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Letter from the Barba Varley Foundation

Foundation Letter

Beauty, vulnerability, stubbornness, rejection

We established the Barba Varley Foundation to actively promote the causes and values that have motivated our lives in the Odin Teatret.

This is confirmed by the life of Eleonora Duse, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Konstantin Stanislavski, Ellen Terry, Gordon Craig, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Helena Modrzejewska, Adolphe Appia, María Guerrero, Antonin Artaud e Bertolt Brecht.

These artists were able to imagine and sometimes create a form of theater that their contemporaries considered impossible. Today, we see them as pioneers who transcended the boundaries of theater, giving another dimension to our profession, which began as entertainment.

Lettera Fondazione Barba Varley

Our Foundation has its roots in this tradition of the impossible. It is a tradition that goes beyond a First Theater focused on the text and a Second Theater dedicated to experimentation. It resurfaces in the varied culture of the Third Theater groups and many other theaters operating in geographical, social, and artistic peripheries.

OurFondazione draws inspiration from the visions, interests, and fields of action of women and men who, from theLiving Theaterin the United StatesTeatr Laboratorium to Grotowski in Europa, fromLa Candelaria in America Latina to the Red Tent of the Teatro Karakumi in Giappone, have in different ways grafted the life of theater onto the reality of life.

Let us consider the theater groups and artists who, since the ‘70 have established themselves as autonomous cells of a new system of production and relationships, demonstrating the transformative function of theater for those who participate in its processes and those who enjoy its results.

Our Foundation has its roots in this tradition of the impossible. It is a tradition that goes beyond a First Theater focused on the text and a Second Theater dedicated to experimentation. It resurfaces in the varied culture of the Third Theater groups and many other theaters operating in geographical, social, and artistic peripheries.

OurFondazione draws inspiration from the visions, interests, and fields of action of women and men who, from theLiving Theaterin the United StatesTeatr Laboratorium to Grotowski in Europa, fromLa Candelaria in America Latina to the Red Tent of the Teatro Karakumi in Giappone, have in different ways grafted the life of theater onto the reality of life.

Let us consider the theater groups and artists who, since the ‘70 have established themselves as autonomous cells of a new system of production and relationships, demonstrating the transformative function of theater for those who participate in its processes and those who enjoy its results.

The Foundation identifies with certain transformative characteristics of theater:

  1. – Simplicity of action that embraces diversity and complementarity, and addresses the inexplicable and the complexity that surrounds us;
  2. – continuity and persistence of action, in an era in which there is an increasing tendency towards disposability;
  3. – a practical utopia that brings together individuals who think and act differently from the spirit of the times.
Theater can be an anthropological laboratory that subverts established ideas and practices. We believe that theater is politics by other means: those of Beauty, Vulnerability, Obstinacy, and Refusal. We started out in small amateur groups, Eugenio nell’Odin Teatret in Oslo and Julia nel Teatro del Drago in Milano. For more than half a century, our motivations have spurred us on not to give up. Today, they encourage us to launch this Foundation. Know how to use it, all of you who want to sow butterflies in the imagination of your viewers and those who will not be viewers.  

Holstebro-Roma, October 15, 2020