The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Norwegian Plays

Eirik Fauske, Kristofer Grønskag, Pernille Dahl Johnsen, Lene Therese Teigen, Liv Heløe, Hans Petter Blad, Neil Howard

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786826978
• eBook ISBN: 9781786826985
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

'If the essence of drama is conflict, the crossing of wills, of culture versus barbarism, the Norwegians have a natural spring to tap into – and it is explosive.' – Line Rosvoll, Artistic Director of the Norwegian Centre of New Playwriting, from her Introduction. The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Norwegian Plays brings together a selection of exciting playwrights reflecting the breadth and vitality of Norwegian theatre's booming new writing scene. Six plays, translated by Neil Howard and published for the first time in English, demonstrate a common willingness to push formal boundaries and to find new ways to tackle the universal experiences of the human condition; grief and loss, violence, manipulation, abuse and despair. Grief Work by Eirik Fauske; Kinder K by Kristofer Grønskag; A Remarkable Person by Pernille Dahl Johnsen; Time Without Books by Lene Therese Teigen; Why Not Before by Liv Heløe; Watching Shadows by Hans Petter Blad

TIME WITHOUT BOOKS
Lene Therese Teigen

This translation was supported by the
Writers’ Guild of Norway

To Cecilia

Situation

TIME WITHOUT BOOKS concerns a country where there was once dictatorship. Now, democracy has been reinstated. What can one speak of after such a national trauma? What is it best to keep quiet about? For whom – and why? There is a shopping centre that was formerly a prison and a new generation that has no idea that that is the case. There are parents who want to give their children a happy life, without agreeing upon what that actually means, and there are children who want to understand why their parents have never spoken about how they feel. How personal is a memory?

Acting Style

TIME WITHOUT BOOKS is written with direct communication with the audience in mind, and for four actors. If preferable, more actors may be used.

Sometimes the actors are themselves on stage; this is a kind of base line in their performance. Taking four actors as read, I use the designations “WOMAN 1”, “WOMAN 2”, “WOMAN 3” and “MAN” in the manuscript as terms for the actors when it is intended that they are at this performance level. From this base line, where they are closest to themselves, they make comments, watch some of the action, perhaps making notes of what happens and what is said, and glide in and out of the various persons and situations they are portraying. This provides opportunities for improvisation and variation. This base line is also applicable for the third scene, the interrogation scene. Within limits that should be agreed beforehand, the actors may improvise new questions and answers in order to sense the here-and-now situation that every theatre performance actually is.

Characters

Woman 1: SOFIA, TATIANA, LYDIA

Man: PEDRO, ENRIQUE, HECTOR

Woman 2: RITA, YOUNG LYDIA, DAUGHTER

Woman 3: IRENE, AURORA, MARIA, EVA

Character Constellations

• RITA, her mother, SOFIA, and her father, PEDRO. RITA’s friends IRENE and TATIANA. In this family, both parents were imprisoned during the period of dictatorship. They later lived in exile in a country far away, where they met each other and had their daughter, RITA. They moved back to their home country when democracy was restored. RITA has acquired new friends in her parents’ homeland. We meet her at fourteen, at nineteen and at thirty.

• LYDIA and her husband, ENRIQUE, their daughter AURORA, and LYDIA when young. ENRIQUE was imprisoned when their daughter was one year old. The mother was only young and left quite alone with the daughter, while her husband was in prison.

• MARIA. She was imprisoned during the period of dictatorship.

• HECTOR, EVA and their DAUGHTER. HECTOR was in the military during the period of dictatorship. His wife, EVA, was unable to have children so HECTOR obtained a daughter for them. THE DAUGHTER does not speak.

The Space

It is light, almost white, and there is a white chair in a white dream, and there are no walls here in the dream, just a kind of landscape that stretches away like an open, endless, smooth expanse; it is exactly like it is neither inside nor outside, neither firm nor fleeting. As if everything is changing from something other to something other.

Shared Actions

During the scenes, the participants find paper, from cigarette boxes for example, and write on it. They write with tiny handwriting on thin slips of paper such as paper for making roll-ups or the thin paper that surrounds the cigarettes inside the packet. Generally speaking, what they write down is what is said during the performance so that it may be remembered thereafter. The audience is to be given the sheets and, in the end, is to decide if they should be thrown or forgotten or made publicly available.

The Handmade Jersey

YOUNG LYDIA knits. First a jersey for her daughter AURORA’s teddy bear. Later on, the bear gets to wear the jersey. Then she...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Grief Work
• Kinder K
• A Remarkable Person
• Time Without Books
• Why Not Before
• Watching Shadows