Form and transfiguration in "An ordinary day of the dancer Gregorio Samsa" by Barba, Varley and Gleijeses

Abstract

The paper focuses on the solo-performance An ordinary day of the dancer Gregorio Samsa by Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley and Lorenzo Gleijeses and performed by Gleijeses since 2016. After a process of creation lasted over five years, through numerous rewriting processes and partially inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the performance deals with the difficult relationship between a young artist and his main reference figures (a demanding father, an authoritarian theatre director, a worried partner, a schematic psychologist). On stage, the actor’s score develops around an obsessive repetition of movements and actions, performed with modulation of intensity and rhythm. From the circularity of the theatrical repetitions, however, the work of the actor creates a more linear, perhaps vertical, path, which aims at self-purification through exhausting effort, at the precision of craftsmanship, and which, in the finale, questions the possibility of transcendence in the incompleteness of the artistic creation. The inexhaustible and essential search for a performative work based on the organic nature of the actor-dancer, explored as the quintessence of human existence, is therefore both a ‘condemnation’ and a possibility of elevation offered by the theatre performance. Surrounded by a refined lighting and sound apparatus, the actor-dancer acts in a multi-sensorial context within which a new poetics of space unravels. Reflecting upon these elements, the paper intends to offer a reconstruction of the genesis and creative process of the performance, also comparing it with some of Barba’s previous works and with his theatrical career.