Eugenio Barba created Odin Teatret in October 1964. As the first theatre group in Europe, they worked out the new practice of training as a total apprenticeship. During the past forty-eight years Eugenio Barba has directed 76 productions with Odin Teatret and with the intercultural Theatrum Mundi Ensemble, some of which have required up to two years of preparation. Among the best known are Ferai (1969), My Father's House (1972), Brecht's Ashes (1980), The Gospel according to Oxyrhincus (1985), Talabot (1988), Kaosmos (1993), Mythos (1998), Andersen's Dream (2004), The Chronic Life (2011), Ur-Hamlet (2006), Don Giovanni all'Inferno (2006) and The Marriage of Medea (2008).

In 1979 Eugenio Barba founded ISTA, International School of Theatre Anthropology thus opening a new field of studies: Theatre Anthropology.
 
Barba is on the advisory boards of scholarly journals such as The Drama Review, Performance Research, New Theatre Quarterly, Teatro e Storia and Urdimento. Among his most recent publications, translated into many languages, are The Paper Canoe (Routledge), Theatre: Solitude, Craft, Revolt (Black Mountain Press), Land of Ashes and Diamonds, My Apprenticeship in Poland, followed by 26 letters from Jerzy Grotowski to Eugenio Barba (Black Mountain Press), Arar el cielo (Casa de las Americas, Havana), La conquista de la diferencia (Yuyachkani/San Marcos Editorial, Lima), On Dramaturgy and Directing, Burning the House (Routledge) and A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology in collaboration with Nicola Savarese (Routledge).
 
Eugenio Barba has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Århus, Ayacucho, Bologna, Havana, Warsaw, Plymouth, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Tallinn, Cluj-Napoca as well as the "Reconnaissance de mérite scientifique" from the University of Montreal and the Sonning Prize from the University of Copenhagen.

He is also the recipient of the Danish Academy Award, the Mexican Theatre Critics' prize and the Pirandello International Prize.