the problematic nature of describ ingthis work in any technical detail, it might bepossible to give some indications of what itentails.62 Rolin explains how according toBaba Bedi you have to be ‘activated’ (by some -one who is already so) to practise vibrationtechnique.63 Activation is not some kind ofwarm-up that is done before every session,but rather is a case of ‘once activated, alwaysactivated’. It generally takes about eight ses -sions to activate the voice. Pietruska elaborateson the process:

We usually do it [the ‘activation’] individually. Theperson becomes ‘activated’ and remains passively-active, allowing the voice, in whatever forms ittakes, to make its journey. The voice is free tomake passages, changes, variations from low tohigh, from whispering to crying, changing ‘colour’,volume etc. Usually, it seems that the voice startsby ‘working on’ the points where the individualhas some problems or blocks, almost like somekind of internal ‘massage’. The voice gets the‘vibrational’ quality when it is completely free;you recognize it immediately and it is then very

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difficult (for the observer) to hear from where it iscoming.64

Certain elements of the practice are used inworkshop situations, but they are neververbalized as ‘technique’; they are, rather,presented as a ‘free work on the voice’ thatmight, potentially, trigger something in parti -cipants without pre-empting an objective oroutcome.

Rolin and Pietruska acknowledge the factthat they did not investigate these tech -niques in great depth on their own merits asa therapeutic practice, but only insofar asthey informed their theatre practice.65 AndPietruska highlights a specific instance ofthis influence, in the process indicating aparadoxical link with and divergence fromthe vibration work in Art as Vehicle, whenshe refers to the relationship between bodymovement and voice:

The body is free to move, but it is very clear thatthe movement of the body is not connected to theemission of the voice. It makes its own ‘travel’,independent from but not in contradiction with themovement of the body. This point was veryinteresting to us. It was a confirmation of what wealready experienced in the work on immobilityand intention as a common source for the bodyand the voice, which means that the specificpositions of the body or a muscular tension as asupport for the voice has nothing (or very little) todo with the voice.66

Though, as quoted earlier, Grotowski main -tains that, ‘in the song of tradition, it is nolonger a question of the position of the bodyor the manipulation of the breath, but of theimpulses and the little actions’, his work didlead him to explore certain body positionsand movement structures in conjunctionwith vocal work and vibratory songs.67 Thework on yanvalou, for example, initiatedduring the Objective Drama phase and thendeveloped in Art as Vehicle, is a good exampleof how songs and movement structures werebrought together.68 Furthermore, in additionto the songs of tradition, Grotowski men -tions ‘the forms of movement’ (along with‘the text as living word’ and ‘the logic of thesmallest actions’) as a key area of investig -ation in Art as Vehicle69 – the implication

being that somehow or somewhere theseforms of movement are related to the songs.

However, Grotowski was not interested incertain body positions because they magic -ally (intrinsically) generate vibratory quali ties,but rather because the impulses required forthese positions and movements are the sameas those necessary to generate vibratory quali-ties. This, I feel, is an important distinction.

From this perspective, Lindh’s work isreminiscent of Grotowski’s except for thecrucial omission of a focus on traditional songsand their accompanying forms of movement.

This specific similarity/divergence bet -ween Lindh and ‘the Master’ is represen -tative of the overall relationship betweenthese two theatre laboratory practitioners atthe end of the twentieth century. On onelevel, it indicates Grotowski’s more sophis -tic ated and systematic approach as much asit highlights the Institutet’s more intuitive(and thus more analytically problematic)practice. On another level, it reflects Lindh’sconsistency in resisting predetermined andpredetermining structures (including songsand forms of movement), not because theyare ineffective or counterproductive, butbecause his specific research, which found itsartistic and theatrical expression in collectiveimprovisation as performance, demanded itfrom him. Lindh was also fully aware that hewould simply be repeating what he acquiredfrom his masters if he pursued the avenueswhich they were already investigating. It wasessential that he developed his way:

I was quite fortunate ending up being this kind ofcrossroad[s] between the two greatest theatremasters in the second half of this century. . . . It wasa very strange crossroad[s], to have been workingwith Decroux, and then later with Grotowski.It was also a crossroad[s] of principles. . . . [Now]I do not want to do the theatre of Decroux, I donot want to do the theatre of Grotowski. But thatis where my starting point is. Now I moveforward.70

Notes and References1. The disinterested act will be discussed in detail

later in the article.2. For a comprehensive introduction to Lindh,

including his principal research concerns and the mainphases of his work, see Frank Camilleri, ‘Collective

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Improvisation: the Practice and Vision of IngemarLindh’, TDR, LII, No. 4 (2008), p. 82–97.

