The Odin Teatret Archives

The Odin Teatret Archives presents collections from the archives of one of the foremost reference points in global theatre. Letters, notes, work diaries, articles, and a wealth of photographs all chart the daily activity that underpins the life of Odin Teatret, telling the adventurous, complex stories which have produced the pioneering work that defines Odin's laboratory approach to theatre. Odin Teatret have been at the forefront of theatrical innovation for over fifty years, devising new strategies for actor training, knowledge sharing, performance making, theatrical alliances, and ways of creating and encountering audiences. Their extraordinary work has pushed boundaries between Western and Eastern theatre; between process and performance; and between different theatre networks across the world. In this unique volume, Mirella Schino brings together a never before seen collection of source materials which reveal the social, political, and artistic questions facing not just one groundbreaking company, but everyone who tries to make a life in the theatre.

Focusing on Odin Teatret's latest work, this discussion is updated by drawing on fresh research. The group's productions since 2000 are included and the book offers a reassessment of Odin's actor training. Its community work and legacy are discussed and Barba's intercultural practice is viewed alongside two major Theatrum Mundi productions.

Focusing on Odin Teatret's latest work, this discussion is updated by drawing on fresh research. The group's productions since 2000 are included and the book offers a reassessment of Odin's actor training. Its community work and legacy are discussed and Barba's intercultural practice is viewed alongside two major Theatrum Mundi productions.

This book investigates theories and practices shaped by a performance’s relationship to the archive. The contributions in the volume examine how the changing nature of performance practices has made it imperative to understand how the archive and archival practices could add to the performance work. They explore a variety of themes, including artistic engagement with the archive in both conceptual and material terms; physical, virtual and digital forms; publicly and privately collected; oral, written and digital ways; or organized and unorganized collections. Finally, the volume examines how archives are modelled on existing structure and the ways in which they can be brought into discourses and practices of performance making through engagement and contestation. A novel approach to performance theory, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of performance studies, media and culture studies, studies of technology and art as also literature and literary criticism.

This book focuses on the role of La MaMa Experimental Theatre within Avant-garde theater during the 1960s and 1970s. This study investigates the involvement of the Off-Off Broadway circuit in the Avant-garde experimentations both in the United States (New York specifically) and in Europe. This exploration shows the two-way influence – between Europe and the United States – testified by documents gathered in years of archival research. In this relevant artistic exchange, La MaMa (and Ellen Stewart as its founder and artistic director) emerges as a key element. La MaMa’s companies brought to Europe the American culture and the New York underground culture, while their members learnt European training techniques by attending workshops or taking part in the research of Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski, and Peter Brook, and brought their principles back to the United States. This book goes through a chronological path that presents some key cases of collaboration between the above-mentioned European masters and some La MaMa’s artists and companies: Tom O ’Horgan and La MaMa Repertory Troupe, the Open Theatre, Andrei Serban and The Great Jones Repertory Company, La MaMa Plexus. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theater and performance studies.

A collection of texts by Eugenio Barba reconstructing the history of his relationships with the Asian classical theatres. Interweaving stories of journeys, meetings, anecdotes, reflections and technical descriptions, the author exposes the phases and changes in a passion that covers the fifty years of his professional trajectory. Little known or unpublished texts are included together with widely diffused articles which have become classics. The result is a book which examines in detail an important chapter of the dialogue between East and West in the theatre culture of the twentieth century.

Eugenio Barba is recognized as one of the most important theatre practitioners working today. Along with the company he founded over fifty years ago, the world-acclaimed Odin Teatret, he continues to produce extraordinary theatre performances that tour the world, and his International School of Theatre Anthropology has greatly developed research into the craft of the actor. Now revised and updated, this volume reveals the background to and work of a major influence on twentieth- and twenty-first century performance. Eugenio Barba is the first book to combine: an overview of Barba’s work and that of his company, Odin Teatret exploration of his writings and ideas on theatre anthropology, and his unique contribution to contemporary performance research in-depth analysis of the 2000 production of Ego Faust, performed at the International School of Theatre Anthropology a practical guide to training exercises developed by Barba and the actors in the company. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.

This volume provides a fresh assessment of the pioneering practices of theatre directors Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba, whose work has challenged and extended ideas about what theatre is and does. Contributors demonstrate how each was instrumental in rethinking and reinventing theatre's possibilities: where it takes place – whether in theatres or beyond – and who the audience might then be, as well as how actors train and perform, highlighting the importance of the group and collaboration. The volume examines their role in establishing intercultural dialogues and practices, and the wider influence of this work on theatre. Consideration is also given to each director's documentation of their practice in print and film and the influence this has had on 21st-century performance.