ODIN TEATRET

UR-HAMLET

A performance by Eugenio Barba based on Vita Amlethi by Saxo Grammaticus (1200 A.D.) UR-HAMLET: THEATRUM MUNDI

Ur-Hamlet is the result of Odin Teatret’s keen interest in acting technique. Instead of technique, we could say professional identity, and this identity does not necessarily coincide with the performer’s biographical-cultural one. Odin Teatret, whose actors are of different nationalities, has been a pioneer in this field, studying and presenting various western and non-western acting traditions in Holstebro. It started in 1966 with seminars on the actor’s professional know-how as practised by Jerzy Grotowski, Etienne Decroux, Jacques Lecoq, Dario Fo, Jean- Louis Barrault, Joseph Chaikin, Judith Malina and Julian Beck. In the beginning of the 1970s, Odin Teatret organised seminars involving Javanese and Balinese ensembles and artists (Sardono, I Made Pasek Tempo, I Made Djimat), Japanese Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki and Shingeki theatre (Hisao and Hideo Kanze, Mannojo Nomura, Sawamura Sojuro, Shuji Terayama) and India’s main classical forms of theatre-dance: Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Chhau and Kathakali. Besides the performances, the performers presented and commented the technical basis of their way of thinking and establishing a communicative relationship with the spectator. ISTA, International School of Theatre Anthropology, founded in 1979, widened this research and has grown in symbiosis with Odin Teatret. ISTA is a working environment characterised by a technical exchange between regularly returning artists and researchers of different genres and nationalities. In this “performers’village”, they compare and analyse the technical foundations of their styles in sessions lasting from two weeks to two months. From 1980 to 2005, fourteen ISTA sessions have taken place in Europe and Latin America. All of them ended with a Theatrum Mundi performance with musicians and performers from different cultures. Many of the ISTA members participate also in Ur-Hamlet. The work on Ur-Hamlet started in 2003 and continued in Holstebro and Copenhagen, then during the ISTA sessions of Seville (2004) and Wroclaw (2005), in the villages of Batuan and Ubud (Bali, 2004 and 2006) and, in its final phase, in Ravenna. Ni Made Srimpi, Cristina Wistari Formaggia and Julia Varley rehearsing Ur-Hamlet in Bali.

02 03 UR-HAMLET A performance by Eugenio Barba based on Vita Amlethi by Saxo Grammaticus (1200 A.D.) GAMBUH PURA DESA ENSEMBLE (Batuan, Bali) Actors/dancers and musicians: Cristina Wistari Formaggia (artistic co-ordinator), I Made Suamba (administrative co-ordinator), I Wayan Naka (musical co-ordinator), Ni Wayan Sudiani, Ni Wayan Nugini, Ni Nyoman Jumiati, Ni Kadek Ariantini, Ni Luh Nik Windasari, Ni Made Srimpi, Ni Made Partini, Ni Wayan Pia, I Wayan Bawa, I Ketut Karwan, I Nyoman Doble, I Wayan Purnawan, I Wayan Martawan, I Made Suteja, I Wayan Suamba, Ida On stage: Akira Matsui (Japan), Cristina Wistari Formaggia (Italy), Ni Nyoman Bagus Negara, I Wayan Lesit, I Ketut Rida, I Wayan Merta, I Ketut Suana, I Wayan Candri, I Wayan Bawa and 30 performers and musicians from the Gambuh Pura Sandi, I Made Budiana, I Wayan Lambih, I Wayan Rawa, I Made Renanta, I Made Desa Ensemble (Bali), Brigitte Cirla (France), Augusto Omolú and Cleber da Geten, I Wayan Berata. Paixão (Brazil), Annada Prasanna Pattanaik (India), Magnus Errboe (Denmark), Odin Teatret (Denmark) and the Foreigners' chorus (43 performers from 21 ODIN TEATRET (Holstebro, Denmark) countries) - Music: Composed and arranged by Frans Winther; classical Actors and musicians: Balinese and Indian songs - Scenic space: Luca Ruzza - Costumes: Jan de Kai Bredholt, Roberta Carreri, Jan Ferslev, Mia Theil Have, Julia Varley, Torgeir Neergaard and Odin Teatret - Light design: Luca Ruzza and Odin Teatret - Wethal. Sound: Cy Nicklin - Production director: Patricia Alves - Production assistants: Emanuela Bauco, Anne Savage - Photos: Claudio Coloberti - THE FOREIGNERS' CHORUS Poster: Luca Ruzza - Technicians: Hans Kobberø, Fausto Pro, Oscar Alonso Adrianna Kabza-Biernacka (Poland), Aeran Jeong (South Korea), Agnieszka Sánchez, Stefan Tarabini, Søren Lykkeager - Judy English translation: Sosnowska (Poland), Ana Sofia Monsalve Fiori (Colombia), Ana Laura López Barba - Director assistants: Julia Varley, Cristina Wistari Formaggia, Ana Morales (Mexico), Ana Woolf (Argentina), Aneta Stojnic (Serbia and Montenegro), Woolf - Administrative director: Søren Kjems - Literary adviser: Annamaria Talone (Italy), Antonello Motta (Italy), Audrey Finkelstein (Canada), Bruna Longo (Brazil), Calafia Montserrat Piña Juárez (Mexico), Carlos Carmona Nando Taviani - Eugenio Barba. Dramaturgy and direction: (Mexico), Carolina Paola Balduzzi (Argentina), Christina Kyriazidi (Argentina), Corina Oprea (Romania), Eugene Park Cofield (USA), Ewa Piotrowska (Poland), Francisco Villicaña Maldonado (Mexico), Fredric Villano (USA), Gabriella Sacco Odin Teatret thanks: The Italian Embassy in Jakarta, Atalaya Teatro, H.M. Berg, Trevor (Italy), Hirton Fernandes Jr. (Brazil), Jessica Bockler (Great Britain), Jon Hewitt Davis, The Centre for the Studies of Jerzy Grotowski, Jonah Salz, Mirella Schino, (Great Britain), Larick Samuel Huerta Gonzalez (Mexico), Linda Cunningham Annamaria Talone, Jesper Boldsen (Syddansk Universitet), Franco Masotti, Batuan Dalam (Great Britain), Liza Urbanová (Czech Republic), Maria Ficara (Italy), Marilli Desa, Ananda Cottages, the Municipality of Russi. Mastrantoni (Greece), Netta Plotzki (Israel), Noah Benezra (USA), Óscar García- Produced by: Odin Teatret, Hamlet Sommer, the Municipality of Elsinore, Ravenna Martín (Luxembourg), Paul Attmere (Great Britain), Pierangelo Pompa (Italy), Festival, KIT - Copenhagen International Festival. With the support of: Danish Arts Rachael Lindsay (Great Britain), Sherry Bie (Canada), Sofia Ristevska Council - Centre for the Performing Arts, Kulturministeriets Provinspulje, Counties of (Macedonia), Steve Rice-Khan (Great Britain), Thadd McQuade (USA), Vanna Ringkjøbing and Frederiksborg, the Municipalities of Holstebro, Lemvig, Struer, Kårfors (Sweden), Wout van Tongeren (The Netherlands), Yuval Dishon 04 Thyborøn/Harboøre, Thyholm, Ulfborg/Vemb and Vinderup, The Japan Foundation. (Switzerland), Zofia Dworakowska (Poland). 05 UR-HAMLET

MAIN CHARACTERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

Pulcinella, master of ceremonies: Torgeir Wethal SCENE 1: Saxo Grammaticus: Julia Varley SAXO, THE MONK, DIGS INTO THE DARK AGES AND UNEARTHS THE STORY Orvendil, ruler of Jutland and Hamlet's father: Cristina Wistari Formaggia OF HAMLET, RULER OF JUTLAND. Fengi, Orvendil's brother and Hamlet's uncle: I Wayan Bawa Gerutha, Orvendil's wife and Hamlet's mother: Roberta Carreri SCENE 2: Hamlet: Augusto Omolú ORVENDIL, HAMLET'S FATHER, IS MURDERED BY HIS BROTHER FENGI. FENGI Hamlet's foster-sister: Mia Theil Have SEIZES POWER AND MARRIES GERUTHA, ORVENDIL'S WIDOW AND MOTHER Queen of the rats (the plague): Akira Matsui OF HAMLET. A counsellor: Cristina Wistari Formaggia Hamlet's foster-brother: Akira Matsui SCENE 3: HAMLET PRETENDS TO BE MAD IN ORDER TO CONCEAL HIS PLAN FOR VENGEANCE.

SCENE 4: THE CASTLE IS INFILTRATED BY FOREIGNERS FROM DISTANT LANDS.

SCENE 5: FENGI LETS HAMLET MEET A GIRL IN ORDER TO TEST HIS MADNESS. HE BELIEVES MADMEN ARE IMPOTENT.

SCENE 6: THE QUEEN OF THE RATS (THE PLAGUE) ARRIVES AT THE CASTLE.

SCENE 7: FENGI'S COUNSELLOR HIDES IN ORDER TO LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN HAMLET AND HIS MOTHER.

SCENE 8: HAMLET TAKES HIS REVENGE AND PROCLAIMS THE LAWS OF A NEW ORDER. I Wayan Bawa, Roberta Carreri and I Ketut Rida.

06 07 The Nine Rules of Hamlet’s New Order

Men and women submit to fear, money and pleasure. Violence that frightens, money and the offer of pleasure are the three main tools of government.

A ruler must be loved for his good government. He must therefore entrust the practice of misgovernment to a reliable minister.

A reliable minister must know how to perform secretly his ruler’s infamous orders and be ready to suffer openly the rigour of his ruler’s justice if his misdeeds come to light.

If you are weak don’t stoop to compromise. If you want to weaken the enemy, offer your hand and make a pact.

Never respect a pact. Don’t allow your adversary time not to respect it.

Be loyal, but only towards yourself.

If you torture a man, don’t kill him. Free him and he will be your dog. If you torture a woman, kill her.

Never be unfair. Be inscrutable. Perversity is inscrutable. Injustice is not.

Betrayal cannot be avoided. Betray, before being betrayed. I Wayan Bawa, Ni Wayan Nugini and I Wayan Martawan. 08 09 Eugenio Barba probably set by him upon his task, he proceeded by gathering and editing mythical matter, arriving at actual history. The 16 books of his Gesta Danorum thread a genealogy of kings in part legendary - among whom also Hamlet, ruler of Jutland. About Saxo, Hamlet The first translation of Saxo into Danish dates from 1575. Books III and IV record Hamlet’s life and death. We recognise most of and the Performance Shakespeare’s figures. Gertrude is Gerutha; Claudius is Fengi; Polonius is Fengi’s anonymous adviser, living only for his master, being his eyes and dying in his place. He has no family. There are neither Ophelia nor her brother Laertes, with their parallel and specular tragedy to that of Hamlet. There is no place, obviously, for Horatio, the young intellectual educated at the University of Wittenberg. There is, however, an anonymous couple of foster brother and sister, humble children of Hamlet, Don Juan, Doctor Faustus and Harlequin are bastard archetypes with no Hamlet’s nanny. They have sucked the same milk and are the dark accomplices of known mother and many fathers. They stepped into our modern culture with the his sexual and bloody intrigues. Hamlet’s father, Jutland’s ruler and brother of first professional companies specialised in selling entertainment at the birth of Fengi, the victim of fratricide and usurpation, is called Orvendil. There are no European theatre, in the ‘Golden Age’ between the 16th and the 17th centuries. ghosts on the ramparts of the chieftain’s fortress in Jutland. The intimate family These were years of plagues, suspicion, massacres, intolerance and wars of drama of remorse and incest, of love and abandonment, of innocence and suicide, religion. Hamlet, Don Juan, Doctor Faustus and Harlequin arrived on the stage, has vanished. Only the struggle for power is left, bare, essential, physical: a hiding their barbaric and fierce nature under a rainbow of humorous remarks and soulless carnage. deep thoughts. They were all four expert in the art of getting rid of their The conflict between uncle and nephew, between Fengi and Hamlet, adversaries with weapons, sagacity and spells. The scent of a refined culture started when Rørik, king of Denmark, entrusted the power over the Danish dissimulated their acrid odours of blood, sex and violence, turning them into province of Jutland to the brothers Orvendil and Fengi. Orvendil challenged the jewels of art. Thus they are no longer able to frighten us. In their fanciful, poetic, king of Norway to a duel, killed him and also slaughtered his sister after raping philosophical and melancholic attire, they live in school books, and perfume our her. Also because of this deed, King Rørik promoted him to ruler over Jutland and adult intellectual life. But their original substance, raw and without illusions, gave him his daughter Gerutha in marriage. Hamlet was born. But Orvendil is makes them our mocking and repugnant brothers, well fitted to our 21st century. murdered by his brother Fengi who takes Gerutha as his wife. According to the heathen norms of honour, Hamlet should avenge his father and therefore Fengi, his uncle, must eliminate him. But Fengi cannot openly resort to violence: he Saxo’s Hamlet fears King Rørik’s and Gerutha’s reactions as well as the people’s anger. Not even a tyrant can challenge unpunished all the laws, and condemn a madman for The first account of a hero, later to become the prototype of the wondering and treason. And Hamlet is mad, or so he pretends. He feigns stupidity as a defense philosophical mind, was told in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus a good three and a half against the absolute power of his uncle, usurper of the position that belongs to centuries before Shakespeare. Amlethus was his name and he was the protagonist him. in one of many episodes in the struggle for power in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum Hamlet’s pretended madness is not of a melancholic or philosophical type. (Histories of the Danes). In this chronicle which takes place in prehistoric times, It does not hide a black humour, a taedium vitae or the subtleties of a Wittenberg Hamlet appears as our contemporary. He steps into the aimless fury of History and student that characterise Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is the folly of the possessed throws away his mask - a stealthy and crafty chieftain, a professional in violence, and the idiot, similar to that of Junius Brutus in Titus Livius. In both cases, the a tyrannicide who becomes a tyrant. hero’s madness is put to the test. Brutus, in Titus Livius, beheads the poppies with Little is known of Saxo (1150-1220), the earliest chronicler and writer of his sword, pretending that they are hostile warriors. In reality Brutus is sending a Denmark. More than one century after his death he was given the name message in code to his fellow conspirators: kill the leaders of King Tarquinius’ Grammaticus (The Lettered). Such a title, in the Middle Ages, usually implied that followers. In Saxo’s chronicle, Hamlet too, by his unreasonable absurd behaviour, its owner was a churchman. A follower of the brilliant Bishop Absalon, and thwarts all attempts to trap him. 10 11 Fengi doubts Hamlet’s madness. He arranges for him to meet a girl in a announces the principles of his future government: “Betrayal cannot be avoided. forest to test whether he surrenders to temptation. Mad people don’t make love. Betray before being betrayed.” Relieved of the avenger’s fury, Hamlet is now the Hamlet recognises the girl as his foster sister. The foster sister gives herself to him young chieftain in a country in a perpetual state of war. without betraying him. She tells the courtiers that the foolish young man was not In his Gesta Danorum Saxo describes the risks of internal disorder, of capable of doing anything. While he, the idiot, boasts of his own sexual prowess factions, of feuds, famine and pestilence. War - real or potential - is the making everybody laugh at him in disbelief. foundation of the state’s inner order and a source of respect for hierarchies and Hamlet behaves as an obsessed. Covered with dirt, he mimics a cock, laws. Hamlet, a chieftain of Jutland, wants to rule the entire kingdom and takes crowing and waving his arms as if they were wings. He kills - as if by mistake - up arms against his sovereign, the king of Denmark. He perishes while performing Fengi’s adviser who is hidden under straw in the room in which he is left alone the last action of his reason’s cunning and craving for power. Machiavelli, the with his mother. He draws his sword and strikes, cuts the corpse into pieces, cooks Renaissance scientist of politics, would have been at ease in this kingdom of the them and gives them to the pigs to eat. After this, he forces his beaten and North. wounded mother - the laceratam matrem, as Saxo writes - to acknowledge the Hamlet was just one of the mythical heroes with whom Saxo had horror of her behaviour for having married her husband’s murderer. embellished Denmark’s history. He was destined to an illustrious life and an Fengi, expert in intrigues and conspiracies, knows that even a madman can everlasting chain of incarnations by François de Belleforest, a French writer who seek revenge. He decides to send Hamlet to England. He gives a secret letter to retold Saxo’s story in his popular Histoires tragiques in 1570. Belleforest was fairly the two young noblemen accompanying his nephew, in which he asks the English faithful to Saxo although he expanded the story to the double and made several king to eliminate the insane prince. Hamlet tampers with Fengi’s letter and changes. He added an aura of chivalry as Hamlet pursued his own honour and replaces his name with that of his companions. As a result, Fengi’s two agents are glory; he let Fengi incestuously seduce his brother’s wife before murdering his hanged on their arrival. In England, Hamlet acquires the reputation of a wise man, brother; and he transformed Saxo’s anonymous foster sister into a young woman and the English king has such a high regard for him that he gives him his daughter of the court (the future Ophelia) who has loved Hamlet since childhood, was in marriage. devoted to him and prepared to do anything for him. A year passes and Hamlet returns home. He arrives on the day of his own A few years after their publication, Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques funeral. Everybody thinks he is dead, such is Fengi’s belief in the success of his were translated into English, inspiring a host of writers for the theatre in plot. Hamlet, who looks like a pathetic beggar, is in reality a bloodthirsty beast. Elisabethan London. In 1596, Thomas Lodge, in his Wit’s Misery, alludes to a A banquet celebrates the funeral that has no corpse. When the drunken guests fall Hamlet which was performed at The Theatre (in which Shakespeare also worked asleep, Hamlet butchers them and sets the building on fire. He enters the room for a while). This Hamlet must have been performed well before 1596 because a where Fengi sleeps and exchanges the King’s sword with his own which he has revival of this play was being satirised by Thomas Nashe in his preface to Robert nailed to the sheath. Then he wakes his uncle. The terrified Fengi tries to draw Greene’s Menaphon in 1589. No one knows for sure who was the true author of his sword, but is unable to do so and Hamlet slays him without sullying his own this Hamlet. The most likely candidate is Thomas Kyd. blade with the traitor’s blood. Scholars agree that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet at the midpoint of his At this point, the fierce avenger seems to change nature. He is no longer an career, between mid 1599 and the end of 1601. Publication of his Hamlet began idiot concealing a far-sighted shrewdness, but behaves like a wise shepherd of with the Stationer’s Register entry on 26 July 1602, when James Roberts “Entered people. He holds a reassuring speech to the population which is disconcerted after for his Copie. . . a booke called the Revenge of Hamlett Prince [or] Denmarke as the palace fire and the king’s death: “The man I killed was not a king, but the yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servants.” murderer of his own brother. Alone I have fulfilled the task that should have been yours, and I have brought order to this country, so troubled by the abuse of power. I did not want to lay on your shoulders such a hard and bloody assignment. I burnt Odin Teatret’s performance the bullying courtiers, but I leave Fengi’s corpse to you. You must burn it. You owe your freedom to me. Now it is up to you to show whether you deserve it.” Saxo, the monk, unearths Hamlet’s skeleton from the basements of the castle, The merciless warrior seduces his people and makes them the accomplices evokes his life and interprets it in Latin. He addresses the spectators in this of his act of revenge. Speaking with the comforting voice of a father, he archaic and defunct language, unveiling and commenting the vile intentions of 12 13 the characters and of their deeds. He wanders through the performance, is at the centre of the action, identifies himself with its development and struggles to avoid its uncontrolled events, seeking a way of escape. The bare space is lightened by torches that can be both portable and fixed to the ground. These moving flames modulate the intensity of the actions and the perception of the space. The actors move amidst a labyrinth of torches, they carry them and use them to underline - as in a painting by Rembrandt - the fragment of a scene or a detail. The stage action follows Saxo’s storyline, punctuated by Hamlet’s outbursts of folly. Moments of indolence are interspersed with frantic crises, while assassins or credulous accomplices run after Hamlet to interpret his behaviour. At times, the whole reality becomes a delirium. The events take place in a castle which is besieged not by the Other World and its ghosts, but - much more concretely - by the outside and its subsoil. From the subsoil rats emerge, carriers of plague. These enemies of the human race surface as miasmas from the dark and underground layers of an orderly society. Invaders are expected from the outside. Up to now, wretched and hungry people have been arriving, looking for refuge. Are they going to be contaminated by the plague or are they its carriers? The castle’s dwellers get rid of them methodically yet without anger: a mere territorial cleansing operation. In the cemetery, a few graves are always open in readiness. The gravediggers try to keep order in this kingdom in which lethal forces scurry around. While corpses burn and the mad night of revenge seems ended, Hamlet, as in a solitary prayer or a hymn of war, proclaims new rules invoking the name of his father. It is not his father’s ghost that appears, but a child, ready to fight for his New Order.

Roberta Carreri as Gerutha, Hamlet’s mother.

14 15 Saxo Grammaticus conduct the last rites of the vanquished. All men agree that these embody the final humane courtesy, for no pious individual has ever shirked them. Each side must relax his rigour and amicably carry out this service. Malice must depart after VITA AMLETHI the one has met his fate, death lull the feud. Although animosity came between us alive, there is no demand for one to continue persecuting the other’s remains, from Gesta Danorum Books III and IV no call for such a mark of severe cruelty. It will be a glorious token for the conqueror to celebrate a rich funeral for his victim. Whoever pays the last rites Translated from Latin into English by Peter Fisher to his dead enemy enlists the good will of his successor, overcomes his foe's survivor by a kindness in exerting his philanthropy towards the departed. Another no less lamentable disaster sometimes affects the living, when part of their bodies are maimed. I believe in being just as ready to help a man in this case as BOOK III when he has breathed his last. Fighters often suffer loss of limbs where life is still VI. At the same time Ørvendil and Fengi, sons of the Jutland governor Gervendil, intact and this ill-luck is commonly reckoned unhappier than any fatal casualty; were both put in his place by Rørik to rule that region. Now Ørvendil, after death takes away the recollection of everything, whereas the living man cannot controlling the province for three years, had devoted himself to piracy and reaped overlook the devastation of his own body. One must therefore give support to such such superlative renown that Koller, the king of Norway, wishing to rival his a mutilated individual. A suitable reparation then for the injured ought to be ten eminent deeds and widespread reputation, judged it would suit him very well if marks of gold. If it is a kind duty to sympathize with others' misfortunes, how he could transcend him in warfare and cast a shadow over the brilliance of this much more is it to pity one's own? Everyone takes thought for his own condition, world famed sea rover. He cruised about, combing various parts of the seas, until and if anyone is negligent in this he is a self murderer.'' he lit upon Ørvendil's fleet. Each of the pirates had gained an island in the midst Both gave and accepted their word of honour on this point and fell to battle. of the ocean and they had moored their ships on different sides. The leaders were They were not deterred from assailing each other with their blades by the novelty attracted by the delightful prospect of the beaches; the beautiful vista from off of their meeting or the springtime charm of that spot, for they took no heed of shore encouraged them to view the woods of the interior in spring and wander these things. Ørvendil's emotional fervour made him more eager to set upon his among the glades and remote expanses of forest. Their chance steps led Koller foe than to defend himself; consequently he disregarded the protection of his and Ørvendil to an unwitnessed meeting. shield and laid both hands to his sword. This daring had its results. His rain of Ørvendil took the initiative and asked his opponent how he wanted to fight, blows deprived Koller of his shield by cutting it to pieces; finally he carved off the stressing that the most superior method was one which exercised the sinews of other's foot and made him fall lifeless. He honoured their agreement by giving him the fewest men. He thought that single combat was more effective than any other a majestic funeral, constructing an ornate tomb and providing a ceremony of type of contest for securing the honours of bravery, since a person must rely on great magnificence. After this he hounded down and slew Koller's sister Sæla, a his own valour and refuse any other man's aid. Koller, admiring such courageous warring amazon and accomplished pirate herself and skilled in the trade of judgment in a young fellow, replied: fighting. ''As you allow me a choice, I vote whole heartedly for an encounter that only Three years were passed in gallant military enterprises, in which he marked needs the work of two, free from the usual pandemonium. Certainly this is judged the richest and choicest of the plunder for Rørik, to bring himself into closer to require more fortitude and leads to a speedier victory. On this our verdicts intimacy with the king. On the strength of their friendship Ørvendil wooed and concur spontaneously. As the conclusion remains in doubt, we must each of us obtained Rørik's daughter Gerutha for his bride, who bore him a son, Amleth. make a concession to human decency; rather than give rein to our natural Fengi was inflamed with jealousy at his grand successes and determined to tempers we should observe our obligations to the dead. Hatred is in our hearts; set a trap for his brother. A man of true worth is not even safe from his near none the less, make room in them for compassion, which in the end is the proper relatives. Once given an opportunity to dispatch his kinsman, Fengi dyed his hand successor to harshness. Though discrepancy of opinion divides us, we share the in blood to satisfy his black desires. Besides butchering his brother he added same universal laws. These join us together, however much rancour now sunders incest to fratricide by taking possession of his wife. Whoever has commited our spirits. Let our sense of duty then make this stipulation, that the victor should himself to one crime soon finds himself sliding downhill towards the next; the first 16 17 speeds on the second. Fengi covered up this foul deed with such presumptuous Among these there chanced to be a foster brother of Amleth, who still cunning that he manufactured an excuse of kindheartedness for his crime, and cherished a regard for him due to their mutual upbringing. Setting the memory of gave the murder a colouring of scrupulous conduct. He made out that Gerutha, their past association before his present orders, he accompanied Amleth and his though she was too mild to do anyone even slight harm, suffered such violent allotted companions with no intention of bringing him into a trap, but rather to loathing from her husband that he had removed him only to preserve her; it bring him warning; he had no doubt that if Amleth gave even a half indication of seemed a disgrace that such a gentle female, containing no bitterness, should his true sanity he would come to grief, but above all if he were openly to perform endure the overbearing arrogance of this man. His persuasive argument did not the act of love. Amleth too was well aware of this. When he was told to mount his fail. If buffoons are sometimes favoured and slanderers honoured, people will horse he sat on purpose with his back to the creature's mane facing the tail. This certainly believe the lies of princes. The villain showed no hesitation in turning he began to encircle with the bridle, just as though he could restrain his steed at his death-dealing hands to unlawful embraces, pursuing both these criminal that end while it was in full career. By such a thoughtful move he foiled the device sacrileges with the same viciousness. and overcame his uncle's stratagem. It was quite ludicrous to see a rider without Amleth observed this and, to avoid stirring his uncle's suspicions by behaving reins gallop forward guiding the horse by its tail. intelligently, pretended to be an imbecile, acting as if his wits had gone quite Farther on, Amleth came across a wolf in the undergrowth and, when his astray; this piece of artfulness, besides concealing his true wisdom, safeguarded companions told him that he had encountered a young colt, he added that there his life. Every day he would stay near his mother's hearth, completely listless and were very few of that breed serving in Fengi's stable, a moderate but witty unwashed, and would roll on the ground to give his person a repulsive coating of reproach which hit at his uncle's affluence. When they observed that he had given filth. His grimy complexion and the refuse smeared over his face grotesquely a clever reply, he admitted that his speech was considered; nowhere in his words illustrated his lunacy. Everything he said was like the raving of an idiot, everything did he wish to yield himself to lying. Amleth wanted to be held a stranger to he did smacked of a deep lethargy. Need I go on? You would not have called him falsehood and mingled artfulness with plain speaking, so that he adhered to the a man so much as a ridiculous freak created by Fate in a madcap mood. He often truth without letting it show through to betray his acute mind. sat by the fire scraping the embers with his fingers and making wooden hooks They were going along the shore when his attendants discovered the rudder which he would harden in the flames; he turned back the ends to form prongs, so of a wrecked ship and said to Amleth that they had found an uncommonly large that they would hold with a tighter grip. When they asked why he did it, he knife. replied that he was getting these stings sharp to avenge his father. The answer ''All the better to cut an outsize ham with,'' he answered, obviously referring brought delighted guffaws; everyone sneered at his pointless labours, though to the sea, since its vastness suited the dimensions of the rudder. As they passed later these were to assist his scheme. the sand dunes they told him to look at this flour, to which he remarked that it However, it was that very skill which aroused in spectators of the wiser sort had been ground by the foaming billows when it was stormy. The company the first suspicions of his cleverness. His diligence in this humble technique congratulated him on this response, which he again agreed was a wise suggested the craftsman's hidden ingenuity; anyone with the brains to execute pronouncement. They intentionally left him behind as a greater incentive for him articles of such finished workmanship could hardly be thought witless. Lastly he to satisfy his lust; after he had met the woman in a sheltered spot, apparently by would keep a most careful watch over his pile of charred stakes. Some men averred chance but really because she had been sent by his uncle, he would have had his that his intelligence was lively enough and thought he was concealing deep designs pleasure with her if his foster brother had not, by a silent warning, given him an under a cloak of feeble mindedness, so that he could deceptively camouflage his inkling of the plot. This friend was debating with himself how he could suitably subtlety; the best way to reveal his trickery was to bring him to some shady nook convey a secret hint and stop the young man in time from dangerously indulging where a very attractive woman could lure his heart into sexual entanglement. his sensuality, when he picked up a straw he had noticed on the ground, inserted Men's characters are so naturally inclined towards love that no subtlety may keep it beneath the tail of a horse fly that was flying past. He drove it towards the its existence secret; his cunning could not obstruct so violent an emotion and particular locality where he knew Amleth was and thereby did him a special therefore, even if he simulated indifference, once the oppor-tunity presented service when he was off guard. The signal was recognized as astutely as it was itself he would succumb to the powers of pleasure there and then. Consequently delivered. Amleth, spying the horsefly and at the same time the straw stuck fellows were found who would conduct the young man on horseback to a distant beneath its tail, examined it closely and concluded that it was a secret caution part of the forest and expose him to a temptation of this sort. against some treachery he must avoid. Alarmed at the scent of an ambush, he 18 19 caught the woman in his arms and, in order to secure his wishes in comparative case any hidden ears should be eavesdropping, he first ran through his regular safety, brought her to a remote and trackless fen. After having intercourse with tomfoolery, crowing like a noisy cock and clapping his arms together like beating her he earnestly begged her not to disclose the incident to anyone. Her silence wings; after this he climbed on to the straw and began to jump up and down to find was promised as readily as it was sought; because they had once grown up out if anything was lurking there. When he felt a lump beneath his feet, he prodded together and shared the same guardians in childhood, Amleth enjoyed the girl's the place with his sword, transfixed the man underneath, dragged him from his deep affection. hiding place and butchered him. Afterwards he sliced the body into chunks, cooked When he returned home they all asked him by way of a joke whether he had it in boiling water and threw the sorry limbs into the mouth of an open sewer where, had his fill of love making, and he admitted that he had slept with the girl. Then smirched with putrid filth, they could be gobbled up by the pigs. they asked where he had performed the act and on what sort of pillow; he Now he had dodged the snare he returned to the bedroom. When his answered that he had rested on a colt's foot, a cock's comb and a piece of roofing. mother's violent shrieks had sunk to weeping over his fuddled wits, the son Indeed when he set out on his test he had gathered specimens of all these to avoid confronted her with these words: having to lie. His reply was received with loud hoots from the bystanders, though ''You lowest of women, why do you try to gloss over your gross infamy with he had not departed a jot from the truth in his jest. The girl, questioned on this false laments? Like a lewd harlot you fly to a damnable, loathsome bed, clasp your matter, retorted that he had done no such thing. Her denial certainly gained husband's murderer to your incestuous bosom and fawn with the most disgusting easier credence when it was ascertained that her retinue had not witnessed the endearments and caresses on the man who destroyed the father of your son. event. Then the one who had fixed the notice to the horse fly, to show that Surely this is the way mares copulate with the stallions which have overmastered Amleth's escape had depended on his ruse told the prince he had recently been their mates; only brute beasts rush promiscuously into a variety of marriages; exceptionally devoted to him. His youthful friend answered pertinently; to your conduct makes it clear that your late husband's memory has grown stale. I indicate that he was grateful for the loyal prompting, he reported that he had wear this zany appearance for my own benefit, as I've no doubt whatever that the seen something suddenly gliding towards him, wearing a straw mattress in its ruffian who could kill his brother is also likely to savage his other kinsmen with buttocks. While everyone else rocked with laughter at this quip, it delighted his equal ferocity. That's why I prefer to put on the behaviour of an imbecile instead supporter by its sagacity. of a purposeful sanity, and borrow a safe cover by looking like an out and out Amleth, then, outdid them all, with the result that none could draw back the maniac. Yet in my heart there is this persistent yearning to avenge my father and bolt to disclose the young man's secret purposes; then one of Fengi's friends who I'm on the watch for opportunities, always waiting for the right moment. There had a greater store of self assurance than cunning said it was impossible to reveal are different times for different undertakings. Against a secretive and pitiless the intricate nature of his intelligence by the usual old tricks. He felt Amleth was mind deeper machinations have to be employed. Consider how needless it is for too obstinate for them to make headway with trifling attempts. They should not you to mourn over my foolishness, when you ought really to be weeping for your therefore test his many sided vigilance straightforwardly. By his own deeper perspi- own dishonour. You shouldn't be shedding tears over another's imperfections, but cacity he claimed to have hit on a more subtle method, practical to put into your own. As to the rest, be silent.'' His mother, rent by this reproof, was recalled operation and highly expedient for the intended investigation. Fengi, on the plea of to the practice of virtue, and he showed her how to set the flame of her previous important business, would purposely proclaim his departure and then Amleth must love before her present bewitchment. be shut up alone with his mother in her bedroom after a person had been planted, Fengi returned to discover that his crafty spy was nowhere to be found, not without either of them knowing, somewhere in a dark corner to listen carefully to even by unremitting investigation, nor did anyone claim to have caught a glimpse their conversation. If her son were in his right mind he would not be afraid to trust of him anywhere. For the sake of a joke Amleth too was asked whether he had his mother and would be ready to speak openly in her hearing. The courtier eagerly detected any trace of him; he replied that the man had gone into the drain, offered his services for this detective work, no less anxious to be the executant than tumbled down to the bottom and, buried under a great heap of sewage, had been the inventor of the plot. Fengi was delighted with the scheme and giving out that devoured by the pigs which frequented the place. This story, though it revealed he had to go on a long journey left the palace. the truth, seemed crazy to his audience and caused merriment. The one who had concocted the plan went silently to the room where Amleth Although Fengi wanted to do away with his step son, of whose counter- was in private conference with his mother and crawled under some straw for feiting he had no doubts, he did not dare put this into execution owing to the concealment. But Amleth turned the tables on this spy: as he was apprehensive in disfavour he would incur from his wife and her father, Rørik; he therefore 20 21 determined that the king of Britain should do him the favour of killing Amleth, so steward and enquired where he had obtained the bread. The man swore that it that, procuring it by proxy, he would preserve an air of innocence. In the desire had been prepared by the king's own baker and was then asked in what place the to keep his barbarity hidden he preferred to contaminate a friend than assign ill corn which supplied the flour had been grown, and whether there was any sign of repute to himself. On his departure Amleth secretly asked his mother to adorn the its being the scene of human slaughter. The other answered that there was a field palace with tapestries and to conduct a pretended funeral for him after a year close by which still bore evident traces of a massacre long ago, strewn as it was had elapsed, at which time, he promised, he would return. Two of Fengi's with the ancient bones of men slain; in spring he had sown it with grain himself, parasites set out with him bearing a letter engraved on wood (at one time this was thinking it promised high fertility and a more abundant crop than the rest. Could a familiar kind of writing material), in which the British king was enjoined to slay the bread possibly have picked up a suspicious taste from the gore? On hearing the young man sent over to him. Amleth combed through their baggage while they this the king guessed that Amleth had spoken the truth and was anxious to know were sleeping and purloined the letter. Having read over the commission, he too where the pork had come from. The steward revealed that through negligence scratched away all that was inscribed there and substituted new characters to his pigs had escaped from their sty and fed on the decaying carcase of a robber; alter the gist of the command and turn his sentence on the heads of his thus, quite by chance, their meat had gathered a tang similar to that of rotting companions. Not satisfied with removing his death warrant and transferring the flesh. As the monarch discovered that this statement of Amleth also was accurate, peril to others, he added a fabricated request from Fengi that the British king he demanded to know with what liquid the drink had been mixed. When he should bequeath his daughter in matrimony to this highly-intelligent young discovered that it had been diluted with honey and water, he proceeded to dig to ambassador. the base of the spring that had been pointed out to him and found several swords When they arrived in Britain the two envoys came to the king and presented eaten away by rust, whose reek it was believed must have infected the water. him with the letter giving instructions for their own death, believing it made Others relate that Amleth disparaged the drink because in sipping he had provision for another man's doom. The king kept the contents to himself and detected an unpleasant edge to it; this had previously been passed through to the entertained them kindly and hospitably. But Amleth spurned the state banquet in honeycomb by bees which had bred in the belly of a corpse. its entirety as though it were coarse fare, drew back from the lavish feast with a The king saw that the reasons for Amleth's disapproval of the flavours were peculiar restraint and touched neither food nor drink. Everyone was amazed that convincing and, since he realized that the same man's accusation of an ignoble this youthful foreigner turned his nose up before the exquisite delicacies and look about his eyes pointed to some strain of impurity, he met the queen mother luxurious dishes on the royal table as if at some peasant's fodder. Once the in private and questioned her about his paternity. She denied having submitted entertainment was over and his friends sent to their rest, the king secretly herself to anyone besides her royal husband, but when he threatened to check the dispatched a servant to their bedroom to overhear his guests' conversation that matter by torture, the mystery of his birth, which Amleth had stigmatized, was night. cleared up; he wrung from her the confession that he was the son of a slave. Amleth, asked by his fellows why during the evening he had shunned the Impressed by the young man's penetration as much as he was mortified with feast as if it were poison, replied that the bread was tainted with blood, the drink shame at his own pedigree, the king asked Amleth why he had sullied the queen had the flavour of iron and the banquet meat was smothered in the odour of a by charging her with servile habits. But even while he deplored the scepticism corpse, as though it had been polluted by proximity to the stench of death. He about his wife's courtliness which the visitor had shown in his late night talk, he added that the king had the eyes of a slave and that his queen had displayed three was told that she was indeed the daughter of a female slave. Amleth said he had mannerisms of a maidservant, aiming the real brunt of his criticism not so much observed three shortcomings in her, denoting a serf's demeanour; first, she at the dinner as its providers. It was not long before his companions began to covered her head with her mantle like a maidservant, secondly, she tucked up her reprove that old weakness in his brains and to mock him with various impudent robe when she walked, and thirdly, she picked out with a spill the morsels of food taunts because he found fault with things perfectly acceptable. This was sticking between the crevices of her teeth and then chewed them. He reminded aggressive and disrespectful talk about a famous king and a queen of impeccable the king that her mother had been captured and reduced to slavery, since he decorum, quite disgraceful aspersions on a pair who deserved nothing but praise. wished to ascribe this behaviour to her servile birth rather than her manners. When the king learnt this from his henchman, he declared the author of these The king worshipped his powers like some god sent talent and gave him his pronouncements must be possessed with superhuman genius or stupidity, gauging daughter in marriage, taking to heart his declarations as though they were the full depth of Amleth's activities in this short phrase. He then summoned his heavenly oracles. But the two companions he hanged the next day in order to 22 23 meet his friend Fengi's instructions. Following this service Amleth pretended to friends had conducted him and, snatching up a sword which happened to be be disgruntled as if an affront had been given, and as wergild accepted gold from hanging next to the bed, substituted his own for it. He then woke his uncle and the king, which he afterwards secretly melted down and had poured into hollow informed him that his noblemen were burnt to death, and that through the aid of rods. his old bent hooks he, Amleth, was at his side, eager to inflict the punishment now After staying in Britain for a year he begged leave to depart and returned to his due for his father's murder. At these words Fengi leapt from the bed but, deprived homeland, though he took nothing of the panoply of regal wealth with him save of his own sword and unable with all his efforts to draw the other, was struck the rods containing gold. When he reached Jutland he altered his present way of down. What a brave man this Amleth was, worthy of everlasting fame! He wisely life to the old one, and the habits he had cultivated to his credit were prepared himself by an incredible performance of stupidity, submerging under it intentionally changed back to a show of clownishness. Daubed with muck, he a brilliant reason transcending mortal faculties; thus his wits provided him with a entered the banqueting hall where his obsequies were being conducted and gave safe conduct and kept him alive until he reached the moment for revenging his them all a tremendous shock, seeing that a false report of his death had been father. Considering the skill with which he preserved himself and the energy with widely current. Eventually fright gave way to laughter with the guests which he exacted atonement for his parent, one can hardly decide which to lightheartedly chiding each other for having held a funeral for a supposedly dead esteem more, his courage or his wisdom. man, who was there with them in person. Asked about his fellow travellers, he pointed to the staffs he was holding: ''Here's one and that's the other,'' he answered. You could not tell whether it BOOK IV was uttered seriously or for a joke. Though most people took it as moonshine, his I. After he had destroyed his step father, Amleth was afraid to expose the deed to statement kept to the truth, for it referred to the price of compensation instead the unpredictable judgment of his countrymen and decided to go into hiding till of the executed pair. he had found out which way the mass of common people leaned. The whole Next, to afford the banqueters greater amusement, he joined the neighbourhood, who during the night had viewed the holocaust, next morning cupbearers and scrupulously carried out the duty of pouring refreshment. So that inspected the ashes of the wrecked palace, eager to discern the cause of the the looser uniform should not impede his step, he bound a sword to his side, which blaze they had seen; though they examined the still-warm ruins, they were unable he would often deliberately unsheathe and prick his fingers with the point. The to discover anything but the shapeless remains of charred bodies. The hungry bystanders therefore had the sword and scabbard riveted through with an iron flames had so completely devoured everything that there was not a single clue to pin. To make safer preparation for his ambush, Amleth circulated with goblets point to the origin of this vast devastation. The body of Fengi, run through with a among the nobles, plying them with drink after drink; he so deluged them all with sword, could also be made out in the midst of his bloodstained clothing. Some wine that they became too intoxicated to stand up and went to sleep there in the were gripped with open anger, others with grief, yet others by secret joy. The palace, making the scene of the feast their bedchamber. onlookers received the king's death with divided feelings. One section mourned As soon as he saw them in fit condition for his plot and felt the time ripe for the passing away of its leader and another gave thanks that this fratricide's his intentions, he took from his bosom the sticks prepared long ago and entered despotic rule had been laid to rest. the hall in which the courtiers, their bodies splayed everywhere over the floor, As the populace continued calm however, Amleth gathered confidence to were belching away in alcoholic slumber; there, spread over the interior walls, he come out of his retreat and called to the assembly those men in whose minds he found the tapestry which his mother had woven, cut it away from its fastenings knew a more vivid recollection of his father was still rooted; there he addressed and tore it down. Then he threw it over the snorers and, using the crooked sticks, them with this speech: tied it with such Gordian knots that none of those lying beneath, however ''Do not be stirred, my lords, by the sight of the disaster here, if the death vigorously they strained, could manage to get to their feet. After this he tossed of poor Ørvendil still moves you; I repeat, do not be stirred if you still retain fire on to the roof, where the flames grew to a wide spread conflagration and within you loyalty to a king and duty towards a parent. You should see it as the enveloped the entire building; the palace was destroyed and every one of its end of a murderer, not a monarch. That was a sorrier spectacle when you saw our inhabitants cremated, whether they were enjoying deep sleep or vainly struggling king woefully mauled by a vile cut throat (I cannot call him his brother). You to rise. yourselves looked with eyes full of compassion on the mangled limbs of Ørvendil, Amleth next sought Fengi's chamber in the pavilion to which the king's his body consumed with many a gash. Who would doubt that that barbarous 24 25 slaughterer stole his life so that he could strip your fatherland of its liberty? The avenger, you said, on his father's slayer. This brought me unspoken proof of your same hand dealt his fate and your slavery. Is anyone so insane that he could prefer affection, since I perceived that the memory of that royal murder had not as yet Fengi's sadism to Ørvendil's affection? Remember with what kindness the latter faded from your minds. Who could have so hard a heart, such craggy inflexibility fostered you, with what equity he tended you, with what humanity he loved you. that he would not soften with compassion at my afflictions, bend with pity at my Remember too how this gentle ruler and just father of his people was snatched wretchedness? Commiserate with your young prince, be moved by my hardships, away to be replaced by a tyrant and kin slayer; you were robbed of your rights, you whose hands are innocent of Ørvendil's death. Commiserate too with my everything was polluted, your country stained with crimes, a yoke planted on your distressed mother and, as she was once your queen, rejoice that her disgrace is necks and any power of freedom removed. expunged; embracing as she did the brother in law who killed her husband, she All this is now ended, for you can discern how the miscreant has been was forced to submit her woman's body to a double weight of shame. overwhelmed by his own evil deeds, the assassin taken to account for his felonies. Therefore, to hide my motives of revenge, to keep my real qualities in the What moderately sensible observer will question that he has been benefited, not shade, I put on a representation of lassitude rather than its actuality, and wronged? What sane person would grieve because the villainy has recoiled on its pretending imbecility, I contrived to mislead people about my intelligence. But perpetrator? Who would weep for the overthrow of this bloody executioner or whether that was effective and achieved its full purpose lies under your consid- bewail the just downfall of this cruel autocrat? Here stands before you the man eration; I am happy for you to make this important judgment. Stamp now on those responsible for the event you are witnesses to. Certainly I confess that I set out murderous ashes, spurn the remnants of one who butchered his brother, corrupted to avenge my father and my country. It was I who carried out the task, but that and shamefully defiled his brother's queen, struck down his lord, treasonably task was equally your duty. Though you and I had an obligation to accomplish it attacked royalty, inflicted galling tyranny on you, abolished your freedom and together, I carried it out alone. Let me emphasize that nobody was my associate crowned homicide with incest. in this noble deed, no comrade lent his hand to the act. Even so, I am quite aware Since I was an agent of righteous revenge striving to fulfil my responsibility you would have devoted your energies to this business if I had asked, for for reprisal, support me with your noble spirits, give me the respect that is due, undoubtedly you have retained your allegiance and love towards your true revive me with your warm regard. I myself have wiped out our country's infamy, sovereign. Nevertheless it seemed better for me to punish the scoundrels without obliterated my mother's dishonour, thrust off the sway of a tyrant, crushed an endangering you. For I thought other men's shoulders should not be made to prop assassin, countered the moves and baffled the treacherous hand of my uncle, a burden I believed could be adequately sustained by my own. whose crimes, if he had lived, would have redoubled daily. Grieving at the I have burnt the others and left your hands to incinerate only Fengi's corpse; violence to my father and fatherland, I exterminated the wretch who fiercely on him at least you can sate your longing for a proper revenge. Run quickly, build lorded it over you in a way men should not have to bear. Acknowledge a service, a pyre, commit the ungodly carcase to the flames, roast his wicked limbs, scatter do honour to my abilities and grant me the kingdom if I have earned it; you see the guilty dust, cast away his pitiless ashes; no urn, no burial mound shall enclose here the dispenser of this great favour, no killer nor degenerate heir to his father's the accursed relics of his bones. No trace must survive to remind us of that power, but the lawful inheritor of the realm and dutiful avenger of fratricide. To brother's murder, let there be no sanctuary in our land for these corrupt members, me you owe the beneficent restoration of liberty, the abolition of the tormentor's no nearby region catch the plague from his presence; neither sea nor earth shall rule, the removal of the oppressor's yoke, the murderer's authority shaken off, the be contaminated by harbouring his execrable body. I have done the rest; this pious tyrant's sceptre trampled underfoot. It is I who have stripped you of slavery and duty alone remains for you: to celebrate such last rites as these for a tyrant and dressed you in freedom, set you back on the heights, repaired your renown, fratricide. When a man has divested his country of liberty, it is not fitting for his evicted the despot, triumphed over a hangman. The prize is in your hands; since country to cover his remains. you are the ones who know my merits, I ask you, out of your goodness, to bestow Apart from this, why should I repeat my sorrows, number my misfortunes, the reward.'' weave my miseries anew? You know them better than I. My step father aimed at The young man's speech had swayed every heart; some were moved to pity, my death, my mother despised me, my friends spat on me, and I passed my years some even reduced to tears. But as soon as their sadness had abated, he was in weeping, my days in unhappiness, all the time unsettled by constant perils and appointed king by prompt and general acclamation. Everyone put maximum trust fear. In fine, I have spent every part of my life depressed by utmost adversity. You in his abilities, for he had contrived the sum total of his feats with deepest often groaned quietly to each other over my bereaved wits; he could be no cunning and worked everything to an astounding conclusion. Many, you could tell, 26 27 were staggered that he could have constructed this precise plan over such a long his welfare was vain, for he had perished by the sword. The king pressed to stretch of time. ascertain the murderer's identity with repeated questioning till he found that the After these accomplishments in Denmark, Amleth fitted out three ships at announcer of Fengi's death was also its cause. At this discovery he was inwardly great expense and paid another visit to Britain to see his wife and father in law. aghast, aware that he was implicated by an old promise of revenge. On one Under his patronage he had also enrolled youths outstanding in arms and clad in occasion Fengi and he had decided by mutual agreement that one of them should great splendour; and whereas he had long performed all his actions in contemptible avenge the other's killing. Devotion to his daughter and affection for his son in law garments, he now had all his accoutrements lavishly prepared, and everything that pulled him one way, but he was tugged in the other direction by loyalty to his had once borne the marks of poverty was converted to a costly luxury. He had friend and, beyond that, by his binding oath, a two way contract which it was ordered a shield to be designed for him, representing in finely executed pictures heinous to desecrate. In the end, despising family ties, he allowed his sworn word the entire series of his exploits from early manhood onwards. In carrying this to weigh more and, subordinating kinship to plighted faith, bent his thoughts to spokesman, as it were, of his prowess, he ensured the spread of his fame. vengeance. However, since he believed it was a sin to violate the sacred laws of On it you might have seen Fengi cutting Ørvendil's throat and then his hospitality, he chose to execute the role of avenger by another's hand, and cloak incest, the criminal uncle and his nephew's antics, the hooked sticks, the step his villainy with pretended innocence. father's suspicions and the covering up by his step son, Amleth's dealing with He therefore devised his plot amid kindnesses and hid his malignant purpose different tests, the woman brought to entrap him, the open jawed wolf, the under busy, deceptive courtesies. As his wife had recently succumbed to an discovery of the rudder, passing the sand dunes, entering the wood, the straw illness, he asked Amleth if he would act as delegate in arranging his second inserted in the horse fly and Amleth's recognition of the signal, how he foiled the marriage, stressing how absolutely delighted he was by the Dane's remarkable companions and in seclusion had his way with the girl. You could have observed capabilities. He claimed that there was a Scottish queen whose hand he the palace portrayed, the queen and her son together, the spy cut to pieces, then passionately desired. In fact he knew that she was not merely a spinster through cooked, then thrown into the sewer for the pigs, his limbs plastered with filth and her chasteness but also cruelly arrogant and always inflicted the ultimate then left for the animals to devour. You would have seen also how Amleth punishment on her suitors with unremitting hatred; of her many wooers not one detected the secret of his sleeping comrades, how he effaced the shape of the had yet escaped with his head. letters and substituted other characters, how he spurned the food and drink at Amleth, then, did not shirk compliance with his instructions and set out, the feast, how he criticized the king's looks and how he censured ignoble traits in whatever the dangers of the imposed mission, relying partly on his own, partly on the queen. You might have remarked the hanging of the emissaries, the depiction the king's servants. He entered Scotland and not far from the queen's palace came of Amleth's marriage, the return voyage to Denmark, his funeral celebrated by a to a meadow adjoining the roadside where he could refresh his horses; the banquet, the rods shown to the enquirers in lieu of his companions, the young man pleasant babbling of a stream induced drowsiness so that, charmed by the attrac- carrying out a butler's duties and hacking his fingers intentionally with the drawn tiveness of the scenery, he thought he would take a rest there after stationing sword which was afterwards riveted, the increasing hubbub among the guests and sentinels a little way off. When the queen received report of this she sent out ten their wilder and wilder dancing, the tapestry thrown over the sleepers, held fast young men to investigate the newly arrived strangers and their equipment. One by the clasping hooks and wrapped firmly round them in their slumber, the brand of the livelier witted of these dodged the guards, crept determinedly up to flung on to the roof and the revellers burnt alive, the palace consumed by the fire Amleth and removed the shield, on which, as it happened, he had pillowed his and collapsing in ruins, the visit to Fengi's chamber, the stolen sword and the head, with such stealth that he disturbed the sleep neither of its owner nor any useless one set in its place, and the king slain by his step son's hand with the point of his numerous company, for the man wished to inform his mistress not just by of his own blade. The assiduous artist had painted all these events on Amleth's word of mouth but with an actual exhibit. The letter entrusted to Amleth he war shield with consummate skill, creating life like shapes to catch an exact filched with equal dexterity from the wallet where it was being kept. image of his deeds. His retinue, to parade themselves more handsomely, covered These were conveyed to the queen, who, by gazing attentively at the their shields in a layer of pure gold. shield, teased out the whole story from the explanatory inscriptions; she gathered The British king received them graciously and entertained them with royal, that the man nearby had followed the most precise, clever calculations to punish lavish dispensation. In the midst of their feasting he asked eagerly whether Fengi his uncle for his father's murder. After scanning also the letter which contained were alive and prospering, but learnt from his son in law that any enquiry about the request for her hand, she erased all the writing, since she was quite repelled 28 29 by the idea of wedlock with elderly men and aimed at being linked with someone signal her refusal of others by execution. She urged him to turn his winning ways younger. She went on to pen a commission, supposedly dispatched to her by the in her direction, transfer his marriage vows to her and learn to set birth before a British king and subscribed like the other with his name and title; in it she forged fair shape. With these words she ran to clasp him tightly in her arms. a request for her consent to marry the messenger. Further, she made sure that the Entranced by the maiden's affable speech he hastened to return her kisses adventures she had learned about from his shield were referred to in the script, and joined with her in a fast embrace, declaring that her desires were his own. in such a way that you would have imagined the shield and the letter confirmed Next a banquet was held, friends invited, the chieftains collected and the each other. She then ordered the same scouts as before to return the shield and marriage ceremony performed. When all was completed he returned to Britain letter to their rightful places in a bid to imitate Amleth's method of deception with his bride, having ordered a stout force of Scotsmen, whose aid he could enlist when he made dupes of his two companions. against various hostile stratagems, to follow immediately behind. Meanwhile Amleth realized his shield had been guilefully withdrawn from As he was journeying back, the British king's daughter, his original wife, met beneath his head and kept his eyes shut on purpose, so that by astute pretence of him. Although she complained that she felt wounded at being superseded by this unconsciousness he might regain what he had lost when he was actually asleep. concubine, she maintained that it was beneath her dignity to set disgust at her He thought that if a single attempt had gone smoothly the trickster would more husband's adultery before her love for him; she would not turn her back on him so readily try to repeat his game. Nor was he mistaken. When the spy stole up, far as to keep quiet about the sinister schemes which she knew were directed at wishing to restore the shield and paper to their former places, Amleth jumped him. Regard for her son, a token of their union, should at least prompt her to forward, grabbed the fellow and clamped him in fetters. Then, rousing his marital affection. attendants, he proceeded to the queen's abode. Here he tendered his father in ''He can hate his mother's rival,'' she said; ''I shall love her; no setback shall law's salutations and offered her the letter signed in the king's handwriting. As lull my passion for you, no spite prevent me from revealing any evil machinations soon as Hermuthrud (that was the queen's name) had taken it and read it through, against you which I have unearthed. Be sure to watch your father-in-law, since you she warmly commended his skilful labours and pronounced that Fengi had been reaped a happy outcome from your embassy and by obstinately seizing the punished legitimately; Amleth himself with his unfathomable intelligence had initiative transferred the whole profit of the venture to yourself and sidestepped achieved wonders surpassing human estimation; through his deep perspicacity he the wishes of the man who sent you.'' Her words revealed that she was more had devised recompense for Fengi's extinction of his father and bedding of his closely devoted to her husband than to her father. mother, and his remarkable principles had led him to seize the kingdom from the While she was addressing Amleth, the British king appeared, embraced his man who had frequently tried to ensnare him. son in law firmly but with little warmth, and conducted him in to a feast, bent on For this reason, she said, she was puzzled that such an accomplished hiding his dishonest intentions by a show of generosity. Amleth, recognizing his individual could have stumbled once into a misguided marriage; almost duplicity, disguised his fears and took with him a train of two hundred knights, outstripping mortal capacities in his splendour, he appeared nevertheless to have having first put on a mail shirt; he humoured his host and preferred the danger of slipped into a dim, undignified union. His wife's parents were slaves, even though complying with the king's hypocrisy than churlishly opposing him. A code of good luck had tricked them out with royal preferment. In seeking a partner a wise honour, to his mind, must be observed in everything. As he was riding up to the man should make his evaluation not by the radiance of her looks but by that of her king, the other attacked him beneath the archway at the double gates and would family. If he therefore desired a proper alliance he must consider her lineage and have transfixed him with his spear if his sturdy undergarment had not resisted the not be captivated by beauty, a provocative enticement which, with a cheap smear steel. Amleth had received merely a light wound and so he sped to the place of rouge, had stripped many a man of his integrity. However, there was a lady he where he had bidden the young Scottish warriors wait on duty; he then sent back could take, of equal rank with himself. Possessed of adequate means and noble to the king his new wife's spy, the one he had captured, to report how he had blood she herself would be ideal for his embraces, since he did not surpass her in secretly extracted from its safe-keeping in the wallet the letter meant for his regal wealth nor did his brilliant ancestry excel hers. She was a queen, indeed mistress, thereby intending to throw the blame back on Hermuthrud and acquit could be counted a king if her sex were disregarded; more to the point, whichever himself of a charge of treachery by a genuine excuse. man she honoured with her bed was actually king, and received a realm and her The king lost no time in pressing hotly on his trail and beggared him of most caresses together. Her sceptre and her hand were complementary. It was no paltry of his troops, so that when the following day Amleth was on the point of kindness to be offering her personal favours like this, seeing that she was wont to contesting for his life, he altogether despaired of having the strength to resist; in 30 31 order to display an apparent increase in his forces he took the lifeless bodies of marriage for her before he entered battle. At this she protested a masculine his comrades and propped some up on staves, secured others to nearby rocks, sat confidence and swore that she would not abandon her husband even in the front some on horseback as if they were alive, and disposed them all with their line, saying she loathed the woman who was frightened to join her husband at his complete military equipment in lines and formations as though they were about end. Nevertheless she did not stick very closely to this rare promise. When Viglek to join combat. The wing of corpses was just as densely packed as his company of had killed Amleth as they fought in Jutland, she voluntarily yielded herself as a live soldiers. Anyone must have been stunned at the sight of dead men being trophy to the victor's embraces. whirled into battle and carcasses mustered to decide the issue. It proved no idle Every female vow is stolen away by changes of fortune or evaporates with scheme for its inventor, since the forms of the deceased warriors, as they were shifting seasons; a woman's reliability stands on slippery soles and is weakened by struck by the sun's rays, appeared like a mighty host. Those senseless, inanimate chance accidents; her faith is glibly pledged but executed slackly, hampered by figures recalled the original numbers in his battalion and you would have imagined the various allurements of pleasure; always eager to seek out new interests and the carnage of the day before had not thinned his band in the slightest. Terrified forget the old it leaps away breathlessly towards its desire. at the sight the Britons fled before the battle was started, conquered by the Such was Amleth's departure; if Fate had tended him as kindly as Nature, corpses of the foes they had overcome when these were living. I cannot judge he would have shone as brightly as the gods and his talents would have allowed whether this victory owed more to cunning or luck. The king was rather slow him to surpass the labours of Hercules. There is a plain in Jutland which is famous taking to flight and the Danes, hard behind, disposed of him. When the conquering as his burial place and named after him. Viglek governed the kingdom long and Amleth had snatched a heavy share of British booty, he made for his own country peacefully until he was carried off by illness. with his wives.

II. Meanwhile, on the death of Rørik, Viglek had assumed the Danish kingship; after harassing Amleth's mother with every kind of insolence he had deprived her of her royal wealth and gone on to complain that her son had seized control of Jutland and stolen it from the king of Lejre, for it was his own prerogative to confer and remove the duties of high office. Amleth bore this charge with such equanimity that when he bestowed the finest spoils of his victory on Viglek, he seemed to be repaying slander with bounty. Later, however, he saw a chance to exact revenge, challenged and defeated the other in warfare and came out into the open as his enemy. He forced into exile the governor of Scania, Fiallar, who, so the story goes, withdrew to a place called Undensakre, which is unknown to our people. After this, Viglek, resuscitated by the soldiery of Scania and Zealand, sent ambassadors to invite him to battle; Amleth's alert brain perceived that he was balanced between one decision involving disgrace, another spelling danger. He knew that if he took up the challenge he was imperilling his life, and if he shrank from it military dishonour loomed. The desire to preserve his integrity weighed more in a mind which dwelt on gallantry, and a keen thirst for fame blunted his fear of defeat; this prevented the true blaze of his glory from being dimmed by a timid cowering from his fate. He observed too that there is just about the same gulf between an undistinguished life and a magnificent death as men agree there is between experiencing disdain and honour. He was bound to Hermuthrud by such great affection that he harboured a deeper anxiety over her future widowhood This version has been thoroughly revised by the translator. First bublished in Saxo Grammaticus, than for his own death; consequently he paid keen attention to securing a second The History of the Danes edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson, Woodbridge, 1979. 32 33 Ferdinando Taviani The Performance Does Not Yet Exist

As I am writing, Ur-Hamlet is still a “performance of the island of Atlantis”, surfacing fragment by fragment from the sea of potentialities. It is still at the rehearsal stage, a constellation of images and promising intentions aiming at a stable structure, and not yet having achieved it. When these pages are read, the performance will have chosen its definitive form, leaving aside the many possibilities which appeared and were silenced, remaining as shadows. The performance will then be ready to transform itself in the mind and the memory of each single spectator: a story around which ghosts of other stories float. It is easy to foresee that the story we are going to watch will not be like the Hamlet most of us know. But since the performance is still being rehearsed, a series of fantasies, attempts and perspectives emerge in an untidy and casual way, at times achieving surprising effects that wreck some of the original hypotheses and ideas. Under this apparent disorder there is, however, a logic. The performance does not yet exist, but the logic which brings it to life is evident. Rehearsals: Eugenio Barba works in Holstebro with eight of Odin Teatret’s actors; in Bali, with his actors plus thirty-two Gambuh performers, the Japanese Noh master Akira Matsui and Indian, Brazilian and European singers and musicians. All of these meet in Italy with about forty other actors from different countries who participate in a seminar guided by Eugenio Barba and his Odin actors, and will be included in the Ur-Hamlet. In the performance, they will represent the immigrants, driven by hunger, war and plague, who seek shelter in Hamlet’s castle, where the winds of revenge blow. Barba’s dramaturgy starts here, from a web of meetings, an interlacement of different people. It is a 'political' dramaturgy since it builds a provisional polis, a theatrical country in which professionals, aspiring professionals, masters from different ethnic origins, cultures, languages, competences and stage traditions cohabit. It is not a tribe, because the union is temporary and intermittent. It is a well organised and compact country, not a nomadic but a flying one, like the 34 04

