The winner of the Sonning Prize for the year 2000 is Italian born Eugenio Barba, the founder and director of Odin Teatret. The official ceremony will take place on Wednesday 19 April 2000 at Copenhagen University.
The Sonning Prize, comprising 500,000 Danish Kroner, is awarded every other year to a person who has made a significant contribution to European culture, the winner being elected by a committee established by the Senate of the University of Copenhagen. In 1991 it went to the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel, in 1994 to the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski, in 1996 to the German author Günter Grass and in 1998 to the Danish architect Jørn Utzon.
There are few who have kept theatre alive and at the forefront of European culture as has Eugenio Barba. In his capacity of theatre pedagogue, researcher and creator over a period of 35 years, he has succeeded in implementing his ideas in accordance with the changing artistic, political and social circumstances in such a way that theatre stands out as a vital source of artistic and cultural renewal.
In giving the Sonning Prize to Eugenio Barba we are honouring a man who is not merely a researcher into the fundamentals of the art of theatre, but is at the same time an outstanding creative artist. Through his art and his theatre research he has managed to carry his craft forward as well as connect his wide European background - reaching from Italy to Norway and from Poland to Denmark - with a worldwide network spanning the Far East, over Eastern and Western Europe as far as Latin America, and consisting of theatre people he has influenced and collaborated with. Eugenio Barba is an original artist and a true European in an age of globalisation, rooted in ancient culture yet with apprentices and collaborators around the world.

University of Copenhagen, 19 November 1999

Kjeld Møllgård
Rector

PRIZEWINNERS

1950 An extraordinary award was given to Sir Winston Churchill.
1959 Albert Schweitzer
1960  Bertrand Russell
1961  Niels Bohr
1962  Alvar Aalto
1963  Karl Barth
1964  Dominique Pire
1965  Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi
1966  Sir Laurence Olivier
1967  W. A. Visser´t Hooft
1968  Arthur Koestler
1969  Haldor Laxness
1970  Max Tau
1971  Danilo Dolci
1973  Karl Popper
1975  Hannah Arendt
1977  Arne Næss
1979  Herman Gmeiner
1981  Dario Fo
1983  Simone de Beauvoir
1985  William Heinesen
1987  Jürgen Habermas
1989  Ingmar Bergman
1991  Václav Havel
1994  Krzysztof Kieslowski
1996  Günter Grass
1998  Jørn Utzon