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Odin Teatret is a theatre group based in Holstebro, Denmark. It was founded by Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba in 1964. The Odin is also the base for ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology, founded in 1979, by Barba, and the Centre for Theatre Laboratory Studies (CTLS), founded in 2002.
In 1961, Italian theatre student Eugenio Barba left his studies at the Polish State Theatre School to join Jerzy Grotowski at Teatr 13 Rzedow in Opole. After three years with Grotowski, Barba travelled to India where he learned Kathakali, then returned to Oslo with the intention of becoming a theatre director.
As a foreigner in Norway he found this was not easy, so he formed his own company, Odin Teatret, in October 1964. The company members were young people who had failed to gain admission to the Oslo State Theatre School, and they rehearsed their first production in an air raid shelter.
In 1966, the Danish municipality of Holstebro invited Odin Teatret to create a theatre laboratory there, offering an old farm and a small sum of money. Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium was established as the umbrella organisation for Odin Teatret and all its activities.
Since 1984, Odin Teatret has been a self-governing institution, and today it has a permanent salaried staff of 18 people (including actors, technicians and administrative staff).
In 1979, Barba founded ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology as an itinerant university and multicultural network of performers and scholars whose common field of study is theatre anthropology.
Since 1990, ISTA in collaboration with the University of Bologna has organised the University of Eurasian Theatre, holding conferences and encounters of a theoretical-practical character. Another of the ISTA activities is Theatrum Mundi, a performance montage of scenes drawn from the repertoire of the physical scores of the Asian and Odin actors.
In 2002, the Centre for Theatre Laboratory Studies (CTLS) was established at Odin Teatret in collaboration with Aarhus University. As well as documenting and archiving all of Odin Teatret's activities, CTLS is researching the contribution of contemporary and historic theatre laboratories, promoting exchange between national and international theatre networks, and initiating seminars and conferences on theatre laboratories as a creative professional and theoretical environment.
Founding Director Eugenio Barba continues to lead the company, and some of the original actors are still with the company. Founding member Torgeir Wethal died in June 2010 making him the first Odin Teatret member to be buried in the Odin "family grave" in Holstebro.
The barter is an exchange of cultural manifestations and offers not only an insight into the other's forms of expression but is equally a social interaction which defies prejudices, linguistic difficulties and differences in thinking, judging and behaving.
THE TEAM
Eugenio Barba, Director
Nando Taviani, Literary Advisor
Søren Kjems, Administrator
Producers
Nathalie Jabalé, Anne Savage, Rina Skeel, Ulrik Skeel
Actors
Kai Bredholt, Roberta Carreri, Jan Ferslev, Donald Kitt, Tage Larsen, Else Marie Laukvik, Sofia Monsalve, Augusto Omolú, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Julia Varley, Frans Winther.
Særkærparken 144 ·
P.O.Box 1283 ·
DK-7500 Holstebro · Denmark
odin@odinteatret.dk
http://www.odinteatretarchives.com/
Here are few videos reflect some of their work.