HOLSTEBThe Odin Teatret in Denmark is presenting ‘‘The Marriage of Medea’’ with performers from around the world.

By SALLY McGRANE

RO, Denmark - A hush fell in the room at the experimental theater and members of an ensemble from Bali were sitting on the floor in sarongs. They were to perform in “The Marriage of Medea, a new production presented in June by the Odin Teatret in a town festival.
“The Jasonite family and friends, said Eugenio Barba, the theater’s founder, pausing to indicate fresh-faced performers in flashy hip-hop-inspired outfits sitting behind him, who were to play the Greek hero Jason’s followers and family members, “are very, very curious to know who you are, Medea’s people. We have the occasion now to greet each other in our own theatrical way. Then we will embrace each other and go back to work. The Jasonites will work very hard; otherwise my reputation will be spoiled.
Everyone laughed, though Mr. Barba, 71, may not have been entirely joking. The performances that followed - a hip-hopflavored song-and-dance sequence, a visiting Polish group’s a cappella rendering of a Georgian funeral song, a Balinese dance solo, and a love-song duet in Chinese and Portuguese between a Nanguan opera singer and a Brazilian percussionist - were the kinds of intercultural exchange that Mr. Barba and his group have been practicing for almost half a century. The Jasonites, however, were something new.
This summer Mr. Barba, who usually directs only his own actors and master practitioners of disciplines from Japanese Noh to classical Indian dance, invited an additional group of 33 performers from 23 countries to spend four weeks at his theater in this small town . Early each morning, the performers took part in strenuous physical workouts drawn from Japanese and Latin American traditions.
They joined Odin actors in vocal and physical exercises. They worked with props like sticks and flags. They met with Mr. Barba to develop scenes, songs and dances. They cooked, cleaned and, after dinner, watched live performances and acting demonstrations. Then, around 11 p.m., they began rehearsing whatever they had come up with that day.
The son of an Italian military officer who died shortly after World War II, Mr. Barba emigrated to Norway as a young man. In the early 1960s he moved to Poland to study theater, before returning to Oslo in 1964 to form his own company, Odin Teatret, which moved to Holstebro two years later. He has directed more than 50 productions for Odin, earning a reputation for an experimental and international approach to theater. Certainly Mr. Barba had aesthetic reasons for creating the Jasonite group. He was looking for a culturally and professionally heterogenous Western counterpart to the highly stylized Balinese dancers of the Gambuh Desa Batuan Ensemble .
“I wanted very young, vital power, Mr. Ba rba sa id. “Somet h i ng t hat could stand facing the expressive artistic power of the Balinese. Of course they can’t compete with the Balinese in terms of skill. But I try to make a performative fresco - this is a contrasting element.
The Jasonites also developed a number of smaller performances to present at places like the local psychiatric hospital and a bakery as part of the town festival.
“You are always thinking, said Andrea de San Juan Hazen, a 23-year-old Spanish actress and circus performer who can ride a 1.8-meter unicycle. “Your mind is an explosion of creativity.
Francesca Guillen, a 30-year-old performer from Mexico, was inspired by the Balinese to investigate her own cultural traditions. “Now, I feel a little bit naked, she said. “I come here, and I would like to show something about my people, but all I can do is sing a song. It’s very Mexican, but it’s the only thing I can do.
In Mr. Barba’s productions it is not unusual for actors to speak onstage in their native languages, and during rehearsal the language spoken could change five times in as many minutes.
For Marcelo Miguel, 31, who grew up in a Brazilian favela and is now a theater teacher in Germany, watching this led him to rethink his idea that as a nonnative German speaker, he could not perform in German.
“My horizons have been extended, he said. “Acting is much larger than just language. What kind of a boundary is it, language?