This article is taken from Jens Bjørneboe English Online Archive (http://home.att.net/~emurer/index.htm )

JENS BJØRNEBOE: EUGENIO BARBA AND

Translated from the Norwegian by Esther Greenleaf Müer

Note: Elsa Kvamme's Kjære Jens, Kjære Eugenio: Jens Bjørneboe, Eugenio Barba og opprørens teater (Dear Jens, Dear Eugenio: Jens Bjørneboe, Eugenio Barba and the theatre of rebellion) was published by Pax in the fall of 2004. The book, by a former student of Barba's, is a memoir of the long friendship between Bjørneboe and Barba. Barba started his internationally known Odin Theater in Oslo, with Bjørneboe's encouragement. The theater's first production was Ornithofilene, an experimental pilot version of Fugleeskerne (The Bird- Lovers). The following essay laments the lack of public support which forced Barba to relocate to . (Jens Bjørneboe: "Eugenio Barba og Norge." Originally published in Dagbladet, 1970. Reprinted in Om Teater (Oslo: Pax, 1977.) Samlede Essays: Teater (Olso: Pax 1996), 57-60. 1977, 1996 by Pax Forlag. English translation 2005 by Esther Greenleaf Mürer.

It is now some years since Eugenio Barba came to Norway. Since then he has sailed on Norwegian ships, he has worked at the Aker Mechanical Workshop, while simultaneously earning a university degree in French and Norwegian, and then founding the now internationally known Odin Theater. Unfortunately the Odin Theater is no longer located in Oslo, but is long since established in a small but culture-conscious town in Jutland, in Holstebro. Every year international theater folk of the first water gather in Holstebro: , Etienne, Decroux, Jean-Louis Barrault and Jerszy Grotowski have taken part in seminars in this little Jutland town. By trade Eugenio Barba is a tinsmith, aside from his theater education, which is essentially grounded in , France and in India.

The last year that he ran the Odin Theater in Norway, he had a job with the Sanitation Department, and began emptying garbage cans at 4 in the morning. After that he worked in his theater, training and rehearsing until late at night. It is already several years since the French government appointed Barba professor of theater at the University of Aix-in-Provence. When Barba once visited a Norwegian theater manager to ask for employment, he was offered a job as a stagehand. But he preferred the garbage cans. For economic reasons he moved his theater a few years ago from Oslo to Holstebro, where it could have passable working conditions. Today Odin Theater also has its own publishing house and publishes its own magazine, Theater Theory and Technique , with contributions from people like Peter Brook.

It must be emphasized that Eugenio Barba started his Odin Theater in Oslo with only Norwegian coworkers — and as a curiosity one can also note that two or three of the first actors who helped establish the theater's reputation had been expelled from the Norwegian State Theater School — in other words, they were rejected acting candidates. There is no real reason why the Odin Theater couldn't have developed here; Oslo is considerably large and wealthier than the little town of Holstebro in Denmark. And the garbageman from Oslo, Professor Eugenio Barba of the University of Aix, had neither motive nor desire to leave Norway, where he had invested much work. However, he had no choice: In Holstebro he could continue working. In this country that was impossible.

Perhaps we should give a little thought to the matter.

To say that the case is deplorable or painful, is to put it very mildly. The Odin Theater in Holstebro is today a theater institution, a true theater laboratory, which all of Denmark profits from. Of course if was a shame that we let it go, for we certainly had the means to keep the Odin Theater. The truth is quite simply that we didn't want to keep it. The many very interested and well- disposed individuals notwithstanding, our cultural authorities were all too indifferent and uninterested, and certain theater circles were downright hostile.

I have a memory which now goes back about nine years: a remark by a very well-known Norwegian actor — to be sure, after a couple of glasses which didn't contain juice and water. Word for word: " You have nothing to do in the Norwegian theater! Keep the hell away from the theater in this country! "

One cannot rule out the possibility that the same sort of attitude also applied to Barba and his Odin Theater; both he and his theater were felt as alien, as threatening, and as completely lacking in the scent of the flock. He smelled different.

That it is ourselves — and nobody else — that we have harmed by this course of action, is very clear today. Our cultural milieu is not so large, so rich, and so varied that we can afford to dispense with people like Barba. That the Odin Theater is today located in Holstebro and not in Oslo, is a definite loss for our country. Of course Barba is not Norwegian, but the theater, Odin Theater, which he created here — it was a Norwegian theater, and it is very strange to see that the theater's magazine, though published in Denmark, has kept the Norwegian spelling; on the title page "teknikk" is written with two k's and "språk" with å; and k.

Three or four years ago a conference on avant-garde theater took place in Oslo, and a number of young directors presented their points of view, not least about economics: You need a secure economic backing to start an experimental theater. And that in itself is not remarkable. They complained that as things were, one couldn't expect truly modern avant-garde stages to arise in Norway in the same way as in our culturally more interested neighboring countries or as in culturally dominant societies. But they overlooked one fact: No one mentioned that at the time Oslo had one of Europe's most advanced avant-garde theaters large as life among us namely the Odin Theater, which occupied a municipal air-raid shelter in an underground bunker, and whose director emptied garbage cans at an hour in the morning when the Norwegian directors were still fast asleep.

The fact is that the only Nordic avant-garde theater which has achieved European renown, and which has really meant something on a professional international basis— that theater was founded and developed in Oslo, and the even more lamentable fact is that young Norwegian actors and directors couldn't be bothered to go and see it. Scandinavia's only creative avant-garde theater originated in Oslo, but departed almost wholly unremarked. Among Norwegian theater critics only Martin Nag took a real interest in the Odin Theater.

In the long run no one — not even Professor Barba — cannot keep on emptying garbage cans starting at four A.M. and then carry on effective theater work until after midnight. And the result we know: he ended up in Denmark, which has a more fruitful climate than Norway. It was an advantage for him, but not for us.

We should think about that for a minute.

On a purely personal note I would like to add that I have never met anyone in the theater who has a greater insight into theater or a broader general education than Barba. In addition to this he is a trained acrobat and, as I said, also a tinsmith, something which is very useful for a director, because it gives him concrete insight into the stage's practical problems of a technical sort.

Eugenio Barba has already made such a deep and lasting imprint on the Scandinavian theater milieu it they cannot be erased. To write a history of the Nordic theater without according Barba a significant place, would be to falsify that history utterly.

For a Norwegian it is difficult to get past the question: Was this really necessary? Was it necessary to offer Barba the job of stagehand? Was it necessary to let him continue as a garbage collector in Oslo? Unfortunately, I have a feeling that a great many theater folk in this country will answer: "What the hell would we want with him?"

There is something wrong with the whole thing. If an Oslo theater puts on a guest production in Bergen, it is described in the press with big headlines, like a world-class event. If Barba plays in Venice or in Paris, it gets not a word of mention.

It is hardly that the information is missing. It revolves around a visible line in Norwegian cultural politics. And this line is an old one. If you want to be nice, you can call it the "dictatorship of mediocrity." If you want to be nasty, there are considerably worse ways of putting it.

Let us observe two minutes of silence in memory of our dead.