Julia Varley
Julia Varley is known in particular for her work as an actress of Odin Teatret, for her vocal work, and for her commitment to the affirmation of women in theatre with The Magdalena Project network, the Transit Festival and the publications of The Open Page. Her difficulties and constraints have always been a creative impulse for her, based on the power of vulnerability and the need to build environments for development and exchange with horizontal structures and a vision that realises a politics with artistic and cultural means.
Born in London in 1954, at the age of three she moved with her family to Milan, Italy, where she did her schooling, including studying philosophy at Milan University. In 1971, always in Milan,
Julia Varley joined Teatro del Drago, an amateur theatre group inspired by the Bread and Puppet Theater, participating in various performances in peripherical neighbourhoods, political demonstrations,schools, factories and popular fêtes. Julia was also responsible for the theatre activities of the Circolo la Comune and for the theatre school in the occupied house of Santa Marta.
In 1976 Julia Varley joined Odin Teatret in Denmark as actress in ensemble, solo, indoor and street productions all directed by Eugenio Barba (Anabasis, J.S. Bach, The Million, Ashes of Brecht, The Gospel According to Oxyrhincus, Talabot, The Castle of Holstebro I and II, Rooms in the Emperor’s Palace, Kaosmos, Inside the Skeleton of the Whale, Doña Musica’s Butterflies, Mythos, Ode to Progress, The Great Cities under the Moon, Andersen’s Dream, Don Giovanni all’Inferno, Ur-Hamlet, The Marriage of Medea, Killing Time, The Chronic Life, Ave Maria, The Tree, A Character that Cannot Die). Julia Varley’s main activity is still today as an Odin Teatret actress. She says that everything she knows comes from a way of thinking rooted in her feet and from the experience of creating, repeating, elaborating and sharing stage actions… READ MORE
