Shadows – 2009
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Shadows – 2009

About This Project

Shadows has its own universe, open, clear and at the same time disturbing and enigmatic. ‘Everything is now and everything is always’. The fact that time and space are dissolved allows me as a reader to recognize my own unease. They exist in an immaterial room in a state of zero, where memories of a life together is the only evidence. The text challenges to ask existential questions and wonder who we are and how we leave traces in each other’s lives.”- Director Kari Holtan.

 

De Utvalgte set up Shadows at the Black Box Theatre in February 2009. The production was invited to the Bergen International Festival the same year and has since been on tour in Norway and abroad.

 

Shadows is the first written play that De Utvalgte set up in its entirety. Jon Fosse’s writing, however, has followed with De Utvalgte since 1995 in the performance “Erosion”. Text material in this performance was based on several of Fosse’s novels. This was before he had his breakthrough as a dramatist. The meeting with his lyrics then became a harrowing experience which created a fascination that has been there since. The time was ready to realize a wish to work with his text universe again when we produced Shadows in 2009.

 

The drama seems to unfold in an abstract landscape that stands in strong contrast to the text physical quality. The outer storyline is almost absent. The characters are interconnected in various ways: Child-parenting, marriage and infidelity. It is now buried as emotional memories come to the surface as sensual experiences. It is also unacceptable and frightening because there is no longer a motive for action. In this play all of the text is performed by children from 6 to 10 years, exposed in video projections. During the production period De Utvalgte Video recorded the children’s faces while they were instructed to perform the text of the various roles. This footage was later edited to be projected at six cocoon-like heads casted in plastic. On the stage four elderly people are wandering without saying a word.

 

Kari Holtan was nominated for The Hedda Award 2009 for best director for Shadows.

Director Kari Holtan about Shadows:

“While working with Erosion in 1995 we read all that Fosse had written and was very enthusiastic about his work. Some time ago we experimented with video projected faces on enlarged heads cast in plaster. The term of the fathers gave and absence of the body led to mind Fosse’s texts.

 

Shadows has its own universe, open, clear and at the same time disturbing and enigmatic. ‘Everything is now and everything is always’. The fact that time and space are dissolved allows me as a reader to recognize my own unease. They exist in an immaterial room in a state of zero, where memories of a life together is the only evidence. The text challenges to ask existential questions and wonder who we are and how we leave traces in each other’s lives.”

 

PRESS REVIEWS:

– Through advanced artistic means, it is brought forth a new understanding of an old message: you can reach many key insights only when you again become like a child.
Jan Bachmann
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

– There are moments during this performance that punch a hole through the ceiling.
Therese Bjørneboe
Klassekampen

– Through children’s faces and children’s voices they hit a pure existential nerve.
Elin Høyland
Morgenbladet

– The result is scenic poetry, existential wonder and an almost meditative contemplation – mixed with a little enraptured amazement at how well children’s readings of text can work. It becomes a thought-provoking, different theater, as if from somewhere else, given to us here and now.
Andreas Wiese
Dagbladet

 

FULL REVIEWS:
The Typewriter  (english)
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Mit Kindereinfalt zur Kern (german)
Aftenposten (norwegian)
Dagbladet (norwegian)
Morgenbladet (norwegian)

Technical Rider: Shadows

Dramatist

Jon Fosse

Director

Kari Holtan

Video/scenography/photo

Boya Bøckman

Instructors

Jørgen Langhelle
Kari Holtan

Music

3 øre:
Torbjørn Davidsen
John Birger Wormdahl
Kari Holtan

Producer/dramaturg

Anne Holtan

Lighting design

Jean Vincent Kerebel

Actors

Fabian Sæthre
Leo Holtan Bøckman
Lois Mathias Williams
Ronja Maria Rodrigues
Synne Flikke
Iben Ossavy Kolbenstvedt

Participants

Eva Bøe Moen
Hans Wedvik
Kari Vik Knutsen
Stein Davidsen

Masks

Carle Lange

Co-creator

Torbjørn Davidsen

Co-production

Black Box Teater

Awards

Director Kari Holtan was in 2009 nominated for the Hedda Award for best directing

Founded by

Norwegian arts counci.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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