Odin Teatret: 60 Years of Theatre

Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley

A Character That Cannot Die: a film by Claudio Coloberti in collaboration with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley, 2019 (35 min.)

Mr Peanut is the skull-headed giant that Odin Teatret created in the 1970s to evoke Jimmy Carter, the US president who had made his fortune in the peanut industry. His many subsequent transformations turned this character into an icon of the work of a company that is as politicised as it is far removed from political theatre.

The Flying Carpet: demonstration by Julia Varley (60 min.)

“Text is a carpet that has to fly far away.” This sentence is the premise for a demonstration in which the actress Julia Varley works through the text fragments she has performed over the past fifty years with Odin Teatret.  

Conversation with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley (60 min.)

One of the most brilliant theatre creators of the last century and his closest collaborator talk to the public about inner truth, introspection as well as physical and vocal work, the foundations of acting ever since Stanislavsky.

All three activities will be conducted in Spanish.

Eugenio Barba (Italia, 1936) emigrated to Norway in 1954 and worked for several years as a welder in a mechanical workshop and two years as a sailor. He studied directing in Poland (1961-64) at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and Teatr 13 Rzędów in Opole, directed by the young Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen. On his return to Oslo in 1964, he founded Odin Teatret, which moved to Holstebro, Denmark, in 1966. He has directed 83 performances with Odin Teatret and the intercultural ensemble Theatrum Mundi. In 1979, he founded the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), a travelling laboratory for comparative studies based on the principles of acting technique, dubbing this field of studies “theatrical anthropology”.

Barba has worked innovatively in all fields of theatrical culture: artistic creation, theoretical reflection, transmission of techniques and professional knowledge, historical memory, scientific research, use of the theatre in the community as interaction, barter and the development of relationships between different ethnic and social groups. He has conveyed his vision and experience in 24 books translated into many languages. His artistic and scientific research has been acknowledged with honorary doctorates from the universities of Aarhus, Ayacucho, Bologna, Havana, Warsaw, Plymouth, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Tallinn, Cluj-Napoca, Edinburgh, Shanghai, Brno, and the Peloponnese.

Julia Varley is best known as an actress with Odin Teatret because of her vocal work and commitment to the affirmation of women in theatre through The Magdalena Project network, the Transit Festival and The Open Page publications. She was born in London in 1954 but moved to Milan with her family at the age of three. In 1976, she joined Odin Teatret in Denmark and worked as an actress in both theatre and street performances, both as part of a group and solo, all directed by Eugenio Barba. Since 1978, Julia Varley has taught in schools and universities, given seminars and followed theatre groups and artists around the world. She has directed 21 performances with various companies and has published several books, including Stones of Water. In 2020, she founded the Fondazione Barba Varley with Eugenio Barba to support artists in disadvantaged situations from the perspective of race, gender, political opinion and social affiliation.