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With Dimitri, walking the stages of Physical theatre
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Dimitri Theatre SchoolAcademy for Physical Theatre
SUPSI
Founded in 1975 by the Swiss clown Dimitri, in 2002 the School be-came affiliated to the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Swit-zerland (SUPSI). It offers basic training in all fields related to Physical theatre. Its taught programmes include a three-year Bachelor of Arts’ degree and a Master of Arts’ degree in Physical Theatre. In addition, the institute conducts research and exploratory projects on the differ-ent aspects of Physical theatre. During the academic year, the school organises, in collaboration with guest teachers and renowned artists,
workshops and seminars for professionals as well as amateurs.
web:
www.teatrodimitri.ch/scuola/
Podcast:
www.ideatorio.usi.ch
There is a place, a village in fact, in Southern Switzerland, whose recent history has been more than anything else associated with the thea-tre and clowning. Verscio is this place: there one ‘does’ theatre and studies theatre. In Verscio, in the last few years, have been created and set up a Comic Museum, a clown park and a clown house, all of which inspired by the founder, Dimitri the clown. Established in the 1970s, this tiny kingdom of the dramatic arts attracts today hundreds of students from all over the world. Unique of its kind in Europe, Scuola Teatro Dimitri provides a blend of several dramatic traditions with an unmistakably ‘new’ component -- it stretches from commedia dell’arte to clowning, from pantomime to modern dance. And yet these theatre forms, which go under the name of Physical Theatre, are still struggling to find its own identity. This is the context in which was conceived a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, under the title “Clowning, Physical Theatre. Research into cultural and theatrical issues based on Scuola Teatro Dimitri in the context of cultural migrations to Southern Switzerland”. Scheduled to be completed in 2015, the study is directed by Scuola Teatro Dimitri and aims to collaborating with a number of other institutes, including the Uni-versity of Lausanne; the Schweizerische Theatersammlung in Bern; Folk-wang Universität der Künste, Essen; the Lecoq Drama School in Paris; and the University College, Oslo.
Ruth Hungerbühler, PhD, dean STD - SUPSI
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Far from being purely a place of higher education in theatre disciplines, Dimitri’s Theatre School has now become a centre for research and inquiry into the art and history of drama. Under the supervision of Richard Weihe, adjunct professor at SUPSI, and with the financial support of SNSF, this research project will enable us to analyse and define the foundations of Physical theatre.
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«Dimitri is the child of that migration which brought artists and intellectuals to Ticino, mostly from north of the Alps. The beating heart of his School is a theatre grounded on the human body
and physical movement, closely tied to both the so-called Physical Theatre and the figure of the clown. For this reason Dimitri is the perfect link between the different souls of this study. »
We can all picture in our heads what it means to do research in a chemistry or engineering laboratory. But the picture tends to blur, we waver somewhat when it comes to representing research in a theatre school. Yet this is the challenge that faces SUPSI, today: each department, in addition to its normal teaching activity, is expected to be active in re-search. This also applies to schools of artistic vocation such as the Uni-versity School of Music and the Dimitri Theatre School, both of which are affiliated to SUPSI. Conducting research in these contexts is anything but simple, or all sown-up: it involves a fair amount of mixing languages and skills; there is scientific research, but there is artistic research, too; and often those who are engaged in investigations need to resort to notions and methods pertaining to different disciplines: indeed, once again, a test for researchers of Scuola Teatro Dimitri!
“To begin with – Ruth Hungerbühler, dean of Scuola Teatro Dimitri, tells us – we want to provide a theoretical definition of Physical theatre; and we will do so analysing Canton Ticino as a destination of cultural mi-gration”. “As far as we know, all that has been written on the history of cul-tural migrations in Ticino in the early part of the 20th century – continues to explain Ruth Hungerbühler – gives us an account from the standpoint of German, Hungarian, or English immigrants; there have been no stud-ies yet revealing the perspective of the host community; we are missing research focused on the way Ticino’s society viewed its immigrants and how the latter settled and fitted in. We need studies that tell us, for exam-ple, about the reactions of the local communities – was there suspicion, was there intolerance on their part? Or rather, as we would be inclined to believe, did they look on the newcomers with a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude, as tolerant as the unaware or uninformed can be — receptive to the de-velopment of artistic, social, and cultural project characterized by inno-vation. The Monte Verità, with its communities of anarchic artists, is an outstanding example of it”. “Following up from this first stage of research and theoretical re-flection – Ruth Hungerbühler goes on explaining – on a more practical level we are going to attend, observe, and take notes on some artistic pro-ductions staged by our pupils. We want to understand how the artist ex-
plores in his work the various aspects of body language”. Our aim in part two of the project is to track down essential evidence to help advance not only current thinking about the clown figure but also the conceptual and theoretical analysis of the different forms of Physical theatre.
To begin with, therefore, the project will look at the social and artis-tic networks of immigrants who settled in Canton Ticino, while also study-ing the cultural policies of the Canton as a border area, from the middle of the 20th century. The idea is to reconstruct the context in which the Dim-itri Theatre and its school were created, a context built on migrations and meeting-points of cultures, where Dimitri’s own family played a promi-nent role. “These migratory movements – explains Demis Quadri, teacher and researcher at SUPSI – have been the source of energy behind the de-sire to break down all language barriers and to develop other languages such as that of the human body. This is a recurrent experience here in Verscio, where students from all over the world meet and live together. It is a situation which as such emphasises the differences, while it also shows how certain kinds of theatre, regardless of where they come from, manage to affect the local public”. In this sense, Dimitri’s Theatre School is an ideal laboratory to conduct research into these forms of artistic ex-pression. “Besides this kind of research in line with the classical criteria of scientific inquiry – Ruth Hungerbühler points out – we must also deal with artistic research; and, there, it is not so much a matter of acquiring new knowledge and transferring it to others, as of creating a different kind of learning, a knowledge that taps into the emotions and aesthetics. Take, for instance, a gesture: we can analyse it and understand it in scientific, anthropological, historical, and cultural terms. We can have a clear and transferable understanding of it, but if we can watch an actor perform this gesture on stage, it is quite another story – our understanding, our knowledge expands, and is enriched by it”. And this sort of knowledge can be investigated through artistic research. “Our work has only just begun. This type of theatre founded on body expression - concludes Ruth Hun-gerbühler – will prompt other research initiatives, other fronts; it’s hap-pening already, on themes ranging from education to learning processes, and to art-therapy designed to relieve distress in people affected by social and psychological disorders”. This is the road that Dimitri’s Theatre School intends to follow, bringing together art, research, and the need and desire to arouse emotions.
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SUPSI - Dimitri Theatre School
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A theatre that advances along the avenues of research, between art and scientific rigour
Project leader:
«We would like to heal the divide between the principles and notions of a theoretician and academic, and what the artist creates on stage.»
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Ruth Hungerbühler, PhDDean of Scuola Teatro Dimitri STD
Scuola Teatro Dimitri STD - SUPSIvia cantonale6653 Verscio+41 (0)91 796 32 09 (STD)[email protected]
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Graphic design, pictures and text by [email protected] version by Prof. Simona Cain PolliFocus on research can be downloaded from: www.ideatorio.usi.ch
