ICARUS PERFORMANCE PROJECT (MALTA)

I set up Icarus Performance Project in 2001 but my theatre roots go back to 1989 when I joined a company by Maltese theatre practitioner John J. Schranz. Schranz was inspired by Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, as well as by Jerzy Grotowski’s work. It was also through Schranz that I came to know about and work with Ingemar Lindh, a former pupil and assistant of Etienne Decroux who went on to found his own company the Institutet för Scenkonst. Lindh formed part of Barba’s ISTA in the 1980s. In the early 2000s I also followed the work of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. Since 2007, I have been involved with Odin Teatret and the Grotowski Institute as a co-partner of Icarus Publishing Enterprise – the name of which was adopted precisely from my company, Icarus Project, on the suggestion of Eugenio Barba. It was therefore this network of theatremakers that inspired me to do theatre, and which influenced my formation as a practitioner, and which continue to shape my processes as teacher and scholar, even in the context of my work with Icarus Project which serves as a platform for my practice-as-research in the space between training and performance.