Disciplining the Scream

Campbell, Patrick ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6349-4445 (2019) Disciplining the Scream. Performance Research, 24 (1). pp. 38-44. ISSN 1352-8165

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Abstract

This article analyses the emerging praxis of Danish Third Theatre group Altamira Studio Theatre, focusing on the way in which the group – former artists in residence at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in Holstebro, Denmark - have adopted and adapted a particular approach to song and theatrical musicality originally honed by Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret. After exploring notions of musicality in relation to the dramaturgical practices of Odin Teatret, focus is given to Altamira’s own praxical relationship to song, which is critically analysed in light of issues pertaining to ownership, appropriation and authenticity, with a focus on the tensions between artistic freedom, the globalized consumption of ‘World Music’ and the problematic representability of the cultural Other. The complex process of poetic transvaluation underpinning Altamira’s praxis is also shown to be of particular use in terms of revealing the tension between deference and difference that characterizes the intergenerational transmission of craft within the Third Theatre community, allowing for a genealogical analysis of the ways in which a particular theatrical legacy is currently undergoing transformation and renewal.