El teatro físico como sistema investigador y educativo en la formación artística y corporal.Descripción metodológica de un montaje a partir de Casa de Muñecas de Ibsen

Abstract

Physical theatre, a stage art based on movement and embodiment, and not on prior theorization, is a phenomenon with diverse forms born over the past two decades in parts of Europe and Latin America. It arises as an alternative to existing, reiterative traditional models, whose authenticity and expressive potential grows weaker with every passing year, and has become emblematic of a new artistic identity. These physical artists have, in eclectic ways, framed their work in new forms of stage performance as a clear reaction to a theatre which has reduced action to a minimum, and their renewed emphasis on dynamic action occupies an ever more significant territory on the current map of stage performance. The phenomenon therefore merits research in accordance with this growing pre-eminence, not only through the creation of physical theatre productions but also through a theoretical and conceptual defense towards a tentative summary of its own transformation and development. Method: In examining the adaptation into physical theatre of the play The Doll House by Henrik Ibsen, using a creative methodology based on improvisation and trial and error, it is hoped to describe the outcome of a researchcreation process which responds to the need to question, characterize and define the nature of physical theatre. This analysis has the particular aim, in engaging the body as a passageway from literary to stage performance, of emphasizing the idea that the body in movement is a fully independent artistic and investigative agent in the creation of knowledge. The guiding hypothesis for this article is the search for a theoretical and conceptual defense of a methodology for the physical staging of a dramatic work which relies entirely on the body and its resourcefulness. As a response to this exploration in defense of an experience in research/creation, I will present a methodological description of this process which will rely on the theories and concepts of recognized stage directors belonging to the European theatre avant-garde of the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX centuries. In addition to this, the work will seek to register the knowledge produced and shared during the process of this research-creation as a consequence of the confluence, interaction, participation and interdisciplinary collaboration of several professionals, artists and students interested in stage movement, who brought diverse work methods to a common objective, giving rise to concrete and practical contributions to contemporary artistic training. Results/Conclusions: The main result of this research project by the Colectivo Voces del Cuerpo (Voices of the Body Collective), a research and creation group of Del Valle University, in Cali, Colombia, was a physical theatre adaptation of Ibsen’s play, which opened in July of 2017 under the name of The Flight of the Lark. In addition to this production, there were other equally important results obtained from the group’s particular approach to multidisciplinary research-creation. For example, emphasis must be put on the work of the physiotherapist Angela Maria Hoyos, whose analysis from a health-care perspective of the physical symmetry and the quality of life of the members of the collective, resulted in a handbook for muscle strength, posture correction and propioceptive training. From an artistic standpoint, the work with professor Juan Carlos Agudelo based on Marceau’s poetics and Decroux’s capacity for abstraction, made for the first insights into the essentials of Ibsen’s text and a first approach to a type of movement that might signify it. Professor Andrea Bonilla provided tools from contemporary dance for building and defining body language for the play. The contribution of professor Dixon, whose belief that the great majority of canonical theatre texts not only bear but demand a physical staging which does not depend on the text, is a reflection on the concept of stage action. Other results, such as the video recording of the process of creating a physical score and elaborating a dramatic structure in movement, are also commented upon. And so through a generic model a particular language has been created for the play in the framework of an ethical, technical and aesthetic body of work from which all of the other components have been articulated. For all of these reasons, the pertinence of this research experience is seen to be justified in the sense that it will contribute to the development of stage movement in a universal way.