ABSTRACT
Teatro Potlach created a performance that would be for the residents of Fara in Sabina—not just a festival but a journey, not only a spectacle but a city-wide encounter: between travellers and residents, between the theatre and the city, between art and life. When the second Invisible Cities happened in Klagenfurt, Austria the year after the first one in Fara in Sabina, geographic differences gave birth to differences in approach to theatrical research. Teatro Potlach was not on home turf. Teatro Potlach’s presence in Fara in Sabina was from the beginning an encounter and interlayering of memories of other cities, including the everyday and theatrical practices artists developed elsewhere before moving. The structure, and name, of Teatro Potlach comes from the gift festivals of Pacific Northwestern Native American societies. Teatro Potlach’s approach to the archaeology of cities and the role of the actor in mediating cultural exchange is deeply connected to the barters of Barba’s Odin Teatret.
