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MANIFESTO

Theatre gives us three basic possibilities as human beings.


To anyone who dedicates themselves to it with sincerity and rigor, theatre opens up numerous paths in search of their self and of the world. From research into the creative possibilities of our body and voice, to research into the human archetypes that we see embodied in everyday life, theatre can find sources of inspiration in any other field of knowledge, past or present.


Theatre also has the power to unite the people who do it. It does this by offering a space and a time in which everyone can silently dedicate themselves to the wounds that life inflicts to them. Through the sharing of a creative process, those who do theatre together have the possibility to transform these personal wounds into glimmers of light.


Finally, theatre has the power to open windows on worlds alternative to that of everyday life, worlds in which everyone, including the spectator, can find, sometimes unexpectedly, fragments of meaning that allow them to make sense of the mosaic of their life.


In human societies, many forces are slowly but steadily active. Deep transformations occur without us realizing it over the course of a lifetime. In a large part of the contemporary world, these forces tend to exalt the individual, his success and his opinion to the detriment of the community; they push towards the fragmentation of knowledge to favour its specialization, but to the disadvantage of its internal connections; they deepen the gap between arts and sciences, between body and mind, between rationality and spirituality.


Like an underground current, theatre has given us a way to resist these forces for millennia, reinforcing the role of some fundamental human constants. Doing theatre confronts us with the evidence that our thinking is embodied, since the mind is creative when the body is also creative. Theatre opens us to the idea that even in the strongest rationality there is spirituality and, sometimes, even superstition. It makes us aware that the fate of the individual is irremediably linked to that of the community, and vice versa.

 

Starting from these lessons, Sarvàn Teater sets itself the ideal of strengthening the relationship between creativity and knowledge, between rational thought and myths, between body and mind, between individual and community.


The Sarvàn or Wild Man is a myth of the Alpine tradition and other European mountain regions. The Sarvàn lives solitary in the mountain forests, dressed in skins, mosses and branches. He knows no distinction between knowledge and know-how and preserves practices and customs long forgotten by modern society.

 

On rare and fleeting occasions, the Sarvàn tried to pass on this knowledge to men, who often reacted with distrust and derision, pushing the Sarvàn to hide in the woods and avoid contact with the society of men. The Wild Man is not without culture or life rules. Rather, he represents the possibility of setting his own rules to pursue a deeper way of living and knowing.


Inspired by the tradition of the Third Theatre of Grotowski and Barba, Sarvàn Teater translates the myth into a concrete theatre pedagogy in order to bring the Wild Man back into contact with the rest of society.

 

Out of the metaphor, Sarvàn Teater's theatre pedagogy aims to re-establish a link with the "shadow" part within each of us - represented by the wild man - which contains many aspects that our society often asks us to suppress, but which, in truth, offer numerous access points to knowledge. Examples of these are our need to play, the corporeal nature of our instinctive and emotional reactions, the capacity of listening to our inner rhythms, and our associative logics.

 

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