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.
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.