EIGHTY FOUR YEAR TREE

 Eighty Four Year Old Tree

Tree in front of Odin Teatret (2019) Photo by Praveen Bhole

I first approached Odin Teatret in 2006. Left for Holstebro from Copenhagen early in the morning. Reached there around 11 in the morning. It's their summer in September. When I reached the Odin Teatret, the sun was already in the sky. The building of the Odin Teatret stood still in front of me, bathed in daylight from head to toe. Alongside with an old leafless tree that rose like a horse, which I found incredibly theatrical. It was painted white and its branches that approached to the sky appeared to me as roots from the upside-down. It reminded me of a poem by Marathi poet Sadanand Rege:

A tree is budding in my mind in an inverse direction,

should I tie a swing on it?

If I tie myself to its trunk,

wouldn’t my feet touch the sky?

This tree does not just an analogy of the journey of the Odin teatret, but also is a symbol of the life- expedition of Odin’s creator Eugenio Barba. Eugenio was born in the southern town of Italy. After completing his high school education, he comes to Norway, the other end of Europe. He completes his education at university while repairing roofs for bread. When it gets troublesome for him to understand the language on the foreign soil, he heads to a multilingual library and reads whatever he can find in Italian and French. After reading Romain Rolland’s Ramakrishna Paramahansa, gets captivated by the idea of visiting India. As the travel cost being too high, he decides to take a job as a sailor on a merchant ship. After reaching to India roams in Gangaghata where Ramakrishna used to walked. After watching Andrzej Vajda’s  Ashes and Diamonds in Norway, he falls in love with Poland. Goes to Poland with the help of UNESCO’s scholarship. However, he cannot  fit in in their education system there, so instead he wanders through the villages and eventually finds Grotowski! He joins Grotowski as an apprentice. He accepts Grotowski as his Guru despite the fact he is just 3 years older than him. As per Grotowski’s suggestion Eugenio again comes to India and studies Kathakali. But when rejected to enter Poland again, he returns to Norway. With the rejected students of National Theatre School of Norway he begins his own Odin Teatret. After gathering eight young people, works on weekdays and rehearses and trains on weekends with them. With no certain play in mind and without a single clue about when the performance would take place or if the performance would take place, they all kept training and rehearsing. Which must be hard for any theatre worker around the world, but Eugenio still insists to work that way.  At last after a play was ready, they decide to perform it all over the Europe. In their way, when they stop by a town named Holstebro, the town people insist them to stay in Holstebro as there were no such theatrical and cultural activities before in their town. Without any hesitation they accept their offer and moves in in a stable. They are working there since last 56 years. They didn’t only work in theatre, instead they explore other fields that are related to theatre. Mainly training. Any organisation that conducts theatrical training has two motives: one, we have done enough theatre now, now we will teach you. Yes, we will call it as spread, extension, promotion, etc, etc, but we will teach you! And another is of course to earn money. While others concentrate on the outer picture, Odin tries to work on the actors’ essentials. The training in Odin is not centrifugal, but is centripetal. Means not training others, but to themselves and lifelong. Odin Teatret has many experienced actors. If we set aside Carolina and Louis the only young actors in Odin, who have joined Odin few 5-6 years before. Although they were connected with the Odin 5-6 years before joining, everybody else has been in Odin for more than 20 or 30 or 40 years. Elsa Marie, who was there with Eugenio from the inception of the Odin, has been there for 56 years alongside with Barba. Eugenio recently directed a play ‘Deaf Man’s House’, Elsa Marie is one of the actors of that play. In conclusion, all the actors from the Odin Teatret, junior or senior, design their own training programms and follow them to train themselves.  So to motivate our actors to do so. So, self-training is one of the activities. To organise the biannual festuge (village fair) for the village Holstebro, the village which had provided the shelter to the Odin to pay their debt. To organise Barters in slums, refuge colonies, old-age homes, schools, etc., barter is the special activity initiated by Eugenio for the people who are not exposed to the organised performances of music, dance and theatre. The actors from Odin create special performances for this activity and perform for these spectators. But not free. The only expectation from the spectators is the songs, dances by them in return. Performance in lieu of performance: Barter system. The Odin actors enthusiastically learn the songs and dances from the community. So the training continues. Besides, they make films on training and performances. Odin has its own production house. Initially, they used to publish journal in Danish language. One of the issues was about the work and philosophy of Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio’s master. The same was then translated into english as a book. We now know it as: Towards Poor Theatre, a seminal book on and by Grotowsky. For more than 40 years, the copyrights of the book were owned by Odin Teatret but then they sold to the Grotowski institute for 1 Euro.  The ceremony of giving back was rather a ritual. Eugenio has penned his research and speculations into many books. Although he doesn’t stops there, instead he encouraged his other actors to write. He has founded International School of Theatre Anthropology, ISTA in 1989. The school is dedicated to study the common principles in various performing traditions. The study centre for the theatre laboratories in Europe is run in association with Aarhus University in Denmark, the Icarus publishing house for translating theatre related books into English language from non-English languages, this project is being conducted in association with Malta University of Italy and Grotowsky Institute of Poland. He also initiated NTL: a group of experimental theatre institutes from Scandinavia which runs activities like Thursday poetry, guest performances, meetings, seminars, workshops, etc. Forty years ago, he had undertaken the project of the networking of the theatre activities in Europe and in Latin America in the name of Third Theatres Network. And today, not only the institutes from that network, but many more institutes encouraged by the third theatre are self supported and working extensively like their peer - the Odin. Apart from these, workshops, performances throughout the year either at Odin or ‘actually’ anywhere in the world, and innumerable conferences, seminars, gatherings, festivals - so many activities. It all seems impossible, like any legend. I asked once to Eugenio, why so many activities, aren’t these tiring? And he replied in his signature intensive manner - to do the theatre is the first priority.  If you do the same, monotonously, it becomes stale. If you wan it to keep fresh at the core, you have to do something or other around it. All these things provides energy to do your theatre and keep your liking about theatre fresh. Don’t allow you to became banal.

But it needs money to do all these things. Anyone working in theatre, anywhere in the world, cries about money at first stage. Eugenio has his stands clear even about this. Theatre must be done professionally, but nothing should be done only for the sake of profession. Do only what you want to do. Then how you will survive? Ask for grants, fellowships, fundings. Again, don’t play with your vision and mission just for getting fundings. On ‘your’ terms only. Otherwise, wonder across the Globe - teach, conduct workshops. When you will have enough money, start a new play!  

This is happening from last fifty-six years. Odin has the performances of their more than twenty plays/work-demonstrations in their repertory, besides they are rehearsing for their new play: Ishi (They changed its title recently to Thebes in the Time of Yellow Fever). All Odinians, who are enjoying their swing rides attached to the tree, which has upward roots and downward branches, are in the phase to touch their feet to the sky. The top to bottom theatrical tree who has given birth to Odin, has becomes eighty four years old.

Birthday greetings to Eugenio.

• Praveen Bhole 

(Translated from Marathi by Chinab)

Eugenio Barba (2019) photo by Praveen Bhole

Eugenio & Praveen (2006)

Praveen & Eugenio (2018)

Tree in Moon's Garden at the Odin (2019) Photo by Praveen Bhole

Odin's logo (2006) Photo by Praveen Bhole