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left out, even impoverished by the richness of the others’ experience. There was also our awareness as a theatre group establishing links, meeting people with whom it has something to exchange, but nevertheless continually living the isolation, the segregation which the norms of a well organised society impose on whosoever wishes to follow his own personal path; the experiences of a group who has felt the tolerant indifference of those who, with nonchalance, consider you as socially useless, fencing you off in a separate enclosure. Nevertheless, we do have personal needs, profoundly individual, which could also be defined as unsocial. Why derive ourselves? Why, instead of considering our true personal motivations, instead of exposing them, driving them on to their maximum incandescence, should we hide them behind a façade of reassuring » political « or » social « justifications? If a profound necessity really exists, it leaves its mark, it is infectious, it becomes a social action. There are people in our society who feel the need to create immediately the cells of a new social body. In small or large groups these different cells appear, struggle to survive, disappear anonymously. A theatre group can be one of these cells. Then we gather together and the theatre becomes the mask behind which the naked face of our dreams and visions is concealed. We still call it theatre. It is judged as theatre. Why give it another name? One word is as good as another. From childhood books, from our adult books, from the commonplaces of our time, other clusters of memories become entwined, other points of reference, which for some may be nave images but for me personally are loaded with a thousand meanings. Those half-naked savages who, with inhuman cries, slaughter the unarmed and unprotected, terrified me in the books I read as a child, in the films I saw. Thirty years were to pass before the child of those days became aware of what many youngsters today take for granted: that the blankets given away to the savages were infected with cholera, that their womenfolk were herded off to brothels, that the few battles won by them were recorded in history as » massacres «. Here in the pages of the chroniclers, biographers, historians, are dates, places, heroes, characters from adventure stories. 1867: On November 27, protected by the darkness and the snow, George Armstrong Custer surprises a sleeping Cheyenne encampment on the banks of the Washita river, annihilating it while the military band incites the soldiers on. 1876; On June 25, in broad daylight, George Armstrong Custer and his soldiers are annihilated by the Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos. Crazy Horse, a taciturn man of medium height. He had experienced the existence of two realities: one which you share with your fellow men, and one which belongs only to you where horses can dance as though mad. At the age of thirty-five he was killed by a bayonet in the back. Little Big Man, his best warrior, a young chief who had always refused all compromise with the whites, was beside him, but in the white man’s uniform, to hold his hands and prevent him from defending himself. In a land of men who are active and conscious, of pioneers

who want to build a new society full of meaning, what meaning could the Indians have? We react emotionally to what happens in the world around us, and attach labels to our reactions. Sometimes these reactions incite us to act. Sometimes they remain inside us and drown in words. We bend like trees in the wind, but we must have roots if we are not to be beaten down. In the beginning we wanted an acier who could work miracles, conscious of his own body, his instrument. A misguided way of thinking because the more we are conscious of our body, the more we become blocked. Freedom is forgetting our own person and going beyond ourselves to reach another, in security, without fear. For us from Odin, the theatre is this reciprocal presence. It is the relationship that we establish between us. Not theories, not methods just this relationship. A relationship within, and a relationship towards others, which changes according to the realities, the conditions and the people we meet. All this is extremely subjective, some people say. The theatre loses all its objectivity. It becomes a group of people who gather together: why? To carry out a common programme? It’s a nice thought. However, my experience has taught me not to believe in theatre groups that act according to a doctrine common to all their members. I believe in groups made up of strong individualists driven by a profound personal need which, in trying to placate, they overcome, go beyond, encounter the needs of others. Shatter your own circle within the theatre. Then shatter the circle of the theatre. It has happened several times in the last few years that I have spoken of the theatre as of a reservation. And not all reservations are for Indians. Outside Holstebro stand two large modern buildings, square, with big windows and surrounded by green lawns fringed with a well kept hedge. They are rest homes. Here the old people live: those who are no longer useful and can no longer create with their hands and their heads. Human residues. A tiny peaceful reservation similar to many of the others that we have legalised wherever we live, that we, that I myself, tacitly help to maintain. Places where we keep thase who are backward, handicapped, mentally ill, neurotic, psychotic, antisocial. All who are useless and uselessly dangerous. How can wo shatter the circle of the theatre? Without losing our identity since we are a theatre group? Without letting our identity imprison us? In a village in Guatemala one of those villages which are often described as »cut off from the world « I went into a small church. The entire community was gathered there men, women, children. The priest was preaching his sermon: »We are all equal before God, our Father. The man who is rich is not more worthy. The man who knows much is not more worthy. There is no need to learn to read to become better. Christ was against the Pharisees, those who knew how to read. Christ was also uneducated like you.« And the tiny Quiche Indians answered him singing the Creed.