Theatre as Social Science: A Comparative Study of Eugenio Barba's Barter Performances and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots

Theatre as Social Science: A Comparative Study of Eugenio Barba's Barter Performances and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots IAN WATSON As the reappraisals of theatre's function and aesthetics by the likes of Stanislavsky , Meyerhold, Brecht, Artaud and Grotowski suggest, theatre has been under threat of becoming moribund and irrelevant for the beuer part of the twentieth century. With the rise of political and social conservatism in much of the Western world, this threat appears to have escalated as we approach the end of the millennium. If critics are to be believed, theatre in the United States, for example, lacks the dynamic character of the '970S or even the I980S, in ·addition to which, its audience base has been in decline during the past years, it has suffered massive reductions in government as well as corporate funding. and is faced with ever-increasing competition from mass media and the cinema. If the art of theatre is so threatened, what of the scholarship it generates? Is it as endangered a species as the stages that spawn it? It would seem to me that theatre has much to offer our understanding of the world. Technology and scientific discovery may improve our material lives, but it is often only the arts which humanize. And theatre, through its roots in performance, is ideally positioned to provide a bridge between at least the social sciences and this humanization. If one takes the likes of Milton Singer, Clifford Geertz, or Victor Turner at their word, for instance, performance, especially what is commonly referred to as "cultural performance," plays a central role in how a culture conceives, narrates, and contextualizes itself.' These scholars, and others like them, posit much ofhuman behavior to include a performative component into which many of the values, archetypes. taboos, and human relations ofparticular societies are encoded. As the term implies, the conceptual origins ofcultural performance lie in the theatre. But.this notion of performance stretches its parameters from the narrow confines of the stage into the broader arena of the socio-cultural. One such performance factor is the role of the text, as a comparative study Modem Drama, 39 (1996) 574 Theatre as Social Science 575 of an event of national significance in the United States, the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, and Eugenio Barba's barter performances demonstrates. BARTER Barter, a term Barba introduced in the early 19705, has its etymological roots in economic exchange. But in Barba's theatrical barter, the commodity of exchange is performance. In its simplest form, a barter entails one group of people performing for another, and rather than the second group paying money, it performs for the first group. A play is exchanged for songs and da~ces. a display of acrobatics for a demonstration of training exercises, a poem for a monologue, and so on. Barba and his theatre group, the Odin Teatret, have mounted barters in a variety of settings and among many different communities ranging from rural villages in Wales and Brittany to the Yanomami Indians in Amazonian Venezuela , from small towns in Europe, Latin America, and Asia to major cities like Montevideo, Bologna and Paris. Even though there are exceptions, most barters are typical of the one Barba organized in Bahfa Blanca, Argentina, as part of the 1987 International Group Theatre Gathering. In this barter, many of the groups from the Gathering worked together in the grounds of a large housing complex in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. All of the groups began their performances at the same time in different parts of the grounds, and gradually moved toward a parking lot at one end of the complex. The various audiences followed the performers to the parking lot where each theatre group presented a short performance . These presentations were followed by artists from the local community who had prepared an array of mostly traditional dances, songs, and poetry recitals to entertain both the visitors and their neighbors. THE LOS ANGELES RIOTS The 1992 Los Angeles Riots lasted six days, from April 29 to May 4. The immediate catalyst to the riots was the acquittal of the four police officers (Sergeant Stacey Koon, and officers Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno...