Theatre
ELEPHANT STORIES

By Tore Vagn Lid
With texts by Elfriede Jelinek
Direction & audiovisual concept: Tore Vagn Lid
Cast: Andrine Sæter, Eindride Eidsvold
Studio Bergen
Excellent! (dice roll : 6)
You will hardly find anyone who forms a greater contrast to the Bergen Festival’s other dramatic principal character, Jon Fosse, than our second central dramatist, Tore Vagn Lid.

Whereas Jon Fosse is content with only a few and very and strictly allotted effects, Tore Vagn Lid delivers a cacophony of effects as well as thoughts and ideas. A lot of fascinating thoughts and ideas.

SOUND IMAGES:
If one considers the staging of “The Wild Duck” as a third extremity, it is clear that one becomes a bit concerned when also “Elephant Stories” has grown from originally two to nearly three hours. But there is no need to worry; Tore Vagn Lid is artistically disciplined.
In a way it is two performances in one. The link between part one and part two is not easy to spot immediately, but it is there.  In part one the text “About Animals” by Elfriede Jelinek is central, while in part two the stage is rebuilt for Tore Vagn Lid’s newly written “Passacaglia”. Together they constitute “Elephant Stories”. The first half where Andrine Sæter is the central actress, surrounded by a chorus of elderly women on one side and by younger women on the other, is about the chase after youth, about sexual exchange, about the tyranny of intimacy. Performed in a frenetic way, it often makes you react just as much to sound images as to a text to reflect upon.

FASCINATING:
The second half “Passacaglia” is more genuinely Vagn Lid, and probably also the most fascinating part. Here we are in a kind of laboratory where human behaviour is to be examined under the microscope. Vagn Lid questions one of today’s frequently used diagnosis – do we really have an explosion of ADHD, or is it just another diagnosis in fashion? Another and similar diagnosis is the diagnosis of psychopathy. What consequences will it have for a court ruling if the criminal impulse is incorporated in such a diagnosis? And the neurobiology, which is dominating this particular laboratory, stands out as a science with a possibly reductive perspective on human existence. There seems to be two quite different themes in each part of “Elephant Stories”, but there is one common trait. What about the individual in the middle of our modern world’s inclination to categorize? And how can one judge if the personality categories are given in advance. What is in common is the fact that there are subjects and ideas for reflection in theatre form, packed for three hours, occasionally a little didactic, but still theatrical in essence.

By his use of audiovisual effects, film and sound recordings, one may confidently say that Tore Vagn Lid with “Elephant Stories” lifts his special form of theatre of totality to a new level. And then I haven’t even started to explain why it’s called “Elephant Stories”.

By Nils Olav Sæverås (BA)
Published 29.05.2009