A Poetics of Third Theatre offers an in-depth, critical analysis of
Third Theatre, a transnational community of theatre groups and artists
united by a shared set of values and a laboratory attitude.
This book takes a genealogical account of Third Theatre as a concept and
a practice that draws attention to the historical Third Theatre
Encounters that have taken place across Europe and Latin America since
the 1970s. The work of renowned Third Theatre groups and organisations,
such as LUME (Brazil), Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru), Triangle
Theatre (UK) and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium - NTL (Denmark), are
explored to reveal how a multifarious poetics of Third Theatre is
manifest through these artists' approaches to performer training,
dramaturgy and cultural action. Three critical pillars - unconditional
hospitality, artisanal craft and (re)enchantment - are employed in order
to illuminate the shared ethos of the Third Theatre community and its
exemplification as a mode of cultural performance.
This informative text will be of great use to students and scholars of
drama and theatre studies, and its dedicated section on performer
training exercises offers the reader pathways into an experiential
engagement with Third Theatre craft.