The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presented A Conversation with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley / Odin Teatret, livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Tuesday 30 May 2023 at 9:30 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 11:30 a.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 12:30 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
Join us for a talk with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley about their current projects. The 2022 Living Archive Floating Islands project, conceived by Eugenio, will be installed this year at the Bernardini Library in Lecce, Italy. Eugenio donated his personal library as well as his personal collections relating to his artistic work to the Polo Bibliomuseale in Puglia. The Fondazione Barba Varley now aims at promoting, researching, and studying the significant and highly influential history of Odin Teatret, the Third Theatre, as well as Eugenio’s life and artistic career. Eugenio, who was born in the Salento region of Puglia in Southern Italy, credits the landscape and people of Salento as one of his most significant influences.
The conversation will also touch on the Transit Next Forum—Theatre and Women, a collective created by Julia to raise opportunities for women in theatre and increase the awareness of women’s contribution to contemporary theatre. With its local home in the town of Holstebro in Denmark, the purpose of the global Transit Next Forum operates in close contact to the Magdalena Project and its vast network.
Eugenio Barba: Eugenio Barba (born 1936) is artistic director and founder of Odin Teatret. During the past fifty-six years he has directed more than seventy productions with Odin Teatret and the intercultural Theatrum Mundi Ensemble. In 1979 he founded ISTA—International School of Theatre Anthropology. His unique work method has been developed from his friend and colleague Jerzy Grotowski’s physical actors’ training and voice work, and together with Odin Teatret he has developed the “barter,” a way of exchanging cultural expressions with a community within the structure of a performance.
Julia Varley: Julia Varley (born in 1954 in London) joined Odin Teatret in 1976. Apart from acting she is active in directing, teaching, organizing, and writing. At the age of three she moved to Milan, Italy, where she did her schooling, including philosophy studies at Milan University. With Odin Teatret, Julia teaches in schools and universities and has synthesized her experience in four work demonstrations: The Echo of Silence, The Dead Brother, Text, Action, Relations, and The Flying Carpet.
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