ABSTRACT
The first week of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) in the Salento region of Italy took place under the sign of Faust. Eugenio Barba had brought together eastern performers (Japanese and Indian dancers and musicians) and western spectator-participants in a collective response to Faust, especially Goethe’s Faust but also Marlowe’s, as well as the whole western tradition of the popular character and of the myth. The work lasted five mornings, from 6 to 10 a.m. It was not supposed to lead to a finished performance nor was it to be presented to an audience outside the group. Was it then an exercise meant to explore a western director’s engagement with Indian and Japanese dancers? Or was it a western production, however unfinished, which exhibited the characteristics of a mise en scène? I tend towards the second hypothesis, although Barba carefully sustained the ambiguity of his work and claimed rather to present a ‘work in progress’ trying out the possibility of a Eurasian theatre.
