The History of Teatret OM

In 1988, after a trip to South America, Antonella Diana and I decided to found our own theater. On the trip we experienced a different way of working with theater. In Colombia, where we stayed for almost five months, the theater companies were fighting and struggling on a daily basis to exist and to express their ideas through theater. They risked ending up in jail or simply being "disappeared".
I realized how important theater could be, as a human necessity.

So we decided to go back home and start our own theater group.

We founded 'Teatro di Sfera Om’ in 1989 in Rome, Italy. Our first production was called Una spada allo mano (A Sword in the Hand). The play, which was about drugs and abuse, was completed in 1991. We showed the play to two actors at Odin Teatret in Denmark (Iben Nagel Rasmussen and Julia Varley) and this became the beginning of our travels to Denmark.

In 1994 and 1995 we received a scholarship to study at Odin Teatret, and in 1995 we moved permanently to Denmark. In 1996 the theater officially became a Danish theater group, and in 1997 we changed the theater's name to Teatret OM. We lived for many years in Vinderup – a small village in western Jutland - and in 2006 we moved to Ringkøbing and became regional theater for the municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern.

When we moved to Denmark, I was asked why we had chosen this country. I replied: "Because I believe that we can build something here." Today I understand that "build" meant and still means finding a place and a group of people with whom one can share a dream, a utopia or a necessity.