Odin Teatret, besides concentrating on artistic expression
through performances, pedagogy and pure research, seeks to enliven
the relationship between socially distant individuals and
subgroups. Theatre becomes the vehicle to implement an active
culture through different activities which release interactions,
gathered here under the title of EVENTS. Listed below are some of
Odin Teatret's projects which reflect the contemporary role and
impact of a theatre laboratory in our multicultural society.
Theatre is the specific technique of putting into relation that
which is different by making it visible, and the FESTUGE (Festive
Week) is an example of how Odin Teatret attempts to
realise this in the community. Each Festuge involves the many
milieus of our town through a suggestive yet ambiguous theme,
confronting crucial local contradictions in the framework of a
culture without borders. In a process of empathy and reciprocity,
theatre gives dignity to different ways of living, interests,
activities and manifestations existing in a community, making them
interact beyond their cultural, racial, class or political
origins.
Abroad and at home, Odin Teatret has developed a particular
performance situation based on cultural exchange, which we call
BARTER. During a BARTER, Odin Teatret's actors
present their work to a specific milieu which, in return, pays with
expressions from its own culture: songs, music and dances,
biographical accounts, games, food samples, etc. A BARTER is a
social interaction that functions in spite of language barriers and
cultural differences. A BARTER may take place in crowded urban
districts or isolated rural zones, among immigrants, specific
ethnic or religious minorities, in hospitals, community centres,
prisons, schools, with the fire brigade, the police, a rock club,
rappers, a church and its parishioners, the patients of a mental
asylum, the children in a kindergarten, etc. A BARTER includes
elements that are not necessarily artistic in themselves, but
acquire a theatrical value and function, such as sports events,
religious ceremonies, fish auctions, military exercises and
manoeuvres. A BARTER revitalises the bonds of a professional,
religious, ethnical or random community, inducing the feeling of a
shared identity versus the 'foreigners' - the actors and their
culture.
TRANSFORMANCE is an activity that reaches
beyond usual theatrical spaces and conventions. It aims at the
transformation of a whole milieu - a school or any other
institution, a parish, a neighbourhood or a village. TRANSFORMANCE
presupposes the practice of theatre as interference, as a factor
upsetting the usual daily dynamics and relationships. In
TRANSFORMANCE theatre uses its manifold knowledge to free latent
energy in a milieu and bring about a constellation of unexpected
collaborative bonds. It is a total use of a theatre's know-how
concerning expressive communication, nonverbal information, contact
and the building of relationships, physical presence and decisional
skill, participation and group dynamics, tacit knowledge and its
transmission, ideoplastic processes (the capacity to transform
thoughts and feelings into disciplined actions and reactions),
artistic and practical targeting, intercultural collaboration,
planning, realisation, management and networking.
Some EVENTS focus on social groups or individuals who normally
benefit from less cultural support, such as the TRANSIT
FESTIVAL for women working in contemporary theatre all
over the world. Others enhance art forms confining with theatre,
like the POETRY EVENINGS during
which Danish and foreign poets read their texts interspersed with
theatrical and musical intermezzos.
GUEST PERFORMANCES include all the
presentations of visiting theatre groups according to Odin
Teatret's policy of hospitality, or of those theatre, music and
dance companies which come to Odin Teatret as part of their
national or international tours.
Odin Teatret has also developed a tradition of transforming
recurrent events and anniversaries into special occasions for
feasts and meetings, in the form of symposiums and festivals with
specific theme for invited international guests, local and
international spectators. These are gathered under the title of CELEBRATIONS.
THEATRICAL
INTERVENTIONS are the numerous activities which
involve the entire Odin Teatret or just a few actors. These range
from a planned yet unexpected parade surprising people in the
street for a spontaneous collective theatre experience, to the
opening of a cultural centre, the singing of a birthday song to a
deserving citizen, visiting a friend of the theatre, welcoming a
guest at the train station or enlivening a political meeting.