Short film "CATILINA" will be screened in Zurich, Switzerland as part of XVI International Ibsen Conference. After the screening there will be Q&A with Tarjei.
Film will be screened on Wednesday 24th June at 18h at the auditorium of the main building of the University of Zurich.
Lese nyheter i dag? Varden gir deg nyheter, sport, kultur, underholdning, feature og meninger fra Telemark.
Tarjei talked to Tone Flaaterud about filming his debute film Catilina, his participation in this year's festival "Ibsen i Mars", his love for Ibsen, what he loves the most about Skien and more in Varden's article.
On March 23. Tarjei will visit Teater Ibsen and talk about his directorial debut short film Catilina . There will be a showing of the movie followed by a conversation between Tarjei and theater manager Line Rosvoll. In the video, Tarjei tells a little more about the movie and what you can experience this evening.
"My name is Tarjei Sandvik Moe. I've written and directed a 45 minute movie called Catilina which will now be shown in Skien under "Ibsen i mars(Ibsen in March)" at Ibsen Theatre 23. March. There I will also talk to the theater director Line Rosvoll. I'm really looking forward to that. And it's so cool for us to show this film in Skien, because the film was shot exclusively in Skien with the help of lots of good local people. The film is about a drama teacher at Skien upper secondary school I won't say more, but, maybe we'll see you?"
“I'm sure that in a parallel universe there's an Isak and an Even who's lying in the exact same way in the exact same place, only, like… the curtains are a different color or something…"
On Monday Tarjei was part of Kickoff of HELT ÆRLIG at Litteraturhuset in Stavanger.
HELT ÆRLIG is a series of projects for students and young people between the ages of 16 and 26. It includes everything from text production, reading and mentoring programs, to planning and implementing events.
Forestillingen Skyt meg er morsom og effektiv, men den vipper også over i rutine.
Newest review of the play "skyt meg"(google translated)
"The performance "skyt meg" is funny and effective, but it also veers into routine.
On Rogaland Teater's intimate stage, the audience is let into a room that resembles an empty swimming pool. Set designer Mathias Lundgren has covered the walls with green and white tiles that occasionally open up into ribbons of light. Along the floor on one long side runs a platform that is partly seating for the audience and partly a performance area. On the other long side are rows of chairs in a small amphitheater. I end up in the amphitheater, but as an audience we meet the gaze of both the actors and each other.
The set design of the performance Shoot Me partially blurs the distinction between actors and audience. This has long been a basic principle in the collaboration between director Even Torgan and playwright Tine Skjold, and this production is no exception. On the Facebook profile of Antiteateret, which Torgan started in 2013, these five dogmas are listed:
We will never create theatre just for theatre enthusiasts.
We should never put on theater that is not relevant to the society we live in.
The performances should never last longer than 1.5 hours.
We aim to shed light on taboo topics.
Rules are made to be broken (Including the ones above).
However, this is not an Antiteateret production. In this performance, Torgan and Skjold have worked with an artistic team from Rogaland Teater.
Crime and realism
Shoot Me is about drugs and human dignity, and whether criminalizing drug use works. Early in the play, police investigator Kine (Nina Ellen Ødegård) loses her daughter to an overdose. Colleagues at the police station see no point in investigating, and in despair, Kine takes matters into her own hands. She begins to unravel the network of therapists, boyfriends and dealers who in various ways supplied her daughter with drugs.
We get to know her daughter Mikaela before the tragedy strikes, including by both Kine and I being able to accompany Mikaela to a therapy session with Troy. As a child, Mikaela was a restless child who needed medication early on, and between the lines, her mother Kine may be struggling with a similar restlessness.
Parallel to this apparent stage realism, the play also borrows quite freely from crime fiction. This makes the plot impossible to reproduce in detail without revealing cliffhangers to a future audience. These twists are often tragic and comical at the same time, and neither of them ends very well. As the title suggests, a police detective has easy access to weapons.
Pedagogical dialogue
The chairs we sit on can also be thought of as props. They look as if they have been in use at the nearest secondary school since the early 1990s. Director Torgan has worked extensively with theatre for younger audiences. I have the same experience from an audience perspective, including guiding young people who are to give feedback on the performing arts created for them. That is why I quickly associate it with The Cultural School Bag when actor Tarjei Sandvik Moe, at the opening of the performance, without any other introduction, addresses us in the amphitheater and asks everyone who thinks that alcohol should be allowed to raise their hand.
