About the book

Stepping Stones is the book of a practitioner. It documents the work of a laboratory-based practice that investigated the principles of collective improvisation as a performance practice. Though the dynamics and mechanisms of collective work and improvisation have been amply researched in training and composition contexts, not so can be said in the context of performance. Ingemar Lindh’s research, which announces a resistance to choreography, fixed scores, and directorial montage, has significant implications for the practice and theory of performance in a post-dramatic age.

Stepping Stones is, to quote Lindh himself, ‘a book not written but spoken’ in the sense that it is a collection of transcripts and writings by and about Lindh. The first two chapters are based on a transcript of a workshop held in Porsgrunn (Norway) in 1981. In these chapters Lindh’s unique work on performer process (including the adaptation of isometric training for actors) is expounded in the context of his views on theatre. Chapter 3 is made up of two letters to a friend, the first detailing Lindh’s artistic biography and the second commenting on the knowledge acquired in the process. Chapter 4 is an interview with Lindh by Paolo Martini with a focus on the ethics of his aesthetics. Chapter 5 is a chronology by Magdalena Pietruska of the Institute för Scenkonst’s twenty-five years of operation under the direction of Lindh.

Photographs by Maurizio Buscarino and Stefano Lanzardo provide visual documentation of the history and research of Lindh’s Institutet för Scenkonst. The book also contains an introductory chapter by Frank Camilleri which places Lindh’s work within a historical context as well as features a glossary of terms, names, and performances. Stepping Stones was first published in Italy in 1998. A Swedish edition appeared in 2003.

About Ingemar Lindh

Was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, on the 21st of February 1945.  His search for a concrete base for the work of the actor, a question ignored by the Swedish theatre of the time, takes him from theatre school (Skara Skolscen) and some work at the City Theatre of Stockholm, to dance school (Stora Teaterns Ballettskola of Gothenburg and Ballettakademien of Stockholm), and, eventually, on to L'Ècole de Mime of Etienne Decroux in Paris.  He studies with the founder and master of Corporeal Mime for two years and then becomes his assistant... Read more…

(original title «Pietre di Guado»)

About the others writers in the book:

Roger Rolin: Swedish actor and pedagogue in Institutet för Scenkonst since 1978.

Magdalena Pietruska: Polish actress, pedagogue and biographer in Institutet för Scenkonst since 1974.

Paolo Martini: Italian actor in Studium Actoris since 1989. Has being pupil and very briefly (1989) actor in Institutet för Scenkonst between 1984 and 1989. In 1994 took initiative to help Ingemar Lindh rewriting the original manuscript behind this book to a more complete and up-to-date version of it. Paolo Martini is the editor, together with Magdalena Pietruska and Roger Rolin, and the graphic designer of the original italian edition of the book. 

Frank Camilleri: after a long process of translation cured by Benno Plassmann and Marlene Schranz with the assistance of Magdalena Pietruska, the book was finally edit by Frank Camilleri which completed with an introduction and made it possible to be published. Frank Camilleri joined the University of Kent in September 2008 after serving as Academic Coordinator of the Theatre Studies Programme at the University of Malta from 2004 to 2008. He is Artistic Director of Icarus Performance Project – a theatre laboratory practice that investigates the space between training and performance processes.

About the publishers:

Bandecchi & Vivaldi: Italian printing house/publisher in Pontedera,  dedicated to books of art an photography. Is the publisher for the Italian edition of the book, printed in July 1998 (postmortem) thanks to the efforts of Stefano Lanzardo and Paolo Martini.

Gidlunds Forlag: Swedish printing house/Publisher. Published the Swedish edition of the book in 2003.

Considering that 50% of all books in translation worldwide are from English while only 6% are translated into English, Odin Teatret (Denmark), The Grotowski Institute (Poland) and Theatre Arts Researching the Foundations (Malta) have created Icarus Publishing Enterprise whose purpose is to present in English texts by artists and scholars about the practice and vision of theatre as a laboratory. 

Icarus was the name of a schooner that in 1697 sailed from Civitavecchia with a cargo destined for a Venetian merchant resident in the international trading port of Smyrna. Its mythological name was intended paradoxically as a bringer of good luck to ward off shipwrecks. In its hold, the small vessel also carried a luxurious curtain never used before, a few painted scenes and a number of scripts and musical scores from a theatre erected in Rome by Queen Cristina of Sweden and torn down on the order of Pope Clement X.    

Similar to that schooner, Icarus Publishing Enterprise wants to ferry into an international dimension writings of theatre artists and scholars who, despite their value, risk a limited circulation because of the language in which they have been written.    

We know by experience that theatre studies are effective only if they succeed in piercing the wrappings of academic common places and inspire those wishing to do theatre. In the books that Icarus Publishing Enterprise will translate and publish, in addition to a knowledge of the past, seeds of future occurrences are hidden. Many think that the theatre has no future. This may be so. But one thing is certain: in the future there will surely be something that we are unable to imagine now, but that will be called theatre.

Odin Teatret (Denmark)    The Grotowski Institute (Poland)   
Theatre Arts Researching the Foundations (Malta) 

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