Presentation
The Odin Teatret Archives (OTA) collect documents,
filmed materials, audio materials and photographic materials. They
were established in 2008, conceived and designed by Mirella Schino
and Francesca Romana Rietti, initially within the CTLS (Centre
for Theatre Laboratory Studies, founded in 2004 in
collaboration with the University of Århus), later as an autonomous
organism.
"Historical" archives
The OTA are "historical" archives.
Every theatre - and every institution - has archives to conserve
documentation of its on-going activities, more generally its
current life. These sorts of "current" archives often
include also memories of the past (generally as press reviews).
There exists however a second type of archives, generally named
"historical" archives. "Historical" archives aim to retrieve and
make available for consultation all the documentary material of an
institute, in this case a theatre. Odin Teatret documentary
materials comprise letters, manuscripts, contracts, notes,
discarded items or film cuts, diverse materials for audiovisual
documentation, audio recordings. They also include work journals,
drawings, estimates for big projects and daily accountings,
personal journals, versions or proposals for the texts of
performances, sheet music, administrative reports, invoices. The
materials are often apparently insignificant; they are however
unique: they cannot be found outside Odin Teatret (as is the case
for a press clipping, a magazine, a book, or a film).
The OTA are retrieving and classifying this documentary
material, which was partly stored in the theatre, partly in Odin
people's houses, and partly in Holstebro Museum.
The Team
The work at OTA is managed by an international team of scholars,
directors, actors, filmmakers and IT specialists who work by turns;
besides collecting and classifying the materials, they conceive new
research issues and projects connected to the
archives. The team is composed by: Mirella Schino (Roma Tre
University) who is the archives' coordinator; Claudio Coloberti,
responsible for the audiovisuals archives; Francesca Romana Rietti,
responsible for the documents archives; and Valentina Tibaldi,
responsible for the OTA website. The OTA also benefit from
the work of a regular group of collaborators: Chiara Crupi, Lluis
Masgrau, Pierangelo Pompa, Lucia Repašská and Gabriella Sacco.
For a complementary memory
The apparently most ephemeral documents - such as letters, notes
and discarded materials - can become the most important testimony
of the past. Although more incomplete than a book, they maintain
the mobility and randomness of life in the making. They were not
written to hand down an opinion or insight, and they are not
affected by the fact that the results are known, nor by convictions
or theoretical systems. They were not originally intended to
document: they only do so a posteriori.
These are crucial documents even in the case of a theatre like
the Odin, on which much has been written. Not only do they
complement books or films, but they maintain alive shadows and
uncertainties. They allow for a constantly evolving reading or
vision, a different memory, not frozen by the effect of
results.
Inventories
The Odin is still an active theatre and it is thus possible to
equip the diverse documents of its historical archives with
explanations and accounts by the people who lived those events.
For this reason, in addition to collecting and organising
documentary materials, the OTA are in the process of building an
"inventory". An "inventory" is a list of stored documents, to which
considerations or quotations from the most important documents are
gradually added, as well as all the necessary or useful information
to reconstruct the context of the events, or to give information on
Odin Teatret work logics or on the people involved.
The inventories can be consulted on-line on the OTA website.
They are not conclusive, as they are renewed at every stage of the
work.
Who can make use of the archives
Odin archives are not only meant for consultation by
theatre-makers or theatre scholars.
From the point of view of anthropological, historical or
sociological studies, theatre is increasingly considered as a
possible access key to areas of the human being difficult to
approach. It can be a useful guide in the exploration of
changes affecting not only theatre, but also ways of thinking,
values and mentality. These transformations often touch upon the
affective dimension - feelings, values, emotions. These fields of
study are interesting for historians and anthropologists too, as
they concern complex social and artistic relationships - for
example, that between a theatre and the town or the socio-political
context in which it acts, or the relationships within a theatre
collective.
From this point of view, the value of Odin Teatret archives can
be applied to numerous fields of study. For example, the Odin has
been a prototype and an international model for a specific sort of
theatre training practiced by "theatre groups" which, from
the point of view of social, artistic and affective relationships,
are different from traditional "companies" and from the great
ensembles of the innovative theatres. This is another field of
interest not exclusive to theatre scholars. The OTA staff
retrieves, catalogues and makes available also materials concerning
areas which are often difficult to record, so that these documents
may be used for scientific research in different fields, whether
theatre-related or not.
The OTA set out to organize its wealth of documents so they may
be useful for:
a) the study of the history of one
of the longest standing and most significant theatre groups of the
second half of the 20th century;
b) the study of the relationships
affecting the theatre life of one generation;
c) the study of the changes in the
sphere of affectivity and values which do not only concern theatre
activity;
d) the study of human
relationships, using theatre as a tool for anthropological or
sociological research.
Living archives
Besides collecting, cataloguing and storing diverse documentary
materials, the OTA also create new materials for documentation. An
example of this parallel activity is the "training project"
developed by OTA since 2009. This project aims at collecting and
making available for consultation a homogenous group of "oral
sources", i.e. accounts on training by Odin actors. This is not
simply training documentation. For every actor who has developed a
personal training for a long time, training is daily, rigorous,
logical, consequential, continuous and elastic. Talking about it
can be a way to reveal the most private and deep aspect of one´s
relationship to theatre. By listening to descriptions of what is
apparently the most technical aspect of theatre acting, one can
come in contact with its most immaterial features.
In 2010 OTA launched the "project Judith" to map the
diverse autonomous layers of the work from which one of the longest
standing Odin performances was born in 1987: Judith, with
Roberta Carreri, directed by Eugenio Barba. Starting from
audiovisual materials produced by and stored at the Odin, commented
on and explained by the actor, her director and the film director
thirty years later, this project is a testimony of the
metamorphosis of the creative process which, proceeding from
training through a series of intermediate phases, leads to the
construction of a new performance.
The library
The Odin has created a theatre library, alongside the archives
and connected to them, comprising about four thousand volumes in
more than twenty languages. The library has been built starting
from a series of donations: the Eugenio Barba collection, the Tage
Hind collection, the Halfdan Rasmussen collection, the Ove Sprogøe
collection, the Agnete Strøm collection and the Torgeir Wethal
collection. These donations make the library an important
documentary source for the cultural interests of the donors
(writers and artists, within and outside the Odin). Moreover,
the library receives about 100 magazines representing the major
theatre publications from all over the world.
