About my experiences at Odin

Dedicated to Olga aswell

When I finally left the school, heading Odin Theatre in Holstebro, you asked me, to tell about my time there; I have some small remarks, it was really just a few days.
The first thing, which amazed me the most, was the openness of the theatre.
The first time we went there, I was suprised, that there was no cloackroom, there was only a rack for coats at the end of the hallway. If you wished to, you could hang your coat there.
I remember, when we saw Andersen's dream for the first time, after the performance we met with several actors and also with Eugenio on the hallway.
The building includes not just the performing and rehearsing spaces, but the technical rooms, offices, the actors private rooms, the archive and the libary of the theatre, two small kitchens and the rooms for guests. The spaces, which are used by the audience are not strictly seperated from others, as it is usual in most of the theatres, which I have seen before. To get to their rooms, where they can dress and undress, the actors are using the same hallway as the audience.
When I was going from my room to the little videostudio, I also had to go through the corridor where the doors of the actors' rooms are. The whole theatre is an organism, which lives together.
The people, who arrive for a workshop, or to make a research, as I did, are latching on to the life of the theatre.
I was wondering, why do other theatres hide actors? Why is it necessary to let them meet only in the show, and seperate them from each other before and after?
Are they afraid, that the magic effect, that the actors transform to another person on stage, will disappear, that the audience will discover some kind of trick?
Normally we can meet actors only on stage, or at the most, we can read an interview with them in a magazine. We can not great them after a performance, or ask them questions. Is it necessary to disguise the actor, as an ordinary person, in order for us to beleive that he does something special and interesting when he is acting?
At the end our performance in the school, The Homecoming of Odysseus, when you went out of the building and the audience followed you, I was very happy, that there was no possibility for the usual very formal bowings. You were standing around the fire, they applauded, you applauded aswell, cried my name, and than the whole group splited up for small groups having coversations. It was easy there, as it was easy also in summer at Hantos, because we knew each other.
I wanted to find the same meeting between the audience and actors at the end of The Journey of Odysseus, in the Merlin Theatre, which seemed a bigger challange, because it is a much more formal place compared to both - the school, and the village enviroment.
We agreed, that you go out from the performance hall to the foyer, light your candles, and sing Létyé la zozule, and wait for the reaction of the people, wether they come out, or not. We agreed also, that you do not bow, if they come out.
They came, which was a great pleasure to experience, because it is something, which you would like to happen, but it is not happening because you explained people they should do like this, they are doing it, because they understand your aim.
After the song you blew your candles, and came in front of the stairs, very close to the people, this was not planned any more. And it was a risky situation, how to find the bridge from being observed, being in caracter, communicating in a special way, to a normal person - person communication.
There were two reactions: Olga went to one member of the audience, actually it was my mother, and huged her; some other's could not handle so well this unplanned situation, they needed to hold on to something, which was familiar to them, which they knew the mechanism of already. This is how the whole group started to stand up in a line to bow. I understood why it's happening, but I regreted.
In Odin, I never saw actors bowing. The audience applauds, but they never come back on stage after the performance is over. You can meet them on the hallway, if you wish to.

By watching the recordings of performances from different ages of the company, it is visible, they have come a long way.
Barba declares, that he looks upon Grotowski as his master. On one hand this clear statemant is sympathic for me. Today it is not a trend if you are an artist to say about another artist, that he is your master. We mostly say very gently drawn sentences; "I was inspired by some aspects of his work.", "I understood very well his style.", and such others like these.
By seeing some recordings of their early performances and some also of Grotowski's performances, I think you can recognize that there is a connection between the creators.
On the other hand I think, if you have so close artistic connection to one specific person, it makes you very hard to not to take from his artistic solutions, but find your own when you face a similar problem. It is even hard to find your own problems, which you want to work with.
I am not saying this is negativ. I don't think if you have a hard task, it's bad. Fighting with hard things can take you to great results.

Tenth note

We have seen a special performance some days ago with Anikó. We wanted to go theatre, but she has been tired, so she didn't wanted to go the one of the big, elit theatres of Budapest to see some serious, classical play. We agreed, we would like to see some alternativ performance made in a small theatre, but we haven't found anything in the program, which really interested us.