The actor eventually tells the audience that his name is Troy and he is a psychiatrist. The character Troy continues to ask us questions. At the same time, he reminds us that no one has to answer, and that we are responsible for what we share. Why is alcohol allowed in Norway, while many other drugs are illegal? Is cannabis more risky than alcohol, and if so, why? Troy asks for opinions from younger audience members. A girl speaks up and says that there is little talk about drugs at the school she goes to, and that she would like to learn more. The psychiatrist asks an adult man in the audience if he feels privileged. The man answers in the affirmative and reflects on drug use, privileges and safety. Troy routinely steers the conversation towards the question of decriminalization. Can it strengthen human dignity for drug addicts and lower the threshold for seeking help?
The question is relevant. In 2021, the then government presented a proposal for drug reform that meant that the use and possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use would be met with help and treatment instead of punishment. Illegal drugs would still be illegal, but the reactions would come from the health system and not from the police. The proposal was voted down in the Storting.
The conversation between Troy and the audience flows well, and many participate. Troy says that Rogaland county is at the top of the drug statistics in Norway.
Charming, but not intoxicating
This type of approach to the audience from stage characters can work well, especially when meeting young people who withdraw when the means become too poetic and ambiguous.
But there in the pool I gradually feel a reluctance to the role of clever spectator. Pedagogy is also manipulation, and I miss Troy's immensely effective conversational leadership creating a space to reflect on what it itself does. When the psychiatrist climbs onto a low, wicker divan and declaims a poem about intoxication in a more general sense, as life force, it is charming but not intoxicating theater.
The audience involvement Troy initiates, however, continues into the drama. Muhammed, a police colleague of Kine, enters the room with a newspaper, flips through the quiz, asks the questions to the audience and collects answers from us, as if we were sitting at the lunch table at the police station with him. Later in the performance, we are all colleagues at a Christmas party that does not end as the station chief and Muhammed have planned.
Police investigator Kine, on the other hand, is not in direct dialogue with the audience, even though she relates to us, for example at the aforementioned Christmas party. Nina Ellen Ødegård builds a character that cannot be immediately calculated. It engages in a different way, which dampens my reluctance and instead arouses interest. Deep love, contempt and frustration surge between mother and daughter at the same time. When the worst happens and the abyss opens up, Kine continues to alternate between black humor, blind revenge and despair. Ødegård creates a professional woman who does everything she can, who never loses a skewed and humorous view of the world, but who is also hunted, tired, afraid and fundamentally uneasy. It touches.
There is no father in the picture, and that fact is brought back to Kine's face when she calls one of her daughter's former teachers to fish for positive childhood memories. The teacher quickly and simply declares that she is only responsible for what her students will learn. That is true, but some of these more peripheral characters become a bit flat and function as signs and principles more than as people. The distance between the teacher in the script and a suggestion from the audience in the introductory conversation about strengthening the school with more adults present becomes noticeably large.
The question as a profession
A scene that sticks out more strongly is when Kine visits psychiatrist Troy after her daughter's death. Both psychiatrists and investigators use questions as tools. He asks from the therapist's perspective whether she needs help processing the emotional chaos she is in. She asks back as an investigator whether the medications he prescribed may have contributed to her daughter's drug addiction and death. Both are right to a certain extent. In a different type of script, this dialogue could have been developed into a deeper social satire: The two professions are created by society to solve common problems, but both lack tools that can actually prevent the tragedy. This script only manages to unfold the situation as surface and possibility.
It's nice how "skyt meg" consistently refuses to choose between being a comedy and a tragedy. The performance is marketed as an interactive crime drama and raises heavy questions with humor and storytelling. Yet it has a nimble efficiency that for me can tip over into routine. When Nina Ellen Ødegård resists this efficiency, something happens that captivates me. But direction and dramaturgy rarely take risks. Between the five dogmas above, I see an unspoken rule about never, ever losing the audience's attention. The rule is sympathetic, and I also believe that such a practice can grow almost unconsciously as a consequence of the Antiteateret regularly playing for a young audience that does not seek out the performances themselves.
But what might have happened if the management had occasionally, just occasionally, taken the chance to break that rule? What is the relationship between routine, risk, and relevance?"
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
titsay
gummygunk
