Alchemists of the Stage. Theatre Laboratories in Europe

What is a theatre laboratory? Why a theatre laboratory? This book attempts to answer these questions, focusing on the experiences and theories, the visions and the techniques, the differencxes and similarities of European theatre laboratories in the twentieth century. It studies in depth the Studios of Stanislavski and Meyerhold, the school of Decroux, the Theatre Laboratorium of Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen, as well as Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret. Laboratory theatres have rarely been at the centre of the news. Yet their underground activity has influenced theatre history. Without them, our very ideas of theatre, as shaped throughout the course of the twentieth century, would have been quite different. In this book, Mirella Schino recounts the vicissitudes of a group of practitioners and scholars who try to uncover the technical, political and spiritual perspectives behind the word “laboratory” when applied to the theatre. Italian edition: Alchimisti della scena. Teatri laboratorio del Novecento europeo, Ropma-Bari, Laterza, 2009.