Eugenio Barba

Birth : 1936-10-29, Brindisi, Italy

History

Eugenio Barba is an Italian author and stage director based in Denmark. After completing high school at the Nunziatella military academy of Naples in 1954, he abandoned the idea of following his father into the military. Instead, in 1954, he emigrated to Norway to work as a welder and a sailor. He also took a degree in French, Norwegian literature, and history of religion at Oslo University. In 1961 he went to Warsaw in Poland to study theatre direction at the State Theatre School, but left one year later to join Jerzy Grotowski, who at that time was the leader of Teatr 13 Rzedow in Opole. Barba stayed with Grotowski for three years. Eugenio Barba created the Odin Teatret in Oslo 1964. The following year the Danish municipality of Holstebro invited Odin Teatret to create a theatre laboratory there.

Profile

Movies

The Art of the Impossible

Director/actor Eugenio Barba returns to Oslo, where he started Odin Teatret, to Opole, where Jerzy Grotowsky's " theatre of the poor" developed a new physical play style, to avoid communism's censorship. And to Holstebro, where Odin Teatrets presence has greatly influenced the city's development.

Itsi Bitsi

Director

Two young progressive people live together in the early 1960s. Their lives revolve around political activities, anti-nuclear actions, love, travel, music, drugs and poetry. And other issues of importance. That they believe in. But in spite of all these motions and movements they drift apart. And their story ends badly. One of the two, Eik Skaløe, the first beat poet singer in Danish, committed suicide in India 1968. The other, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, an Odin Teatret actress since 1966, reflects on her life today and, through the characters of her shows, compares it with visions and the events of that time.

Judith

Writer

A white deck chair, a large fan, a bonsai, combs of mother-of-pearl, a decapitated head carved out of wood, long hat pins to pierce its eyes and tongue and for adorning the hair, a red dressing gown, a white silk nightdress. Through the justification of the biblical story of Judith, the performance explores the theme of violence and vulnerability, plunging into an ocean of luminous and murderous eroticism.

Judith

Director