The Third Theatre

A Poetics of Third Theatre offers an in-depth, critical analysis of Third Theatre, a transnational community of theatre groups and artists united by a shared set of values and a laboratory attitude. This book takes a genealogical account of Third Theatre as a concept and a practice that draws attention to the historical Third Theatre Encounters that have taken place across Europe and Latin America since the 1970s. The work of renowned Third Theatre groups and organisations, such as LUME (Brazil), Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru), Triangle Theatre (UK) and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium – NTL (Denmark), are explored to reveal how a multifarious poetics of Third Theatre is manifest through these artists’ approaches to performer training, dramaturgy and cultural action. Three critical pillars – unconditional hospitality, artisanal craft and (re)enchantment – are employed in order to illuminate the shared ethos of the Third Theatre community and its exemplification as a mode of cultural performance. This informative text will be of great use to students and scholars of drama and theatre studies, and its dedicated section on performer training exercises offers the reader pathways into an experiential engagement with Third Theatre craft.

Eugenio Barba is one of Europe's leading theatre directors, at the forefront of experimental and group theatre for more than twenty years. Ian Watson provides the most comprehensive and systematic study of Barba's work, including his training methods, dramaturgy, productions and theories, as well as his work at the International School of Theatre Anthropology.

This is the first-ever, full-length study of Badal Sircar's Third Theatre. Sircar was a very prominent playwright of modern Bengali Theatre. It challenges some of the well-established notions of the Third Theatre. It brings to the fore the lost voices of some members of the Third Theatre. It has some rare photographs of Shatabdi, Sircar's Theatre group.

Perhaps no other theatre personality has had such a deep and pervasive influence on theatre practice and theory in post-independence India as Badal Sircar. As a writer of proscenium plays in the 1960s, all of which have been widely produced by leading directors in several Indian languages; as the pioneer of non-proscenium political theatre in the 1970s; as the mentor of countless directors and theatre activists who have carried his ideas to far corners of the country, his work is an integral part of contemporary Indian theatre history. Badal Sircar has over the years written and expounded on his key concepts such as free theatre, humanity in theatre, masks in theatre, and the term with which he is most closely identified, the Third Theatre. This volume brings together for the first time his seminal writings in both Bengali and English, written over three decades, between 1972 to 1992, an invaluable opportunity for cultural scholars and theatre lovers to familiarize themselves with this most influential of practitioners as he delves deep into the evolution of his theoretical stances and analyses his own milestone productions. Written with the same honesty and directness for which his theatre is renowned, these writings reflect a cultural landscape representative of a historical period prior to the watershed of liberalization. Born in 1925, Badal Sircar has been the recipient of several national awards and honours including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Padma Shree, Kalidas Samman, Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, and Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship.

Providing a clear journey through centuries of European, North and South American, African and Asian forms of theatre and performance, this introduction helps the reader think critically about this exciting field through fascinating yet plain-speaking essays and case studies.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.