Akira Matsui as the Queen of the rats. island of Laputa invented by Swift. investigación escénica, ed. by Ileana Dieguez, Mexico 2006.) It is a free country in the elementary sense of the term: difficult to enter, As I see it, this pride is both artistic and political. Artistic, because it unifies easy to leave. In order to make it solid, long and interconnecting efforts are without standardising; political, because it deepens the diversities, strengthening required. To dissolve it, a word suffices: a “good-bye” and a toast, immediately them reciprocally. after reaching the destination. I have spoken of a free 'country of the theatre'. But I have not underlined When at work, the theatre’s island of Laputa has the features of an its most important aspect: it is free because it is not rooted in the division of the energetic and imposing organisation. It allows the independence of every profes- work, with hierarchies and subordinate roles, but on multicultural relationships. sional and group to amalgamate with the independence of the others, exploiting The multicultural feature is practically an obligation for the theatre between the the aggregating fire of Barba’s creative and strategic abilities, his authorita- 20th and 21st century. The reasons are many and obvious. The theatre, in any tiveness, and - a practical detail not to be underestimated - his linguistic skills. geographical and cultural context, is a small and minority genre of performance. But every one is well aware that such a heterogeneous association is short lived It can escape its isolation and conquer the equivalent of its ancient centrality only and will vanish, like snow in the sun, immediately after the performance has if it spins fragile threads from one side of the planet to the other, connecting materialised. experiences and professionalisms that in the past didn’t feel the need to be Ur-Hamlet is a 'special project', very different from the repertoire and the connected, or, on the contrary, were motivated by the opposite need: to prevent style of Odin Teatret’s own performances. But it appears so only if it is observed the proximity of different traditions, in the same context, from becoming a broth from the point of view of dimensions and spectacular forms. The work’s substance in which peculiarities and stylistic contours were obliterated. and logic correspond to what distinguishes the whole history of Odin Teatret, this In general, multiculturalism can be experienced as a value or an invasion, a small group of actors persistently tied to each other and to their director- subversive threat or a fertile revolution. But in the theatre field it imposes itself playwright. as a condition of survival, if the dispersion of technical patrimonies and know-how Over the years, each Odin actor has developed his/her own artistic is to be prevented. Without a vision able to unify the different technical silhouette and personal working method. They are professionals with very distinct patrimonies and know-how, these, taken one by one, would find refuge only in a artistic individualities, despite their affiliation to the same theatrical enclave. museum. Or else they would end up isolated and forgotten, minute and almost They are not linked by a stylistic unity like the different members of an Asian invisible, crushed by the hegemonic performance media. classical theatre or a great European tradition like ballet or modern mime. I could It is in this worldwide condition of the various living performances that say, exaggerating a little, that Odin Teatret has created a situation similar to that theatre anthropology - of which Barba is the main promoter since the 1970s - finds of a Commedia dell’Arte company in the 16th-18th centuries. These companies its historical basis beyond its theoretical and scientific originality. It is a science, were clearly distinguishable as a whole, although every actor followed a line of but above all it is an effective tool to prevent our time’s minority performance - work and even a different professional tradition: that of his/her 'mask', with the living performance - being reduced to a diminutive or handicapped genre. his/her 'manner'. Theatre anthropology investigates the different recurrent principles in The comparison is not an exaggeration since, in recent years, an actor from various traditions and performative practices. 'Different' and 'recurrent' are not the Afro-Brazilian tradition of the Candomblé has been able to integrate himself contradictory. They point out the possibility of locating a substantially unitary into the Odin enclave without conforming to a presumed 'Odin technique', scenic bios (life) under the skin of the numerous styles and conventions. The maintaining his own technique and 'manner'. This actor is not introduced into the 'recurrent principles' give diverse artistic answers, but these are equivalent to the performance (Andersen’s Dream, 2004) as a quotation or a striking and exotic same basic questions: how to attract and hold the spectator’s attention? How to body: he is present with the same degree of unity/diversity which characterises modify daily behaviour in order to make the actor believable despite the artifi- the 'manners' of the others. ciality of the representation? How, through the work on visibility, to wipe out the “There is not an Odin technique - declares Barba - not one of the actors I visible and make the invisible come into view? have directed can be considered the single genuine interpreter of my visions and When expressed in words, these questions seem obscure and abstruse. In theories. We are a group of unbelievers, towards ourselves even more than reality, they synthesise the artisan’s needs and restlessness. The 'recurrent towards the surrounding world”. And he adds: “Of this I am particularly proud.” principles' can be studied and recorded. But to study-and-record, for an artisan, (E.B., The Dance of Algebra and Fire, in Desmontajes: procesos de creación e is never an end in itself. It follows and precedes the 'doing'. It serves to discover 36 37 the implicit tacit knowledge of what the actor 'does' without knowing why 's/he beginners, all at the service of enigmatic fables that are the patrimony of human does it in that particular way'. And it serves to open new roads. kind, independently from the different cultures in which human kind is divided. The practical consequences of the 'recurrent principles' investigated by These are all roads that sometimes lead to memorable results, to perfor- theatre anthropology are the 'projects' in which Odin Teatret seems to disappear mances that we call masterpieces. But Barba’s road is another. He doesn’t look within a vast Theatrum Mundi. Here artists and masters from many cultures and for the rich nourishment of the banquet of cultures, nor for the nourishment of a traditions converge. Above all: representatives of heterogeneous professional simple and essential food. elites blend with representatives of dissident and autodidactic theatres which Working with actors trained inside different traditions, Barba respects open independent enclaves, often ignored or underestimated, in the territories meticulously the scenic behavior that characterises the professional identity of presided over by 'legitimate' and financially protected theatres. each of them. He composes the performance with these heterogeneous Odin Teatret’s 'projects' are of two types. One consists in the investigation fragments. and the transmission of experiences (the periodical sessions of ISTA - International School of Theatre Anthropology, and of the University of Eurasian Theatre). The He says: other 'projects' aim at the creation of performances which are exceptions, such as Ur-Hamlet, which at the moment of writing does not yet exist. Each artist faithfully preserves the characteristics specific to his/her own Eugenio Barba, if we look closely, doesn’t make multicultural perfor- style, integrating them into a new context. We practise a dramaturgy that is mances. He doesn’t make a spectacle out of the multicultural features. For him, based on the intertwining of autonomous styles. The way the intertwining comes these features are a premise. about, as well as the plot, are both my responsibility as director. What is created Barba doesn’t underline the stylistic syncretism. He doesn’t draw amazing by the actors belongs to their cultural identity and is not encroached upon by the artistic effects by approaching heterogeneous elements, thus generating a mise-en-scène. suggestive tension or an imagined dialogue between cultures. Nor does he show I have called this way: 'the romanesque method'. how, in spite of their differences, the various traditions can embrace, each spilling over into the realm of the other, plunging, for example, a Greek or a Barba explains, turning history into example and legend: Shakespearean text into the waters of Chinese Opera or Japanese Kabuki - or vice versa. On the other hand, he doesn’t follow the diametrically opposite road, In the Middle Ages, the builders of churches in the style that was called asking performers from different traditions to strip themselves of their own romanesque (because it was common in the regions in which the language of peculiarities, stylistic uniforms and conventions in order to recover the Rome was spoken) practised the art of montage. The craftsman’s knowledge availability of an actor in statu nascendi, becoming a beginner beside other necessary to sculpt a capital or shape a column of precious marble had been lost. Nor were there the financial and technological resources to extract and transport the marble. The ecclesiastical architects therefore chose rough or carved stones; fragments of statues; Ionic, Doric or Corinthian capitals; odd columns which they found in various deserted buildings of the ancient Empire. These miscellaneous fragments were reassembled in a new unity, amidst the patches of light and the pools of shadow in the temples where people prayed before bread and wine. The scenic traditions of the actors who come together in the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble are by no means abandoned styles. But my way of proceeding is similar to that of the ecclesiastical architects of the romanesque style.

Then he speaks as an artisan:

I do not intervene over the fragments. I choose them and connect them. A Eugenio Barba and Ni Nyoman Candri in rehearsal in Bali, March 2006. performance composed of fragments remains fragmentary unless it digs a path 38 39 towards a deeper unity. In order to reach this point, you have to work within the the visible choices. The more this 'music' is incorporated, the less it risks being domain of technique, of scenic presence, at a pre-expressive level. Thanks to this lost during the external transformations. After all, the difference between the work, the actions of the actors can interact and so create a context. actor-master and the actor-beginner lies in the following: not in the mastery of In this new context, the fragments change their nature. Those which the execution, but in the density on which the execution is rooted. started off as corners of separate worlds turn into necessary parts of a story This 'music' seems to point out something impalpable and metaphoric. In which neither I nor the actors would have been able to foresee. practice it is something empirical and concrete in the eyes of the artisan trained In this way, stories and characters from far away weave, before our very to recognise and manipulate it without offending or suffocating it. eyes, a veil of appearances and illusions. (E.B., The Romanesque Method, in the Therefore, when we observe the rehearsals carefully, Ur-Hamlet is not programme of the performance The Island of Labyrinths¸ 10th ISTA session, composed. It surfaces. It is as if in the submerged island of Atlantis, a living Copenhagen 1996). theatre makes and unmakes itself incessantly. And it appears on the surface in temporary islands which never coincide with the expected images. It is possible that the medieval simile is more appropriate than the one which In this process, “to create” becomes synonymous with “to choose”. The refers to the Commedia dell’Arte. Perhaps it is less obvious, but it is as precise. artisan’s experience coincides with the ability to recognise the choices which Both are, however, just similes, approximations. They lead to the threshold of the impose themselves through their strength and to know how to follow these essential work and stop there. Because the essential work doesn’t consist of any choices, ceasing to chase one’s own preliminary plans. assemblage, of composition as art – of “associating with power” as Eugène One should never speak about a performance in rehearsal. One risks Delacroix used to say. It proceeds, instead, along vertical lines. It operates on the assuming the tone of a person who tells fables to kill time. layer beneath the forms incorporated by the single actors. For this, and only for this, this essential work can safeguard the incorporated forms without assuming their meaning. When we observe Barba rehearsing, it seems that he is 'putting together' one actor’s fragment with that of another. He is intervening, in reality, not on the whole fragment, but on its inner ligaments, its impulses and nervous rhythms. Simile for simile, he is not comparable to the medieval architect that sets an ancient capital on a column of a different style. He is similar to a gardener who takes care of the grafts or to the surgeon who restores a tissue. But similes are not worth much, because theatre is something else. The scenic behaviours are not organisms, they don’t belong to the so-called 'body', but to the integrity of the body-mind. For this, the fundamental logic of Ur-Hamlet’s rehearsals doesn’t resemble an assemblage of forms drawn from various cultures, but corresponds to the creation of new organic forms. I believe that Barba is not interested in the different stage traditions as 'traditions'. He is interested in actors who have incorporated forms. The profes- sional traditions are one of the situations that promote incorporation. 'Incorporation' it is a strange and ambiguous term. It is distinct from 'execution', 'reproduction' or 'imitation'. It implies the idea of organic roots that reach deeply into the actor’s body-mind. These roots can change their external aspect, without losing their submerged identity. The form and the visibility that these roots assume are always the choice of one of their potentialities. Behind their visible score, an invisible, yet stable 'music' of psycho-physical impulses lives, which remains intact in the changes of Julia Varley as Saxo Grammaticus. 40 41 Eugenio Barba dwell allows me this illusion. I have often wondered if this country can be quoted as an example or whether it is just an exception. ‘Exception’ implies something exceptional, but it is a bitter word, because I know that in the end the exception The Paradox of the Sea confirms the rule it opposes. In order to escape rhetoric and bitterness, I tell myself: my country can be defined as a voluntary exile. The country in which I dwell is the theatre. But also around the term ‘theatre’ we must understand one another. There are theatres standing as houses, surviving longer than their inhabitants, and maintaining an identity of their own while passing from hand to hand. Then there are other theatres whose identity ignores stones and bricks. Their architecture consists of the relationships between the people who compose Centuries, weapons and the sea which unites and separates them. They cannot be inherited or filled with new contents: they will disappear with those same people. These theatres result from the intertwining of the paths According to Luis Borges, the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto believed that the traced by their inhabitants. When they stop advancing, their theatre loses its indispensable ingredients for a great book were ''the dawn and the west, recognisable profile, its house. For me, for example, it would be a sheer contra- centuries, weapons and the sea - that treacherous abyss and means of communi- diction to think of Odin Teatret continuing after those people who founded it and cation''. still keep it alive today. It would be as incongruous as thinking that a fist persists This applies not only to those important texts about which Borges, our once you have opened your hand. modern Tiresias, spoke but also to cultures, provided that we don’t regard them Such is the country in which I live. It is very small and yet vast. We are so as universes encircled by metaphoric or real walls, moving towards one another many, spread over different continents, far from each other, profoundly and, at times, colliding dramatically. The term culture conceals a flow of different, bound by solid, elastic and fragile ties like the threads of a spider’s interactions and appropriations, simultaneous processes of decanting and web. At times we are few, just three, four, fifteen people. At others, we spend interweaving that converge or obstruct each other. The unity of a culture is a web time, energy and money to gather together for two days, a week, a month. Then of contradictions: a culture maintains its own identity on condition that it is able we separate again, and each of us returns to the not-isolated loneliness that to endure and cohabit with tensions and metamorphoses. identifies us. But I ask myself: why weapons? Such is the paradoxical space of my country. To live ‘exile’ as a country is a When I was thirty or forty years old , those ‘weapons’ that in the verse of living contradiction. It is a sad sign of our times that this type of exile can our modern Tiresias are included with the ‘centuries’ and the ‘sea’, reminded me resemble a utopia. But it is a sign of the times which has been recurrent of the heroes of Orlando furioso, of the Chanson de Roland, or of Baldwin, the throughout in history. The theatrical profession, in all countries and ages, even fourth king of Jerusalem, crusader and leper. Now that I am about to turn seventy, before being characterised as a craft producing images and performances, was that same verse doesn’t evoke ancient legends but the daily chronicle of the distinguishable as a profession in exile - or rather, the profession of exile. times in which I live, the events reported by the newspapers and which appear in the animated indifference of the television, between a talk-show and the commentary of a football match. The act of multicultural birth

