“Decapitated. My culture is full of severed heads. I’ve admired them in so many works of art in museums that constitute the pride of Europe’s capitals: Perseus and Medusa, Judith and Holofernes, the beheadings of Achilles, Agamemnon, Diomedes and Patroclus in the Iliad, Salomé and St. John the Baptist, Cicero, St. Paul, Anne Boleyn, Thomas More (the ingenious inventor of Utopia), Mary Stuart, André Chénier, Danton (‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’).
In Europe, up until the end of the eighteenth century, beheading was considered an “honourable” method of execution reserved for nobles, the bourgeoisie …”
A few reflections by Eugenio Barba regarding the new production from Odin: “The story of an immense dead tree: the tree of History, the tree of nostalgia, the tree of forgetfulness. The moon slides over the mountains and lights up dreaming child-soldiers, praying monks, mothers cursing the sky and warlords anxious about the fate of their children.”
Alongside two previous productions, that were also presented at La Abadía, this work makes up a “Trilogy of Innocents”: ”The Chronic Life” presented the ill-fated future, “Great Cities Under the Moon” the convulsive present, whilst ”The Tree" is rooted in the recent past.
Actors and actresses from Bali, Canada, Chile, Denmark, India, Italy and the United Kingdom evoke “a frieze of broken promises and hopes and a perspective full of pain in order to represent the history of Mankind, based on the dreams of a child”.
“Forests precede civilisations and deserts follow them” (François-René de Chateaubriand).
Luis Alonso
Parvathy Baul
I Wayan Bawa
Kai Bredholt
Roberta Carreri
Elena Floris
Donald Kitt
Carolina Pizarro
Fausto Pro
Iben Nagel Rasmussen
Julia Varley
Scenic space: Luca Ruzza, Odin Teatret
Lighting designer: Lucca Ruzza, OpenLab Company.
Lighting adviser: Jesper Kongshaug
Tree conception and realisation: Giovanna Amoroso and Istvan Zimmermann, Plastikart.
Software programming: Massimo Zomparelli
Costumes and props: Odin Teatret
Poster: Barbara Kaczmarek
Musical director: Elena Floris.
Technical director: Fausto Pro
Puppets: Niels Kristian Brinth, Fabio Butera, Samir Muhamad, I Gusti Made Lod.
Dolls' heads: Signe Herlevsen
Photos: Rina Skeel
Dramaturg: Thomas Bredsdorff
Literary adviser: Nando Taviani
Text: Odin Teatret
Director's assistants: Elena Floris, Julia Varley
Director: Eugenio Barba
Con la colaboración de Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Madrid
