De Utvalgte is an autonomous theater company that has made its mark during the last fifteen years by displaying a desire to seek new expression, but also new content in the stage arts.
De Utvalgte is a theater company founded in Oslo in 1994 after the group’s original lineup graduated at the Nordic School of Theatre in Denmark.
The company consists of Kari Holtan, Boya Bøckman, Torbjørn Davidsen, Anne Holtan, and link up with other artists as needed.
De Utvalgte deals with contemporary theater and their performances are moving in the borderland between theater, visual art and performance. They create a distinctive and multifaceted expression through the assembly of self-made instruments such as video, text, sound and music.
De Utvalgte has as the first in the world developed new technology that uses 3D film scenography and narratives.
The performances often have a cast consisting of people with and without acting experience. This adds a dimension to the play with roles and identities, authenticity and theatricality.
The company mixes the comic and the tragic in bold ridicule of their own and others’ inadequacies.
In 2014 the company received the Norwegian Arts Councils base funding.
AWARDS
The Hedda Award 2019
Special Artistic Achievement
Statement of the Jury:
The award is given to a brutal and poetic, comic and gloomy, deeply human performance. A game between roles and identities, authenticity and theatricality creates a multifaceted, confrontational and distinctive expression. The site-specific provides the basis for a moving life, a changing society, and the actors behind exploring the human space between courage and powerlessness, between being extremely privileged and extremely vulnerable.
The audience is taken on a joint exploration into a myriad of lived lives, imaginations and myths that are created and created by our lives. The approach that characterizes the company, exploratory, challenging and open-mindedly inclusive, also characterizes this notion. In a cinematic expression, the seemingly mundane is anchored in a mythical fabric and contains the unpredictable in the human journey.
In this deeply moving work, this year’s recipient of the award for special artistic achievement embraces both hyperrealistic horror scenarios and spectacular beauty, all with an artistic finesse, humility, authenticity and an ambition level of the rare.
The award was given in the context of the performance “The Ship vol.5 – Short cuts”.
The Hedda Award 2019
Best Visual Design
Statement of the Jury:
The award is given for an audiovisual work that not only acts as an instrument, well integrated into the performance, but which is an active partner and premise provider. The work ranges from the total staged and directed to experiences of losing the direction in their own lives. From the created, studio-inspired scenography as a framework to a scarred quarry, the award-winner manages to enter and create both cosmic and human universes – as a pioneer in his field.
The award was given in the context of the performance “The Ship vol.5 – Short cuts” and “Lazarus” (a production at Det Norske teatret).
The Hedda Award 2013
Special Artistic Achievement
Statement of the Jury:
Sometimes the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. The winners of the award for Special artistic achievement have for years distinguished themselves with a peculiar grip on the performing arts, and constantly challenge their own practice by moving into the themes that reflect both social and artistic finesse. We have registered a clear necessity to praise this company’s full oeuvre for both its entirety and parts of it – their stretching stage room dimensions, their questions of timeless character. This year’s award for Special artistic achievement goes to De Utvalgte who are always seeking new avenues in its stage language.
The award was given in the context of the performance “The Chosen Ones”.
The Hedda Award 2012
Best Visual Design
Statement of the Jury:
The scenography today is often the most exciting part of many productions, and whether the visual takes a minimalistic or maximalistic form, the visuals add a unique and exciting dimension to the performance. At times the winner of the year subordinates its special endowment the overarching scenographic project. But the winner gets the prize for having created a staggering beautiful three-dimensional universe that complements and embodies both a simple and enigmatic text, and with letting a rich and diverse imagery allow for infinite variety of associations.
The award was given for the performance “The Art of Being Tamed”.
The Critics Prize 2011-12
Production
From Therese Bjørneboe’s speech:
This year’s Critics’ Price for theater goes to the company De Utvalgte. They have deserved such an award for a long time. But with The Art of Being Tamed, which premiered at the Black Box Theatre last year, De Utvalgte demonstrated their ability to surprise – renew themselves and set themselves new challenges – and so does the theater more unpredictable.
Like few others, De Utvalgte succeed in taking the pulse of our times – and I hope that they will continue. De Utvalgte have changed the way we look at, and made their audience a little more critical and less naïve in relation to the contemporary “thirst for reality.”
The award was given in the context of the performance “The Art of Being Tamed”.
Torsovteatrets Vennepris 2010
Production
The first award of the award to the Friends of the Torshov Theatre, for 2010:
The performance “The Dream” was unanimously chosen by the board consisting of Kjersti Holmen, Kaia Varjord, Kim Haugen, Øyvind Wangensteen and Thea Stabell – all of whom have been associated with the Torshov Theatre.
“The Dream” lived up to many of the criteria that underpinned the award. It was clearly a performance of high artistic quality that comes from a Norwegian reality with original text and with deep-seated actor performance as well as an addictive use of modern technology seamlessly integrated.
When the board eventually learned that De Utvalgte is a group that has existed since 1993 and acts as an artistic collective with a virtually flat structure, they were confirmed that De Utvalgte and “The Dream” are rightful winners of an award for theatre art in the spirit of the Torshov Theater . They are experimental in both theme and form, they search for new expressions, but also new content in the performing arts.