JACOB OLESEN
Dual Danish/Swedish national Jacob Olesen has been acting in Italy and abroad for more than thirty years with the Donati & Olesen Company, in which he is actor, author, musician, and often director. His lengthy, distinguished artistic career began at The Commedia School in Sweden and continued in Paris at the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Later, in Rome, he also acquired a teacher’s diploma in the Feldenkrais Method.
In 1981, he founded the Donati &Olesen Company, for which he produced twenty different shows with artists Giorgio Donati, Ted Keijser, Giovanni Calò and Iaon Gunn. In 2007, he began creating his own one-man productions in parallel with the company work. The first was My Name is Bohumil, followed by Oibò sono morto, for which he was awarded the Teatro del Sacro prize in 2009. He has been able to perform throughout Europe and in North Africa, South America and Asia. He has appeared in many short and feature-length films and worked on numerous radio and television programs as well.
He teaches acting, stage presence, Commedia dell’Arte and clowning both in Italy and abroad. Since 2011, with Jim Calder, he has collaborated with New York University in Florence, teaching, creating Commedia dell’Arte performances, and helping to stage productions with professional actors, graduates of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.