3. Ingemar Lindh, ‘“Gathering Around the WordTheatre . . . ” ’, in Pentti Paavolainen and Anu Ala-Korpela, ed., Knowledge is a Matter of Doing (Helsinki:Acta Scenica, 1995), p. 66.

4. I discuss this point further in my ‘Introduction tothe English Edition’, in Ingemar Lindh, Stepping Stones(Holstebro, Malta, Wrocław: Icarus, 2010), p. xvi–xvii.

5. Marco De Marinis, Mimo e Teatro nel Novecento(Florence: La Casa Usher, 1993), p. 128–9.

6. Eugenio Barba, ‘The Hidden Master’, in ThomasLeabhart and Franc Chamberlain, ed., The DecrouxSourcebook (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 29.

7. Ian Watson, Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barbaand the Odin Teatret (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 6.

8. De Marinis, Mimo e Teatro, op. cit., p. 129. Despitethis situation, Lindh kept assisting Decroux from time totime in workshops and conferences until 1970, the 1969

event in Holstebro being one such instance.9. Cf. Alison Hodge, who writes about the com -

plexity of the cross-fertilization of ideas and practicesbetween theatre practitioners in the second half of thetwentieth century in Actor Training, second edn (London:Routledge, 2010), p. xxiii–xxiv.

10. Magdalena Pietruska, in correspondence withthe author, 20 March 2008.

11. Magdalena Pietruska, in correspondence withthe author, 30 January 2007.

12. ‘It was Ingemar Lindh, a young Swede who hadattended the mime classes Decroux taught in his ownParis home, who first told me about him. Ingemarillustrated the basic principles of the work done thereand demonstrated some of the exercises he had learned.He told me many anecdotes revealing his master’s per -sonality’ (Barba, ‘The Hidden Master’, op. cit., p. 28–9).

13. Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, ed., ADictionary of Theatre Anthropology: the Secret Art of thePerformer, second edn (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 313.This book also features three sets of photographs bySavarese which depict Lindh demonstrating exercisestaken from Decroux (p. 94–5, 204–5). Barba continued,and still continues, to pursue his interest in Decrouxwith the participation of another former student andassistant, Thomas Leabhart, during ISTA sessions.

14. Torgeir Wethal’s Odin Teatret films from thisperiod – e.g., Yves Lebreton’s Corporal Mime (1971),Training at the Teatr Laboratorium in Wrocław (1972), andPhysical Training at Odin Teatret (1972) – reflect the cross-fertilization and exchanges that existed at the timebetween Decroux’s former assistants and the labora -tories of Barba and Grotowski.

15. Frank Camilleri, notes from a conversation withIngemar Lindh, 1997. I discuss Lindh’s exchange withCieślak in ‘ “To Push the Actor Training to Its Extreme”:Training Process in Ingemar Lindh’s Practice of Collec -tive Improvisation’, Contemporary Theatre Review, XVIII,No. 4 (2008), p. 427.

16. Torgeir Wethal, dir., Training at the Teatr Labora -torium in Wrocław (Holstebro: Odin Teatret Film, 1972).

17. This walk recalls Marcel Marceau’s famous‘Walking Against the Wind’ routine, which he used fromthe 1940s through the 1980s, where he pretends to bepushed backwards by a gust of wind. Marceau was, ofcourse, a former student of Decroux.

18. See also Lindh, ‘Gathering Around the WordTheatre’, op. cit., p. 67–8, where he hints at thisexchange with Cieślak.

19. Camilleri, ‘To Push the Actor Training’, op. cit.,p. 427.

20. The disinterested act will be discussed in detaillater on. See also Frank Camilleri, ‘Hospitality and theEthics of Improvisation in the Work of Ingemar Lindh’,New Theatre Quarterly, XXVI, No. 4 (2008), p. 257–8.

21 Magdalena Pietruska, ‘Institutet för Scenkonst: aChronology’, in Ingemar Lindh, Stepping Stones (Hol -stebro, Malta, Wrocław: Icarus, 2010), p. 135.