We were walking in Király street, the street of Sirály, and we weren't so far from a very small studio theatre, which is called R.S.9. - because it is under number 9 in Rumbach Sebestyén street. According to the program magazine, there was nothing on that evening, but let's give a try, we entered and asked if there will be something.
There was something, called 'Álomszínház' ( 'Dreamtheater'). I think it is the name of the company and the title of their performances aswell. And actually it is the genre of the performances also.
In the program it said that they create theatrical scenes out of the dreams of the audience. They don't try to decipher, to analyze them, they just try to show them on stage. This sounded sympathic, so we decided to participate.
On one hand it was true. There was a coordinator, who was keeping the contact with audience, he told a little of their story, asked us questions, like how did we get there, what kind of mood are we in? Do we dream? and so on. He created a quite safe athmosphere, where you didn't feel ashame to talk aloud, when they asked you a question. The way how we got the to the point where they asked us to tell about our dreams was also well built up. More than the half of the audience had been already on their performances before, so it also helped them, to create this cosy athmosphere.
After the work, what we have done in the Monk Key, and the task which we gave to ourselves - that we should try to find the way of communication with the audience, which makes them feel safe, and free to answer; it was interesting to see how they reached this kind of state.
When we got to the point, where they asked us to tell our dreams, the one who undertook, had to go on stage, where were two chairs and an old-fashioned reading lamp. The coordinator and him set in these chairs, and we all listened to his dream (or story).
After he chose from the actors, which of them should play which role in his story. He had to give one sentence to each of the actors. And than they improvized something on what they have heard.
So on one hand it was true, what they wrote in the program. But on the other hand, they did not only listen to dreams and show them on stage. The coordinator asked questions from the volunteer dreamteller like: what kind of state were you in, in the period of your life, when you had this dream. And these circumstances, the facts outside the dream effected the scenes what they did. This is some kind of interpretation already. And I had the feeling, by doing these scenes they were trying to give some solution to the problem, what they sensed in the dreamtellers life. Which was disturbant for me. Because situations and states in life seem to me much more complicated, than how far they could get in understanding one's story by listening to it for some short minutes and than doing a littlebit funny improvisation (there is a need for some entertainment for the audience aswell) out of it.
The other thing, which I didn't enjoy in this event was the very law quality of the scenes. Everything they done was very verbal. The jokes which came ot of the scenes were all built upon some verbal meaning. And all sentences were told with similar, smooth melody.
Verbality is the first prehensile which we grab, because it is the form of communication, what we use consciously, and which has a bulided up system of telling different contents. It is the language, what we learnt to communicate on. The coordinator asked the dreamteller to give one sentence to each caracter of the story, even if a caracter was silent, or non verbal during the whole dream.
The movments and actions what they done were also shown in a "smooth melody"; and I couldn't figure out any meaning for them, unless the actors had to do something on stage.
Giving words for something which communicates without words, and trying to give some solution for a problem, which we do not understand really yet are both ways of simplification.
We heard some crazy, ineteresting dreams, and we seen some scenes, which were more poor.
There was a gipsy girl, who told her dream. She mentioned that it was a great feeling afterwards, when she walk up, so she remembers it at as a good experience. She was accompanied by someone to hold a literature class in school, but when they reached the classroom the company left her alone there, telling her, that she will manage on her own. She started to teach the children. There were some of them crying the sentence: "Gipsy girls are stinky, their pussy is rotting." Than there were some gipsy girls in the class, who started to dance, and said to her: "Look, golden rain is falling on us." And later: "Look this beatiful picture!" Ans she saw something which reminded her a buddhist mandala.
We could learn so much art, so many artistic values from dreams. From the courageously strange and unnexpected way they connect the facts, what we experience, when we are awake.
I am only interpretating, what I have seen; this unnexepected and poetic way of connecting different events and scenes was the quality of Odin Theatre's performances, which I appreciated a lot. After seeing several of their performances, I would say this quality noticeably describes an aspect of their style (at least their recent style), and not only the Andersen's dream, which we have seen togheter.
We have talked a littlebit about this once on the apropos of Andersen's dream. The meaning of making these not evident, dreamlike connections between different things on stage is not only that it creates poesy; I appreciate it, because it shows theatre can have a similar function to dreams.
We say in dreams our mind is processing our daily experiences. Especially those, which effected us a lot, and those which we could not deal with.
In theatre we do something very similar. We are trying to process the experiences which we have collectively, the experiences of the community living around us, our society.