Beginnings – 2016

About This Project

By Carl Frode Tiller, Motorpsycho, and De Utvalgte

Daddy didn’t like potatoes with the peel on them, so Mom always used to peel the potatoes when he lived with us, but when he left, she bought a vegetable brush.

Potatoes tend to break when you peel them, she said. – But the most important reason to scrub them instead of peeling is that almost all the vitamins are in the peel or right underneath. So when you peel them, you peel away the vitamins too.

She started getting agitated; I could hear it in her voice. – You get fat when you eat potatoes that have been peeled before they are boiled, Mom said, and she snickered and shook her head. There’s no nutrition, you just get fat, she said, and in a way lingered on the F in “fat,” almost snarling out the word fat. – You destroy the food, she said, and I scrubbed harder and harder, and the gray-black water spun and spun, and Mom got angrier and angrier; she stirred the pepper with hard, angry movements, and she shook her head and snickered to herself, and I dropped the last potato into the pot.

“Begynnelser” started as a collaboration between De Utvalgte, Carl Frode Tiller, and Motorpsycho. Tiller was given free rein to write, and the result was a prose text that was almost a novel in scope. The text was the point of departure for a mutual exchange of ideas and impulses that influenced and shaped the material along the way. The performance is a result of a creative process where images, music, and text interact and ends up in something larger than itself. “Begynnelser” is a performance where the emotional and stylized stand side by side.

In the moment of death the human brain activity is at its most intense.

“Begynnelser” is a death journey backwards in time. During the moment of death Terje relives situations that have somehow steered his path in life. Fragments of everyday life can be seen as a family album with photos that were never developed. It is about man’s constant attempt to break patterns; about falling and rising up again.

How free are we to shape our lives?

I closed my eyes and opened them again, a low, red sun was floating behind the tallest mountain, and the low sun lit up the lower part of a thrush that came flying, I could see the brown, arrow-shaped spots on the white bird belly, and I traded memories with the thrush, and beneath me the neighborhood and city drifted away, and the countries and continents, and the seasons, it all floated slowly by, and the souls floated together, like water colors on a sheet of paper, and there was the forest, into the land where I lived before I was born.

Anne Holtan / Elisabeth Egseth Hansen
The quotes are from Carl Frode Tiller’s manuscript

CARL FRODE TILLER
Author from Namsos who debuted with the novel Skråninga in 2001, for which he received the Tarjei Vesaas debutant award, and which was named one of the most important novels of our time (Dagbladet 2006). He has since published Bipersonar (2004) and Innsirkling (2007), which won the Brage prize, Critics Award, and was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Innsirkling was continued in Innsirkling 2 (2010) and Innsirkling 3 (2014), which have also been extremely well received. Skråninga was dramatized for Det norske teater in 2004, and Innsirkling at the same theater in 2011. At Trøndelag Teater he wrote the manuscript for Folkehelsa in 2007. Carl Frode Tiller’s novels have been sold to 19 countries.

MOTORPSYCHO
is a rock band from Trøndelag consisting of Hans Magnus Ryan and Bent Sæther. The band was formed in 1989 and has since released around 30 records and toured worldwide. They have received several Spellemann Awards as well as an unknown number of other awards, and have played in all of the venues from UFFA and Blitz to the Nidaros Cathedral and the Norwegian Opera. They have also collaborated with the Trondheim Soloists, Carte Blanche, Kammerkoret Aurum and with many of our new Norwegian jazz greats. They were also recently – following a separate exhibition at the Norwegian rock museum Rockheim – incorporated into the Hall of Fame. They are good guys, but a little disappointed that Hall of Fame`ers do not get a discount on the bus, much less receive artist salary, and are therefore happy to receive donations from people in the theater-audience segment. It feels better to receive support from such philanthropists than from social services. Thanks.

GJØRIL BJERCKE SÆTHER
Majored in costume design from the Art Academy in Oslo in 2006, and has worked as a freelance costume designer for 10 years. She has worked for a long time with independent performing-arts companies such as Grusomhetens Teater and Wee / Francesco Scavetta. This is her fourth production in collaboration with De Utvalgte. In recent years she has produced costume design for Svanhild at Grusomhetens Teater, Romeo and Juliet for Brageteatret, and for Snåsamannens Sang at Teater Ibsen.

TOMMY GJEVING
Has worked with lighting since 1994 and was in 1998 affiliated with Trøndelag Teater, and in 2006 he was appointed Master Electrician. At Trøndelag Teater he has designed the lighting for a variety of shows, including En gorilla søker hjem, Ifigeneia, Tro, Håp og Kjærlighet, Prinsessedrama, Pseudonymet, Jeanne d`Arc, Dager under, Suffløren, and Bunnlinja. For Armod og edelt sinn earlier this year he was commissioned to recreate 19^th century lighting – with modern instruments without the use of candles.

WHAT THE PRESS SAYS:

– A TOUR DE FORCE  
– Exhaustingly intense meeting of masters in music, images, and dialogues
– A collaboration between one of the country’s leading authors, one of the country’s leading theater groups, with a focus on the visual; and not exactly poorly executed by the actors either – constitute a performance rich in powerful impressions
– Most powerful are Boya Bøckman’s videos. They practically knock the audience out with their nuances of concrete content and dream-like atmosphere
– Some might regard “Begynnelser” as simply a wonderful Motorpsycho show with something extra. Quite a lot extra
Ole Jacob Hoel
Adresseavisen

– “Begynnelser” is an unusually strong and sensual theater experience  
– Trøndelag Theater has put together a highly rare meeting of artists
– Through Kari Holtan’s somewhat stylized direction and Boya Bøckman’s scenography and outstanding video projections they are able to combine different artistic expressions into an impressive unit. Together with the mesmerizing soundscape of Motorpsycho and an excellent performance by four of the best actors at Trøndelag Theater, they have managed to step in and visualize the most inner feelings of Carl Frode Tiller’s very ordinary people
– First and foremost a sensual theater experience where all you have to do is lean back and join the many minds of Tiller
Amund Grimstad
Klassekampen

– Hildegunn Eggen is priceless… She’s believable as a mom trying to do the best, but who don´t have the strength to do it
– Sky crackling beautiful compositions of Motorpsycho
Guri Hjulstad
Trønder-Avisa

– A mosaic of memories with elevated contrasts
– Theater that builds understanding, understanding of the gloom, the pessimism and the despair people may feel
Lillian Bikset
Dagbladet

– The story is profound and strong
– The text, in the local Norwegian dialect trøndersk, is direct and definite, and at times strikingly fun
– The actor achievements, especially Hildegunn Eggen and Kenneth Homstad, as mother and son, are amazing in all its honesty and rawness
– Intense and powerful, and the video work that lies as a backdrop during the whole performance is beautiful
– “Beginnings” deserves to be seen by many
Audhild Eye
Avisa Sør-Trøndelag

FULL REVIEWS (currently in Norwegian):
adresseavisens-anmeldelse-av-begynnelser-030916
Klassekampens anmeldelse av Begynnelser 050916
Dagbladets anmeldelse av Begynnelser 050916

Technical Rider (currently in Norwegian):
Technical Rider Beginnings