 Eugenio Barba was born in 1936 in
Italy and grew up in the village Gallipoli. His family’s socio-economic
situation changed significantly when his father (a military officer) was lost to The War.
Upon completing high school at the military academy of Naples (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. He also took
a degree in French, Norwegian literature and History
of Religion at Oslo University.
In 1961 he went to Warsaw (Poland) to study theatre directing at the State Theatre School,
but left one year later to join Jerzy Grotowski, who at that time was the leader of Teatr
13 Rzedow in Opole. Barba stayed with Grotowski for three years. In 1963 he traveled to
India where he had his first encounter with Kathakali, a theatre form which at that time
had been overlooked by a significant majority Western theatre practitioners and scholars.
Barba wrote an essay on Kathakali which was published in Italy, France, the USA and
Denmark. His first book, about Grotowski In search of a Lost Theatre, came out 1965 in Italy and
Hungary.
When Barba returned to Oslo in 1964, he wanted to become a professional theatre director,
but as he was a foreigner, he was not welcome in the profession. So he started his own
theatre. He gathered a group of young people who had not passed their admission test to
Oslo’s State Theatre School, and created the Odin Teatret in October 1st,
1964. The group trained and rehearsed in an air raid shelter. Their first production Ornitofilene,
by the Norwegian author Jens Bjørneboe, was shown in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
They were subsequently invited by the Danish municipality of Holstebro, a small town in
the Northwest, to create a theatre laboratory there. They were offered an old farm and a
small sum of money to begin. Since then Barba and his colleagues have made Holstebro the
base for the Odin Teatret.
During the past forty five years Eugenio Barba has directed 71 productions, with Odin Teatret and with ISTA intercultural Theatrum Mundi Ensemble, some of which
have required up to two years of preparation. Among the best known are Ferai
(1969), Min Fars Hus (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) and The Marriage of Medea (2008).
Since 1974, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret have devised their own way of being present in
a social context through the practice of theatre "barter", an
exchange through performance with a community.
In 1979 Eugenio Barba founded ISTA, International School of Theatre Anthropology. He is on
the advisory boards of scholarly journals such as "The Drama Review",
"Performance Research", "New Theatre Quarterly" and
"Teatro e Storia". Among his most
recent publications, translated into several different 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) and in
collaboration with Nicola Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer
(Centre for
Performance Research/ Routledge), Arar el cielo (Casa de las Americas, Havana) and La conquista de la diferencia (Yuyachkani/San Marcos Editorial, Lima).
Eugenio Barba has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Århus, Ayacucho, Bologna, Havana, Warsaw, Plymouth, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires
and the "Reconnaissance de mérite
scientifique" from the University of Montreal.
He is also recipient of Danish
Academy Award, Mexican Theatre Critics' prize, Diego Fabbri prize,
Pirandello International prize, and the Sonning Prize by
the University of Copenhagen.
CV and selected bibliography - Eugenio Barba 
Speeches:
Havana, 2002 
Warsaw, 2003
 
The Sonning Prize, 2002
Eugenio Barba's Merits (Sonning Prize, 2000) |
