“Our first meeting with Odin was actually a few years ago. We had heard of them, read some books and seen some performances, but the fundamental meeting for us came only in 2013, at Teatro Rasi in Ravenna, on the occasion of the celebration of thirty years of Teatro delle Albe.
On that occasion we saw Great Cities under the Moon and we were lucky enough to attend a meeting in which Eugenio showed us his great openness and curiosity towards all forms of live performances, even the more hybrid ones created by young artists like us. And so we decided to come up with a ploy as well and do what we could to get to know them more closely.
After corresponding for a few months with Julia Varley we first landed in Holstebro in the fall of 2014. Our request was just to be able to be close to them, but in response Julia offered us to go there in residence to finish the production we were working on at the time, On the difficulty of telling the truth, a reading-concert based on Bertolt Brecht’s essay Writing the truth: five difficulties, written by the German playwright in 1934 when he was in exile in Denmark itself, shortly after Hitler came to power. It was a text we were strongly inflamed by, so much that we decided to put it at the center of our research on the interaction between voice and sound, and allow it to still speak to the present by breathing life back into it on stage.
Those weeks working in residence at the Odin were invaluable to us. We were able to enjoy the concentration that a unique place like that can give to work. We stayed in the room in which Grotowski used to stay and worked in the room in which the Odin spent countless hours, and all of that had something sacred for us, who in life, on the other hand, are accustomed to profane the gods. We fed at the archives, alternating moments of study with long sessions of work in the hall, in a dense atmosphere, pregnant with the stories and lives of all the men who breathed within those walls and who in those same days inhabited them. The Odin all was with us of incredible generosity, leaving us almost embarrassed at times. Many actors and collaborators came to follow our rehearsals, giving us insights and advices. After the play’s debut, we met Eugenio again in his studio, and before filling us with valuable readings for the return trip, he told us: “You have created a shape as precise as a diamond. Try now to surprise yourself with something that will also surprise the audience. Go against yourselves.” And this is what we tried to do once we returned to Ravenna, adding a short scene that abruptly disrupted the course of the performance, enriching it with meaning and questions for the spectator. But this fundamental advice continues to accompany us to this day: when we are constructing a performance we always remember it and in our own way we put it into practice within our works.
Thinking about it in retrospect, one of the greatest gifts was that we changed our way of looking: after that encounter we never saw a performance in the same way again: our gaze became more precise, careful, sharp as a scalpel. Another important gift, on the other hand, was to offer us the tangible embodiment of the ethical ideal of group work that we have always pursued. Seeing it implemented through concrete choices and actions, every day, for more than fifty years, has given us strength and courage, making us feel less alone even in the darkest moments.
Our relationship with Odin over the years has grown through many other experiences, which have led us to return to Holstebro, to follow them at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław or around Italy, whenever possible.”