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ned or distilled as we say, the material is edited. I - as director - am responsible for the editing. The actors are responsible for their own material. This method frees us from the bonds of cause and effect. An actor can fix an improvisation and I might decide to cut out the middle and retain the only first and last parts. It's up to the actor to protect the soul of the now radically transformed improvisation. NOG: When an actor is improvising, do you allow him to work uninterrupted or do you try to direct the improvisation immediately? Eugenio Barba: No one interferes during an actons improvisation. An actor always has the right to complete his improvisation, to go to the end of the process of creating a journey in space and time, a visualisation of his own mental film. We work this way: the actor improvises. The improvisation is either written dowm by the actor's colleagues, down to apparently negligible details: the big toe of the left foot raised . . . Sometimes we use a video machine. The actor

must be able to repeat the improvisation, precisely, with no hesitations. This is an arduous and laborious process since it demands the actor absorb numerous actions and reactions from the outside, as it were. Actions ne may not be aware of having done. The process takes a lot of time. And so, at first, the actor feels stiff and mechanical. But when he reaches the point when the actions are fully absorbed and memorised - with their myriad different muscular tonicities - the improvisation becomes spontaneous again and regains the soul it originally had. At this point I begin to work on the material in accordance with certain basic principles. These have to do with the power each action must possess in regard to contrasts and oppositions evinced through the body of the actor ,and which must continually transform his presence. The time arrives when the actions of a particular actor must be put into relationship with the actions of the others. This meeting produces numerous associations and in-

terpretations that deepen our comprehension of the work. We don't have an a priori understanding of what the production is supposed to signify when we start. No thesis to propound. We never say beforehand, we want to express this. It is only at the end of this long process that something blossoms, something that I feel has power. It is not a question of logic but of power. The power of life. It is this power that I try to protect, in the actor, so that he can rediscover it every evening, repeat this miracle to the letter, something worthy of being seen. And it is a long and gruelling process, since every single action has gone through a succession of continuous metamorphoses. NOG: Is there ever a time you wish the process were shorter? That you could do something that would speed it up? Eugenio Barba: Wishful thinking. A purely abstract desire. Because I know' the process just has to be the way it is. You can’t get around it and you can’t make it go any faster. A child needs nine months be-

fore it can come into the world. Whenever we start a new production there is some defense mechanism in me that says; No. Let’s not try to do a new production. Let's wait. Find a way to postpone it. But once I begin, I accept that I have to get through it. The longer I am in it, the more I know that the end must be getting nearer. It’s exhausting, demoralizing. And then that sudden ecstasy when you glimpse the first far-off ray of light. 134

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