Internal Workshop: The Third Theatre Methodology of Embodying Hunger

Enzo Cozzi in his essay “Hunger and the Future of Performance” argues on the performative impossibility of representing hunger except through a state of trance. In contrast, for Third Theatre, the representation of hunger is a political act of empowerment and activism. Badal Sircar, the founder-director of the Third Theatre group Satabdi, introduces the phenomenon of hunger “practically, non-verbally” that enables the participants to “leap to another state of being,” says Jo Trowsdale in the article “Sitting in Badal’s Circle: Artist and pedagogue; the theatre of Badal Sircar.” The process of effecting this transition in the Third Theatre is called the Internal Workshop. Drawing on personal interviews with Third Theatre practitioners, my experiences of being a participant-observer in three Third Theatre workshops, and similar records of experiences by practitioners of this theatre, as a counterpoint to Cozzi’s view, in this essay I elaborate on the Internal Workshop process as the Third Theatre methodology of embodying and representing hunger.