The company members were young people who had failed to gain admission to the Oslo State Theatre School and they rehearsed their first production in an air raid shelter.
In 1965, the Danish municipality of Holstebro invited Odin Teatret to create a theatre laboratory there, offering an old farm and a small sum of money.
Another of the ISTA activities is Theatrum Mundi, a performance montage of scenes drawn from the repertoire of the physical scores of the Asian and Odin actors.
The current (2018) company of actors is Luis Alonso, Kai Bredholt, Roberta Carreri, Jan Ferslev, Elena Floris, Donald Kitt, Tage Larsen, Else Marie Laukvik (founding member), Caroline Pizarro, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Julia Varley, Frans Winther, Parvathy Baul and I Wayan Bawa.
(Teatrets Teori og Teknikk) and Jerzy Grotowski’s book Towards a Poor Theatre, which was translated into more than fifteen languages.