DYING IS FUN....(Vera Nabokov)

"DYING IS FUN.....(Vera Nabokov)"

A show exploring the supposed personal struggle growing inside Vera Nabokov as her dying husband, the famous writer, asks her to burn the unfinished manuscript of his last novel; "The Original of Laura."
Having spend all her married life transcribing Nabokov's manuscripts and acting inspiration as well as non-inspiration for his female characters, Vera plunges into a deep moral and personal dilemma. The novels are partly her and most of the works are dedicated to her. Burning it would be betraying herself - not doing it would be betraying her husband's dying wish.

Vera locks away the 138 little handwritten index cards that is "The Original of Laura" in a safe. For more than 20 years, she refrains from deciding upon anything, roaming about in the shadowy crimescene realm of the deepest corners of her mind.

Of course the contents of this show are purely fiction and loosely based on the events following the death of Vladimir Nabokov in 1977. The focal point of this show is visualizing and staging the deep mind of a widow being haunted by the creatures of her dead husband's imagination. These becoming an inescapable curse of love and hate for the fictive women that shaped her life - and whose lives she shared and inspired.

Played at Norwegian Theatre Academy, January 2010
Created by Jon Skulberg and Maja Clementsen Hansen
Performers: Maja Clementsen Hansen, Ingrid Rusten, Karen Tømte 
Tutor: Reinart Mithassel


Photos by Jon Skulberg

 

Nostalgia #3: TYREFÆGTER

"TYREFÆGTER"

Played at BASTARDEN, TeaterHUSET - June 18 - 21st 2008

Director: Mads Schaltz
Actors: Magnus Christensen, Piet Gitz-Johansen, Maja Clementsen Hansen, Kristine Elmedahl Johansen
Lightning Design: Kristoffer Lumbye
Playwrights: Emilie Bendix, Nicholaj Siltan, Sarah Otte, Pernille Jespersen, Julie Kirkegaard 



This performance event was curated by DRAMATORIET (an open lab for upcoming playwrights in KBH).
Each playwright had been given the task of producing a short text dealing with the theme Bullfighting (Tyrefægtning). The 5 texts would then be given to a team, consisting of 4 actors and a director, that would stage a show based on these works - adjusting and rewriting the drafts in close collaboration with the writers.

The five pieces varied from each other quite a lot in both genre, style and length;  some dealing directly with the act of bullfighting, others with the associations or contexts of bullfighting, still others only touched upon the theme, vaguely hinting at the ritual of a death match between man and beast.

The show required the actors to take on several parts, as the action moved from dreamy ritualism, to a deadly cartoonish tango, through kitchen sink drama and slapstick comedy, ending up on a death bed overlooking the bullfighting arena.
It dealt quite thoroughly with the mythologies linked to bullfighting as a social event, and how the themes of this often infamous ritual seems to reflect the choices and behavioural patterns of our daily interactions with the people surrounding us.

http://www.teater-huset.dk/newsite/index.php