22. Thomas Richards, At Work with Grotowski onPhysical Actions (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 9.

23. Roger Rolin, in correspondence with the author,1 November 2007.

24. A work-in-progress demonstration version,Popolo on the Road, was presented in Italy, Germany,Sweden, and Norway in 1991.

25. In 1999 it changed its name to FondazionePontedera Teatrale (Pontedera Theatre Foundation).

26. The cover of Lindh’s Stepping Stones (and of theItalian and Swedish editions, 1998 and 2003 respec -tively) consists of a photograph of Pietruska by Busca -rino. The book also contains five full-page photographsby Buscarino at the beginning of each chapter. See alsoAntonio Attisani and Maurizio Buscarino’s photo-article, ‘Al Teatro di Pontremoli la Svezia Vicina’,L’Illustrazione Italiana, XLIX (1987), p. 102–11.

27. For details about this research programme, seeLindh, Stepping Stones, op. cit., p. 180 ff. Mental pre ci -sion in Lindh’s work will be discussed later.

28. See, for example, Jerzy Grotowski, ‘From theTheatre Company to Art as Vehicle’, in Richards, AtWork with Grotowski, op. cit., p. 121–32; RichardSchechner and Lisa Wolford, ed., The Grotowski Source -book (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 367–494; JamesSlowiak and Jairo Cuesta, Jerzy Grotowski (London:Routledge, 2007), p. 52–3, 116–18.

29. I discuss mental precision in Lindh’s work invarious instances elsewhere. See, especially, ‘To Push theActor Training’, op. cit., p. 430–1; ‘Hospitality and theEthics of Improvisation’, op. cit., p. 251; and my ‘Glos -sary of Terms’ in Lindh, Stepping Stones, op. cit., p. 220–1.

30. Richards, At Work with Grotowski, op. cit., p. 96

(emphasis in the original).31. Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (Lon -

don: Routledge, 2002 [1968]), p. 185–6.32. Richards makes constant reference to working

with associations in a way that recalls the Skara speechdescription. See, for example, Richards, At Work withGrotowski, op. cit., p. 58, 64, 66.

33 Lindh, Stepping Stones, op. cit., p. 45–6. ‘Mentalthemes’ refers to the content of an action or an event(ibid., p. 32–3, 225–6).

34. I discuss the Institutet’s isometric-based trainingfor actors in detail in ‘To Push the Actor Training’, op.cit., p. 435–9.

35. Lindh, Stepping Stones, op. cit., p. 25. See also p.218.

36. For other accounts of the disinterested act, seeLindh, Stepping Stones, op. cit., p. 122–3, 214; Camilleri,‘Hospitality and the Ethics of Improvisation’, op. cit.,p. 257–8; Lindh, ‘Gathering Around the Word Theatre’,op. cit., passim; and De Marinis, Mimo e Teatro, op. cit.,p. 289.

37. The active-passivity phenomenon referred tohere is related to Lindh’s work on ‘mobile immobility’or ‘active immobility’ which he had received fromDecroux. This kind of immobility refers to ‘a technicaland physiological condition in which the practitioner

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performs an action even if there is a lack of movement’(Camilleri, ‘Hospitality and the Ethics of Improvisation’,op. cit., p. 250; 253–4).

38. For a comprehensive account of Lindh’s trainingprocesses, see Camilleri, ‘To Push the Actor Training’,op. cit., p. 431–40.

39. Pietruska, ‘A Chronology’, op. cit., p. 170 (em -phasis in the original).

40. Directed by Lindh and based on texts fromSappho, fragments of Saffo were presented from as earlyas 1992.

41. The term ‘non-manifested act’ was not used byLindh and Pietruska at the time; it was coined by Piet -ruska later when she was writing the chronology of theInstitutet’s activity and the need was felt to differentiatebetween the main focus in the work on Popolo and Saffo(Pietruska, ‘A Chronology’, op. cit., p. 176).

42. Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to Artas Vehicle’, op. cit., p. 125.

43. See, for example, ibid., p. 121–3.44. See also The Decroux Sourcebook, op. cit., p. 156–9:

‘mime is movement in place. It’s movement withinexterior immobility. It’s as if man were a shell inside ofwhich things happen that we can sense without beingable to see them. . . . It’s what I call immobility trans -ported’ (p. 156–7).

45. Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, op. cit., p. 17

(emphasis in the original).46. For an account of these phases see Schechner

and Wolford, Grotowski Sourcebook, op. cit., p. 205–364.See also Slowiak and Cuesta, Grotowski, op. cit., p. 40–52.

