Eugenio Barba
Eugenio Barba was born in 1936 in Italy and grew up in the
village of Gallipoli. His family's socio-economic situation changed
drastically when his father, a military officer, was a victim of
World War II.
Upon completing high school at the Naples military college
(1954) he abandoned the idea of embarking on a military career
following in his father's footsteps. Instead, in 1954, he emigrated
to Norway to work as a welder and a sailor. At the same time he
took a degree in French, Norwegian Literature and History of
Religions at Oslo University.
In 1961 he went to Poland to learn directing at the State
Theatre School in Warsaw, but left one year later to join Jerzy
Grotowski, who at that time was the director of the Theatre of 13
Rows in Opole. Barba stayed with Grotowski for three years. In 1963
he traveled to India where he studied Kathakali, a theatre form
which was unknown in the West at that time. Barba wrote an essay on
Kathakali which was immediately published in Italy, France, the USA
and Denmark. His first book about Grotowski, In Search of
a Lost Theatre, appeared in 1965 in Italy and Hungary.
When Barba returned to Oslo in 1964, he wanted to become a
professional theatre director but, being a foreigner, he was unable
to find work. He gathered together a few young people who had not
been accepted by the State Theatre School, and created Odin Teatret
in October 1964. As the first theatre group in Europe, they worked
out the new practice of training as a total apprenticeship. They
rehearsed in an air-raid shelter their first production, Ornitofilene, by the Norwegian author
Jens Bjørneboe, which was shown in Norway, Sweden, Finland and
Denmark. They were subsequently invited by the Danish municipality
of Holstebro, a small town in north-west Jutland, to create a
theatre laboratory there. To start with, they were offered an old
farm and a small sum of money. Since then Barba and his
collaborators have made Holstebro the base for their multiple
activities.
During the past fifty years Eugenio Barba has directed 76
productions with Odin Teatret and with the intercultural Theatrum
Mundi Ensemble, some of which have required up to two years of
preparation. Among the best known are Ferai
(1969), My Father's House (1972),Brecht's
Ashes (1980), The Gospel according to Oxyrhincus
(1985), Talabot
(1988), Kaosmos(1993), Mythos
(1998), Andersen's Dream
(2004), Ur-Hamlet (2006), Don Giovanni
all'Inferno (2006), The Marriage of Medea (2008) and
The Chronic Life (2012).
Since 1974, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret have devised their
own way of being present in diverse social contexts through the
practice of the "barter", an exchange of cultural expressions with
a community or an institution, structured as a common
performance.
In 1979 Eugenio Barba founded ISTA, International School of
Theatre Anthropology thus opening a new field of
studies: Theatre Anthropology.
Barba is on the advisory boards of scholarly journals such as
"The Drama Review", "Performance Research", "New Theatre
Quarterly", "Teatro e Storia" and "Urdimento". Among his most
recent publications, translated into many languages,
are The Paper Canoe (Routledge), Theatre:
Solitude, Craft, Revolt (Black Mountain Press), Land
of Ashes and Diamonds. My Apprenticeship in
Poland, followed by 26 letters from Jerzy Grotowski
to Eugenio Barba (Black Mountain Press), Arar el
cielo (Casa de las Americas, Havana), La conquista de
la diferencia (Yuyachkani/San Marcos Editorial,
Lima), On Dramaturgy and Directing. Burning the House
(Routledge) and A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology
in collaboration with Nicola Savarese (Routledge).
Eugenio Barba has been awarded honorary doctorates from the
Universities of Århus, Ayacucho, Bologna, Havana, Warsaw, Plymouth,
Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Tallinn, Cluj-Napoca, Edinburgh
and Shanghai as well as the "Reconnaissance de Mérite
Scientifique" from the University of Montreal and the Sonning
Prize from the University of Copenhagen.
He is also the recipient of the Danish Academy Award, the
Mexican Theatre Critics' prize, the Pirandello International Prize
and The Thalia Prize from The International Association of Theatre
Critics (IATC).
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