Yesterday Lars Norén died after complications of Covid 19.
Tarjei has written a tribute to Lars Norén on a site called scenekunst.
Dramatikeren Lars Norén døde av komplikasjoner knyttet til covid-19 26. januar. Skuespilleren Tarjei Sandvik Moe, som venter på å få spille
I decided to translate the tribute with google translate, so you all can read it.
Here it is:
Thank you for your swallow dives in the dark, Norén!
The playwright Lars Norén died of complications related to covid-19 on 26 January. The actor Tarjei Sandvik Moe, who is waiting to play Norén's on November 20, remembers the meeting with Norén's art.
"Sometimes I am filled with a strong happiness - but I can only express it through crying."
From the play Munich-Athens, by Lars Norén
On January 26, the playwright Lars Norén died of complications related to covid-19. Norén showed us how existential darkness can be turned into art and how that art can once again light up in the theater darkness. For decades, he created profound, sharp and powerful drama that has touched and inspired many.
I first discovered his drama, completely without a clue as to who he was, when my mother took me on a production of Som lauvet in Vallombrosa at Det Norske Teatret in 2017. Before this evening I was a theater-skeptical seventeen-year-old, who was more interested in film. and simply thought that theater was rather boring. After this evening, I almost wanted to do nothing but watch, read and play theater, and most of all Lars Norén's drama. I laughed so I cried, and cried so I laughed, of the dysfunctional relationships, the self-absorbed characters and the strong and effective dialogues and monologues. I also suspect that in inappropriate ecstasy I got up in standing ovations before the show was completely finished. Lars Norén's acting made me understand the enormous power a stage text can have when it is written without fear of going into existential themes with a personal angle and both invites and gives the actors on stage space to find tragicomic, spark and dynamics together. . Then theater really is not boring.
Suddenly I had to play Norén's drama myself. In April 2020, we were to premiere the monologue on November 20, Norén's dark play based on texts left by a school shooter, in Oslo Nyes Teaterkjeller. No project has aroused more nervousness and awe in me. Carrying Norén on my narrow shoulders seemed impossible. I still had a secret (and most likely quite unrealistic) dream that the playwright himself might come and see. But due to a virus, we still have not premiered. This virus also took Lars Norén's life. Now I know for sure that he will not come and see the show when we are one day allowed to have a premiere.
I have been walking around with my head on November 20 for over a year now, and I can often think: Why does Norén have the strength, bother and desire time and time again to portray characters in such unimaginably deep crises? He writes about relationships full of physical and psychological violence, drug addicts, sex offenders and school shooters. Are these people representative of who we are?
Many will also think that Norén's art, in those cases where he has been very engrossed in uncompromising methods in the search for dark truths, contains some major flaws. However, we artists should look to him today and into the uncertain future because we must remember that we as artists must uncompromisingly search for these truths. We represent the universe in everything we create. And the universe is strikingly often a painful place to be. The universe is made up of many people in very deep personal crises, people who commit cruel acts, and although we are not all exactly like them, we can understand them and ourselves through art. We all have darkness in us.
Anyone who sees or reads a play by Norén gradually understands that it is far healthier, and moreover uplifting, to dive into the darkness through art than to suppress the existence of darkness. For the darkness that is not processed, but only suppressed, will grow. Therefore, we should be happy that Lars Norén has plunged into his own and others' tragic fate and psychology both through realistic and more symbolic expressions time and time again and conveyed it further in his very intellectual, but far from inaccessible texts. This means that we as readers or theater audiences can feel resonance, recognition and understanding that we can take with us further in life.
Lars Norén remains the greatest Swedish playwright after August Strindberg, and he will undoubtedly live on in our common consciousness and on theater stages all over the world, for many years to come. In Oslo, there will be a trip to play Norén at both the National Theater with Etter Stillheten and Oslo Nye Teater on 20 November as soon as it is safe and legal in terms of infection control. Then we will play with you in our dark hearts, Lars.
Thank you for everything, and rest in peace, great artist.