47. The Institutet’s various periods of work corres -pond to the different geographical locations of theirlaboratory base: (1) the early period between 1971 and1976 saw the Institutet operating in the isolated nor -thern Swedish forests of Storhögen-Nyby; (2) thenomadic period between 1976 and 1983 corresponds tothe time when the Institutet lacked a permanent baseand operated mainly in France and Sweden; (3) between1984 and 1997 the Institutet was based in Pontremoli,Italy; (4) since 1998 the Institutet has been based inNygård (Sweden) under the co-directorship of Mag -dalena Pietruska and Roger Rolin. For a detailedchronological account of the Institutet’s periods seePietruska, ‘A Chronology’, op. cit., p. 125–200. For aconcise account, see Camilleri, ‘The Practice and Visionof Ingemar Lindh’, op. cit., p. 83.

48. Roger Rolin, in correspondence with the author,1 November 2007.

49. Lindh, ‘Gathering Around the Word Theatre’,op. cit., p. 60.

50. Ibid., p. 77–8.51. See Schechner and Wolford, Grotowski Source -

book, op. cit., p. 272.52. Pietruska, in correspondence with the author, 20

March 2008.53. Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to Art

as Vehicle’, op. cit., p. 126.54. Ibid.55. Ibid., p. 127.56. Ibid., p. 128 (my emphasis).57. Linear voice refers to work ‘aimed at achieving a

starting point for the voice, i.e. to obtain as neutral

(“linear”) a base as possible. It seeks to overcome thepredetermined rhythms of a text and of a language by“flattening” the texture of the voice so that it is no longerpredictable and can thus serve as a base for the creationof vocal qualities and patterns for texts used in perfor -mance’ (Camilleri, ‘Glossary of Terms’, op. cit., p. 219).

58. Pietruska, ‘A Chronology’, op. cit., p. 138

(emphasis in the original).59. Torgeir Wethal, dir., Vocal Training at Odin

Teatret (Holstebro: Odin Teatret Film, 1972).60 Rolin, in correspondence with the author, 22 June

2008.61. Cf. Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to

Art as Vehicle’, op. cit., p. 132–3.62. Cf. Wolford’s attempt to give an account of the

vibratory qualities in Action: ‘I have never heard singinglike this before. It is begun by Richards, who sings witha fluctuation of vibration so alive, so extreme, that thesong becomes in some sense tangibly present in thespace. . . . The resonance is spatial, concrete; it strikes myskin in a particular way. There is something . . . almostinhuman about it, not like anything I ever imagined ahuman voice could do. As if not only words and melodybut even the singer himself comes to be aspirated by thesong. Not that the words or melody are made any lessprecise – exactly the opposite – but this powerful fluctu -ation of resonance – physical as well as audible – theliving presence of the song, fully unearthed and em -bodied, is so alien to my perception, so unique, that it isas if I experience song for the first time’ (Schechner andWolford, Grotowski Sourcebook, op. cit., p. 413, emphasisin the original).

63. Cf. Richards speaking about centres of energythat ‘become activated’ during the work on subtleenergy: ‘The syllables and the melody of these songsbegin to touch and activate something I perceive to belike energy seats in the organism’: Thomas Richards,‘The Edge-Point of Performance, 1995’, in Heart ofPractice: Within the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski andThomas Richards (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 7.

64. Pietruska, in correspondence with the author, 20

March 2008.65. Rolin and Pietruska are also aware of the New

Age contexts that Baba Bedi subsequently (especiallyafter his death) came to be associated with in Italy. Rolinadmits that though he has experienced enough ‘prac -tical consequences’ to believe in its existence andpotential, the Institutet has not been ‘taken in’ by theesoteric context that surrounds Baba Bedi’s therapeuticpractice (Roger Rolin, interview with the author, 13 July2009).

66. Pietruska, in correspondence with the author, 20

March 2008, my emphasis.67. Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to Art

as Vehicle’, op. cit., p. 128.68. ‘The yanvalou is a ritual dance with a strong

rhythm that incorporates a subtle undulation of thespine and a bending forward from the hips’ (Slowiakand Cuesta, Grotowski, op. cit., p. 49–50).

69. Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to Artas Vehicle’, op. cit., p. 128.

70. Lindh, ‘Gathering Around the Word Theatre’,op. cit., p. 59, 66. 68.

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