Inside this living contradiction, it is difficult to experience as a problem, a A country called exile threat or a pressure, the events that shake our surrounding world, the confusing intertwining and the unexpected clashes among cultures, their I don’t recognise these times as my own. I want and am able to enjoy the wind of quarrels for the same territory, the continuous changes of geographical and another way of living time. Perhaps it is an illusion, yet the country in which I mental borderlines. Multiculturalism, in the country of theatre, is not an 42 43 maintained order in the surrounding society. For this reason theatre often constituted a separate micro-society, discriminated and despised. And therefore it was, at times, an island of freedom. When in the 20th century theatre seemed destined to perish because it appeared inadequate for the demands of modernity with its urban structure, economy and new types of performances, theatre people practised - more through force of circumstance than as a conscious plan - a double strategy. On the one hand they induced the surrounding society to recognise the stage profession as a cultural good to be protected, releasing it from the chains of commerce. Our profession is art, they claimed, and managed to get it subsidised and safeguarded as a valuable national legacy. While this change of mentality was taking place, a few men and women established archipelagos of small autonomous theatrical islands. Each of these small islands lived, and still lives, in its own cultural environment as a negligible minority, capable nevertheless of opening its own path into new territories, thus escaping the customary enclosures of commercial theatre and traditional artistic performances. Marginalisation within its own professional and cultural environment is compensated by a widened sphere of action. A similar process of compensation concerns also the century-old performative traditions. The more a classical European or Asian theatre genre loses vigour locally, becoming old-fashioned within its context of origin, the more it acquires prestige beyond its own traditional boundaries, overcoming the cultural barriers and expanding the impact of its presence in a dense mesh of exchanges and decanting. In other words, it finds a new equilibrium within a multicultural horizon. The theatre profession is no longer separated by language barriers. Despite its differences, it is welded more and more into one planetary professional country. It becomes possible to speak of a unitary theatrical culture that embraces experiences whose roots are in a distant past, in classical traditions, once respected or persecuted, as well as in small autonomous islands that carry Augusto Omolú and Mia Theil Have as Hamlet and his foster sister. out borderline practices. Diversity is the basic matter of theatre. The fact that today diversity is experienced as a dramatic historical condition whose consequences worry governments and single individuals, should not let us forget that it is the fundamental material on which theatre has always worked. Anyone who uses emergency. It is something obvious which belongs to its act of birth. Its long theatre as his/her own craft must know how to work on his/her own diversity. history suffices to demonstrate it. S/he must explore it, weave it, transforming the curtain that divides us from the Those who practised the theatrical craft, in Europe as in Asia, always lived others into an enthralling embroidered veil through which others can look and the condition of foreigners, as if they were in transit. The actors’ troupes were discover their own visions. Which are my visions? I ignore them until a golden veil composed of people coming from different regions and social classes. Theatre was or a gleaming cobweb captures them. Until someone strange stops being a foreign in the world in which it lived and among the spectators who made it live, stranger and begins to talk to me with a voice that is both not mine and not not- above all because it contradicted the limitations and the hierarchies that mine. 44 45 For an emigrant like me, who affirms that his roots are in the sky, theatre The subterranean space of the foundations, on the other hand, becomes, has become the tool for encounters and exchanges to overcome mutual for its very nature, the territory of the exchanges where the country of the indifference. It is a technique that establishes relationships, helps to withstand theatre experiments its multicultural unity and organic complexity. The conformity and builds bridges. foundations are neither wine cellars nor catacombs. They are paradoxical subter- ranean bridges that allow the passage from one point to another in the country of the theatre which is united although spread in geographically distant places. Organic subterranean bridges Unlike in theatre, in real life bridges do not always act as a means of communication between two regions, between the banks of a river, between one It is interesting to observe the inner nervous system of the organic bridges which tribe and another, between the water and the sky. theatre builds. In the relationship with the spectators, the living nature of these bridges derives from the ability of the performer’s presence to reinforce a quality of awareness, independently of the words. We experience this when we are The bridges and the simplicity confronted by an actor who knows how to give scenic form to his/her body-in-life, or when we listen to a singer who captivates us even when we ignore his/her Ronda is a town in the mountains of Andalusia, famous for its bridge built at the language. time of the Arabs, high up beside a gorge at the bottom of which a river plunges In the relationship between performers from different genres and cultures, furiously. During the Spanish civil war, the Franco troops used it as a suitable place the bridges consist in the paradox of the techniques, similar to the paradox of the to execute prisoners. They tied them one to another, standing on the parapet, sea that unites and separates. then a bullet in the neck of the first in the row - and down went all, crashing Acting techniques are doubly paradoxical, because we make prolonged against the rocks and being dragged away by the impetuous stream. Ernest efforts to appropriate them for the sole purpose - once we are in control of Hemingway immortalised this story in For Whom the Bell Tolls. them - of freeing us from them. According to the way we look at them, But I want to speak of another bridge, a splendid one. Kozda Mimar Sinan, techniques may separate or connect those who practice our profession. We the Michelangelo of the Ottoman Empire, was the architect of the Edirne mosque can decide to look at technique as something in which the context, the and that of Suleyman the Magnificent in Istanbul, as well as the impressive bridge ideologies, the religions or the dreams that are at the base of a tradition or of on the river Drina in Visegrad, Serbia, at the end of the 16th century. The bridge a small theatre group are distilled. Thus, at the same time that we glorify of Mostar, one of the most admired in Europe, is also attributed to him. This them, we make them useless, turning them into a wall or embalming them in architectural masterpiece, described as a rainbow rising above the Milky Way, a museum. leaps over an abyss. However, it was not the ingenious Sinan who created this But we can also choose to approach the various acting techniques as the bridge, but Harudjin, one of his disciples, who built it in 1666 by order of the ground where we can meet, the place of physical translations and somatic re- sultan Suleyman the Magnificent at the request of the town’s citizens. foundations that unite and allow performers of distant origins to establish a For centuries, the bridge of Mostar glorified its city and was the pride of its dialogue between them. population of Catholic Croatians, orthodox Serbs and Croatians, and Moslem It is up to us to decide whether techniques serve to separate or unite us. Serbs. On their own, techniques are nothing. Their meaning is not in their origin. They Every time the actor Slobodan Praljak crossed it to go to his Theatre of the whisper something important to each of us only in the moment we start to Youth, he could not help admiring the stone blocks smoothed by the caress of discover how to use them. Every culture has given a form to its own spectacular time. Slobodan had begun his career when his country was still called The Socialist eloquence according to its own styles. To do so, they had to create a living Republic of Yugoslavia. He was not only an actor, but also directed plays by Bertolt subterranean theatre, an organic theatre of foundations with a basic Brecht and Evgenij Schwartz. technique. The dismemberment of the Yugoslav Federation started. First Slovenia Working at the surface of the styles, we can mutually admire the artistic detached itself, later Croatia, then Croatians and Serbs clashed trying to annex results. We can also achieve a syncretism which at times is very effective, and at as much territory as possible from Bosnia, whose majority was Moslem. Actor and others leans towards degradation, muddled rather than composite. director Slobodan Praljak left the stage and devoted himself to the mission of 46 47 national growth. As a Croatian, he was in command of the military position which, In simpler words: they may be among us, provided that they assimilate, that from the surrounding hills, regularly tormented the Moslem city of Mostar. His is, that they submit and are exploited. chetniks were skilled and clever. They shot to wound the leg of a passer-by who In the last century, effective compromises were elaborated to mitigate the ran between the barricades, then they waited for rescuers hastening to help, and harshness of the market in which work is bought and sold. But these compromises liquidated with precision both the wounded and the rescuers. It was Slobodan can be outflanked by immigration laws. Exploitation finds again a legal colour: Praljak, the appreciated actor and director from the artistic milieu of Mostar, who legitimate self-defence in a war between civilizations. A humanistic and ordered the guns of his position to bombard Harudjin’s bridge that had defied the libertarian flag hides the bullying of those who know or have the illusion of being centuries. Like a rainbow, the bridge vanished in a grey rain of splinters, joining the strongest. Weapons and laws pretend not to defend our interest in prevailing, the reckless waters of the river. but the rightful desire to preserve our integrity. The following day, at dawn, who did the obstinate and distant roosters greet The centuries and the sea are vast and immeasurable thoughts. Or perhaps with their crowing? For whom were the dogs barking? minuscule, as the daydreams that we believe and hope will protect us. Centuries, weapons and the sea that unites and separates. There have always been wars. Violence due to intolerance, also. Racism and xenophobia have always thrived. But today we see that xenophobia, racism, violence and war do The castle not hide behind the flags of opposite interests or conflicting ideas about the future of the world. They act under the banner of roots and civilisations. Cultures Light is crystalline here in Elsinore, on this August afternoon. The world around and civilizations seem to oppose one another just as contrasting ideologies once me is the image of order, peace and good taste. On the sea, in front of the coast did. We would never have imagined that this would happen in the 21st century. of Sweden, several boats sail on different ribbons of time: roaring motors and Such a situation seems to belong to the mediaeval age of Roncisvalle or that of rowing boats, yachts for modern regattas and an ancient frigate still capable of the empty holy grave for the sake of which Christianity crossed the sea and silently dominating the sea. brought arms to Jerusalem. Even the criminal racism that infested history in the The castle of Kronborg, that regal building, stretches out towards the sea 20th century seems less archaic. with its huge windows and towers that all seem identical, yet each is different The centuries distill and individualise the cultures. The sea unites and at from the other, when carefully inspected. Around the castle, the tourist the same time separates them. The organic processes that characterise and hold commerce is never impudent. Near the harbour, cool Danish beer is served by them in motion are long, subtle and intricate, at times incomprehensible. But courteous waiters from Morocco. when weapons enter into action, everything becomes simple. We are in the same heart of civilization and sit comfortably on our hopes. When history speaks in simple terms, art and culture fall into desolation. - Would you create a performance here? The worlds that they create are like iridescent soap bubbles which burst at the - In the castle? first breath of wind, returning to the nothing of which they are full. - Inside its rooms or in the courtyard. We gather to discuss the encounter between different cultures. We reflect - I would like to make a performance as though it was a court’s feast, with its on the particular art of underlining our own borders in order better to perforate luxury and poisons. Outside the walls, itinerant sellers, curious people, them and cross over them. We question ourselves about the risks of syncretism. mountebanks, fireworks and guns that shoot blanks. We affirm that ‘diversity’ is not only a condition of departure but a goal to be - And the performance inside will be… reached. And while we are disputing about complexity, the daily world around us -… Hamlet, of course. is simplified. My friend Trevor Davis suggests that I direct Hamlet in the castle of Elsinore Simplicity is merciless. It says: ''Us or them''. where the only ghosts to appear for centuries have been theatrical ones. As soon But - common sense replies - we need them: we need their work. as I step inside the courtyard, the architecture of the castle leads my gaze In this way, the Law too shows its simple and armed aspect. Many of us upwards. I feel a desire to populate the air between the four walls. Up there, declare: of course, we have to live together, but not to the point of questioning Ophelia will drown in a river that flows in the emptiness beneath the clouds. An the absoluteness of our own civilization’s values. We accept a multi-ethnical ancient bishop will come out of the church tower preaching a modern sermon, the society, provided that it is not multi-cultural. equivalent of to be or not to be. Hamlet is a son hunted by a loving Father-Ghost 48 49 who pursues him, pacing incessantly in the void above the spectators. Here is the heart of my civilization: of the great theatre and of the small Denmark. Then I hear dogs barking. They are many and sound fierce. The magic of the sea which reflects the castle vanishes and dark lightning cleaves the crystalline August light. Is the banal barking of dogs enough to make me change my mind? The actuality of history has many voices. No more mountebanks around the walls of the castle and no aristocratic feast inside. No Shakespeare, but the naked struggle of power as the mediaeval Saxo Grammaticus described it, in his elegant Latin that so few of his contempo- raries were able to understand. No terror of appearances from the Other World, no pathos of existential questioning: only the anguished panic for real and supposed foes. I imagine the deceptive safety of the people inhabiting the castle. I envisage their laws pruned by the rhetoric of justice and reduced to the pure relationship of power such as Machiavelli prompted to his Prince, so simple and deprived of a moral alibi, that their author seemed to his contemporaries to be an emissary of Hell. The castle is threatened, not by Fortinbras, but by rats and foreigners. The inhabitants, afraid of the plague, chase them with merciless coldness. They see in these miserable paupers in search of a refuge, their future inner enemies, the sign of a siege to come. There Saxo wanders, between the law of the Weapons and the weapons of the Law, solitary as a blind man. He had once described his country as an embroidery of waters, seas and rivers, among which the Danish fields emerge as jewels. Now, in Elsinore, sarcastic and helpless, he contemplates and portrays the rebirth of archaic barbarities in the same heart of one of my culture’s historical castles.

This is Eugenio Barba’s speech of thanks on the occasion of the Honorary Doctorate conferred to him by the University of Plymouth on 27 October 2005.

Sketches by Luca Ruzza for Ur-Hamlet’s scenic space.

50 51 Gambuh

Gambuh is Bali’s oldest surviving ritual theatre, comparable to Noh theatre in Japan and Kathakali in India. Its music, literature, acting and dance originated in Java during the Majapahit era (1292-1527), at the apogee of the classical Hindu- Javanese court culture. When the Moslems came to power, the fine flower of Hindu-Javanese aristocracy migrated to Bali, which remains the only Hindu island in the Moslem Indonesian archipelago. Gambuh has not changed in essence during the 500 years of its recorded history and still mirrors the compelling atmosphere and figures of the ancient Javanese royal courts. Its characteristic epic form using acting, dance, dialogue, singing and music became the source of a multitude of dance and performance genres, that has made Bali such a strong inspiration for today’s theatre in the East as well as in the West. Just one example of this is Artaud. When Bali became a Dutch colony in 1908, the glamour of the royal courts disappeared and Gambuh faded in popularity. Today Gambuh survives in only a few villages and is in danger of becoming extinct. In Gambuh the main characters speak and sing in Kawi (an archaic literary language) accompanied by attendants who translate their dialogues into present- day Balinese. The Gambuh dancers sing and speak the text, often without fully understanding it, having learnt it through an oral tradition handed down through generations. The plays are taken from the Malat cycle of tales which revolves around the heroic mythical prince Panji’s quest for his beloved Rangkesari. The Gambuh gamelan orchestra of drums, gongs, bells and flutes was already established before bronze metallophones, characteristic of most other gamelan orchestras in Bali, made an appearance. Thus the drumming patterns, tunes and musical structure of Gambuh form the basis of nearly all Balinese music.

The Gambuh Pura Desa Ensemble was created in 1993 in the village of Batuan as a project by Cristina Wistari Formaggia and supported initially by the Ford Foundation. The aim was to preserve and transmit the practice of this dance drama among the younger generation. In addition to teaching boys and girls, the permanent Gambuh Pura Desa Ensemble performs regularly in its village, in the Cristina Wistari Formaggia as Orvendil, with Ni Luh Nik Windasari, Ni Kadek Ari Antini and Ni Made Srimpi. temples of Bali and abroad. 52 53 Noh

Noh is a classical Japanese performance form which combines elements of dance, drama, music and poetry into one highly aesthetic stage art. Noh developed into its present form during the 14th and 15th centuries under the leadership of the distinguished performer-playwrights Kannami and his son Zeami (1363-1443). Zeami, in particular, wrote numerous plays which are still performed in today’s classical repertory of some 250 plays. He also wrote a number of secret works which explain the aesthetic and technical principles governing Noh and give details on how the art should be composed, acted, directed, taught and produced. These texts were discovered only at the beginning of the 20th century. Noh is not a realistic theatre form. Rather, its movement is highly stylised and can be described as dance. While some gestures have specific meaning, others serve as an abstract aesthetic expression to convey the emotions of the character. A play is performed by two or three actors, accompanied by a chorus of eight persons and an orchestra of three or four musicians. Make-up is not used in Noh. Instead, delicately carved masks are usually worn by the main character and his attendant. These masks are considered objects of superb beauty as well as powerful means of expression. Today, like many classical performance forms throughout the world, Noh cannot be described as a popular art among the Japanese people as a whole. Yet its supporters are enthusiastic and its professional performers are highly trained and extremely busy performing and teaching throughout the country. There are today approximately 1,500 professional performers who make their living largely through performing and teaching Noh. There are five separate schools of Noh continuing this artistic tradition: Kanze, Hosho, Kita, Komparu and Kongo. Each differentiates itself slightly through atmosphere, acting style, plays, masks and costumes. Noh began to be known in the West at the beginning of the 20th century, introduced, among others, by the translations of the American poet Ezra Pound. It became a source of inspiration for European theatre both with respect to the actor´s technique as well as the dramaturgical literary structure. Among other ardent admirers were William Butler Yeats, Paul Claudel, Jacques Copeau and Bertolt Brecht. 54 Akira Matsui in the Noh based play Agave. Photo: Fiora Bemporad 55 Candomblé and the Dance of the Orixás

The African diaspora has contributed preponderantly to Brazil’s cultural profile. The religious beliefs brought from Africa helped the black population to keep alive the roots which gave meaning to the world around them. Their divinities, the Orixás, representing different forces of nature, manifest themselves during the ceremony of Candomblé. Particular drum- rhythms and dances invite the Orixás to come down and 'ride' the devotee. Each Orixá, male or female, has its own toque (drum-beat) and dance whose quality of energy and pattern of movements are fixed according to the different 'nations' (Ketu, Angola, Jêjê). When the devotee falls into a trance becoming the 'horse' of the Orixá, s/he is dressed with the costume and attributes of the divinity and continues to dance in an altered state of consciousness. The rhythm of the drums of the Candomblé, when brought out of the terreiro (the ceremonial space), acquired a new character which became extremely popular and, in the eyes of foreigners, the quintessence of Brazil - the samba. In the 1950s, the dance of the Orixás also began to be used outside the context of the Candomblé, first by folkloric ensembles, later as the basis for a specific Afro-Brazilian style which has been elaborated by many choreographers and dancers.

Augusto Omolú and Cleber da Paix˜ao in Orô de Otelo – A Ceremony for Othello. Photo: Fiora Bemporad

56 57 Odin Teatret

Odin Teatret was created in Oslo, Norway, in 1964, and moved to Holstebro (Denmark) in 1966, changing its name to Nordic Theatre Laboratory. Today, its members come from a dozen countries and three continents. The Laboratory’s activities include: Odin’s own productions presented on site and on tour in Denmark and abroad; ‘barters’ with various milieus in Holstebro and elsewhere; organisation of encounters for theatre groups; hosting other theatre groups and ensembles; teaching activity in Denmark and abroad; the annual Odin Week; publication of magazines and books; production of didactic films and videos; research into theatre anthropology during the sessions of ISTA (the International School of Theatre Anthropology); periodic performances with the many-cultural Theatrum Mundi Ensemble; collaboration with the CTLS, Centre for Theatre Laboratory Studies of the University of Århus; the Festuge (Festive Week) in Holstebro; the triennial festival Transit devoted to women in theatre; children’s performances, exhibitions, concerts, round tables, cultural initiatives and community work in Holstebro and the surrounding region. From the start, Odin Teatret has concentrated on the actors’ training, their ability to create scenic closeness and new audience relations as well as analysing and developing the different dramaturgies which make up a performance. The fact that the Odin actors were self-taught and had to train themselves and each other has resulted in a constant interest in learning and the passing on of technical knowledge. Odin Teatret’s 42 years as a laboratory have resulted in the growth of a professional and scholarly milieu characterised by cross-disciplinary endeavours and international collaboration. One field of research is ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology) which since 1979 has become a performers’ village where actors and dancers meet with scholars to compare and scrutinise the technical foundations of their scenic presence. Another field of action is the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble which, since the early 1980s, presents performances with a permanent core of artists from many professional traditions. Odin Teatret has so far created 65 performances, performed in 53 countries and different social contexts. In the course of these experiences, a specific Odin culture has grown, founded on cultural diversity and the practice of ‘barter’: Odin actors present themselves through their work to a particular milieu which, in return, replies with songs, music and dances from its own local culture. The barter is an exchange of cultural manifestations and offers not only an insight into the other’s forms of expression, but is equally a social interaction which defies Frans Winther, Jan Ferslev, Roberta Carreri, Julia Varley, Iben Nagel Rasmussen and Tage Larsen in Don prejudices, linguistic difficulties and differences in thinking, judging and behaving. Giovanni all’inferno. Photo: Tommy Bay. 58 59 Performers

Cristina Wistari Formaggia (Italy) settled in Bali in I Wayan Bawa (Bali) is son of I Nyoman Sadeg, a 1983. Under the guidance of the reknowned master renowned interpreter of the masked dance drama I Made Djimat, she studied the classical forms of Topeng. Since his youth he has studied Gambuh, Gambuh and Calonarang and Topeng for sixteen Topeng and Calonarang, the drama of magic, under years. During the last decade, in addition to her the guidance of I Made Djimat, one of the great activity as dancer and teacher both in Bali and Balinese dance masters. He has also been a student abroad, she has devoted herself to the preservation of the Dance Academy in Denpasar, STSI, and now and documentation of Gambuh. She has edited the teaches the male dancers of the Gambuh Pura Desa only existing book on this classical art (Gambuh, Lontar 2000). She has collab- Ensemble. He has collaborated with ISTA since 1995 and is a permanent member orated with ISTA since 1995 and is a permanent member of the Theatrum Mundi of the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble. Ensemble.

Ni Nyoman Candri (Bali) learned classical dances Akira Matsui (Japan) began studying Noh chant at from her father, I Made Kredek. Today she is well- the age of seven. At twelve he became a “live-in known as an Ardja (Balinese classical opera) singer apprentice” to Kita Minoru, the fifteenth generation and is one of the rare female dalang (puppeteer) of of masters of the Kita school (one of the five guilds Wayang Kulit (shadow theatre), a genre traditionally of Noh main actors). In addition to performing and performed by men. Since 1998 she is part of the teaching in Japan, he has been active for more than Topeng Shakti Company. She performs regularly in two decades in disseminating Noh abroad and, from Indonesia and abroad, and teaches students coming his firm foundation in tradition, he has also experi- to her from all over the world. She has collaborated with ISTA and the Theatrum mented in intercultural projects. He has collaborated with ISTA since 2000 and is Mundi Ensemble since 1990. a permanent member of the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble.

Roberta Carreri (Italy) is an actor, teacher and Augusto Omolú (Brazil) was born in Salvador, and organiser. She joined Odin Teatret in 1974. Her grew up within the religious world of the Candomblé, professional experiences are presented in The where he is ogan (ceremonial assistant). He began to Actor’s Way, edited by Erik Exe Christoffersen. She dance in 1976 with the ensemble Viva Bahia directed gives workshops for actors all over the world, also by Emília Biancardi. After studying classical ballet presenting as a work demonstration her professional and modern dance, he joined the Castro Alves Ballet. autobiography, Traces in the Snow, and the two During the years 1983-1985 he created the company productions Salt (with Jan Ferslev) and Judith. She Chama, working both as a dancer and choreographer. organises and leads the annual international workshop Odin Week in Holstebro He has collaborated with ISTA since 1994, is a permanent member of the Theatrum and abroad. Mundi Ensemble and since 2003 is an actor at Odin Teatret.

60 61 Musicians and singers

Mia Theil Have (Denmark) is an actor. She has Brigitte Cirla (France) started her career as a singer, established her own international group performing actor, director and teacher, after an education in in Latin America and Denmark, she is part of the classical piano. In 1991 she created Voix musical ensemble Kabaret Vogn, and directs Polyphoniques and her activities are based at the projects with children. After studying with Tage cultural centre of La Friche Belle de Mai in Marseilles, Larsen and Else Marie Laukvik for three years, she and cover environments ranging from prisons to joined Odin Teatret in 2004 and is the youngest hospitals. In 1998 she created the vocal group Les member of the group. Dissonantes, whose concerts and performances are inspired by the repertoire of Bartok, Kodaly, Ligeti and music from the Caucasus.

Julia Varley (Great Britain) joined Odin Teatret in 1976. Kai Erik Bredholt (Denmark) began as a folk-musician Apart from acting, she is active in directing, teaching, playing in the streets and in popular cabarets. His organising and writing. Since 1990 she has taken part in studies include extensive exposure to various genres the conception and organisation of ISTA. Since its of European traditional and folk music, especially beginning in 1986 she is a member of the Magdalena those of Denmark and Greenland. He joined Odin Project, a network of women in contemporary theatre. Teatret in 1988, first as a musician/composer, later as She is also artistic director of the Transit Festival in an actor and organiser/director of barters and Holstebro, editor of The Open Page, a journal devoted transformances (theatricalisation of a specific social to women’s work in theatre, and author of Wind in the West, a novel by a theatre milieu). His latest collaborations include Turin university and old people’s homes, character. and the town of Frederikstad in Norway.

Torgeir Wethal (Norway) is an actor, teacher and Magnus Errboe (Denmark) is a musician and actor, film director. He is one of the founders of Odin founder of Mango Teatret and organizer of an Teatret and has participated in most of its perfor- international theatre festival in Silkeborg (2003). He mances since its beginning in 1964. His professional studied at Dell’Arte (California), at Antonio Fava’s experiences are published in The Actor’s Way, International School of Comic Acting (Italy) and at edited by Erik Exe Christoffersen. He is in charge of The Arts Educational School of London. He played the production of Odin Teatret Film and has directed the main character in Cuando vuelan las vacas, a several films about Odin Teatret’s own performances documentary/fiction film that won several prizes. as well as the actor’s training of Etienne Decroux, Jerzy Grotowski and Odin Since 2001 he has participated in several of Odin Teatret’s projects and is a Teatret. permanent member of the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble.

62 63 Jan Ferslev (Denmark) is a musician, composer, actor and teacher. His background includes rock, jazz, Latin and classical music. As a guitar player in the 1960s he participated in various recordings and composed the music for different forms of theatre. He has worked as an actor in both traditional and group theatre before joining Odin Teatret in 1987. In his workshops, Jan Ferslev concentrates on the stage presence of musicians and on the dramaturgical function of music in theatre performances.

Annada Prasanna Pattanaik (India) was born and educated in Orissa and living in Bangalore. He is a composer, singer and solo flautist of Hindustani Classical Music who has toured extensively both in his own country and abroad. He has recorded the solo album Deep Sky and played music for more than 800 Indian films, five of which have received National Awards. He has collaborated with ISTA since 1990 and is a permanent member of the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble.

Cleber da Paixão (Brazil) was born in Salvador where he works as professional percussionist both with Afro- Brazilian orchestras and in a symphonic orchestra. He learned his skill growing up within the religious universe of the Candomblé, where he is ogan (ceremonial assistant). He has collaborated with ISTA since 2000 and is a permanent member of the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble. He accompanies Augusto Omolú in Ôro de Otelo – A Ceremony for Othello, as percussionist and singer. Rehearsal of Ur-Hamlet, Bali, March 2006.

64 65 Frans Winther (Denmark) is a composer and musician. He studied at Ålborg FOTO Music Conservatory. He joined Odin Teatret in 1987 where he performs as musician and composes/ arranges music for its performances and other activities. He has created two operas: Shakuntala (his own libretto based on Kalidasa’s play) and Ezra (with libretto by Peter Laugesen based on Ezra Pound’s life and poems).

Luca Ruzza (Italy) is an architect and set designer and teaches at the University of Rome. He has projected and built several theatre buildings. Since 1980 he has created OPEN LAB which applies high technology systems to performance and architecture. He has collaborated with Italian and international theatres and festivals for the creation of multi-media projects, focusing on the relationship between images and space of different kinds. His projects have been realised in 17 countries from Qatar to Usa and from Brazil to Germany.

Jan de Neergaard (Denmark) is a set designer. He has worked throughout Denmark, with a number of plays, shows and events in addition to being a television designer. Since several years he also designs for museums and exhibitions, such as the first architectural Biennale in Venice where he planned the Danish Pavillion. He theaches at art and design schools. Since 1996 he has collaborated with Odin Teatret for the performances The Island of Labyrinths, Mythos, Ego Faust, Ezra, Don Giovanni all’inferno and Ur-Hamlet.

Eugenio Barba (Denmark) was born in Italy. He is the director and founder of Odin Teatret/Nordic Theatre Laboratory (1964) and ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology, 1979). He has directed 65 performances with Odin Teatret and the Theatrum Mundi Ensemble. He has received 8 honorary doctorates for artistic and scientific merits. He is on the editorial or advisory boards of TDR, New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, Teatro e Storia. Latest publications: Land of Ashes and Diamonds. My Apprenticeship in Poland, Black Mountain Press, 1999; and A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology with Nicola Savarese, Routledge, 2005. Rehearsal of Ur-Hamlet, Bali, March 2006. 66 67 ODIN TEATRET NORDISK TEATERLABORATORIUM SÆRKÆRPARKEN 144 · POSTBOKS 1283 DK-7500 HOLSTEBRO · DENMARK TEL. +45 97 42 47 77 · FAX +45 97 41 04 82 E-MAIL [email protected] · www.odinteatret.dk HOLSTEBRO · JUNE 2006