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"Change the world, it needs it!" is what the text says. One could also say: "Change the theatre, it needs it!"
In Bergen the process has already started."
On Die Massnahme, Dr. Dirk Pilz, critic and editor of Theater der Zeit (Berlin) tvl/tt-b
News
[15.04.2010] Tore Vagn Lid / Transiteatret-Bergen (NORWAY), new Production 2010:
RESSENTIMENT - Pavane for a dead princess
by Tore Vagn Lid
The Anatomy of Powerlessness – Into the Test Zone
As state, society and school talk loudly about young people’s potential and development possibilities, new “naturalistic” research talks even more loudly about what’s static, what’s congenital and what’s determined by nature. What happens when the “loser” - in encounter with popular science, TV-entertainment and Internet tests begins to look at oneself as nature?
What new - and to date - unknown dramas will be produced when new naturalistic research creeps out of the laboratory windows, becomes talk show entertainment on national state television channels before they end up as a part of our understanding of ourselves? "Ressentiment" is a term (S. Kirkegaard) describing a frustration caused by a deep sense of powerlessness. As a “visual radio play”* in a chamber music exchange between stage and music – Tore Vagn Lid’s new piece sees itself on the track of such “anatomy of powerlessness”.
Text/direction/audiovisual concept: Tore Vagn Lid, Scenography/video: Kyrre Bjørkås, Sound design/Sound technique: Thorolf Thuestad, Sound technique/dramaturgical materials: Roar Sletteland, Music and sound dramaturgy/musical arr.: Tore Vagn Lid
Stage actors/musicians: Tor Christian F. Bleikli, Hilde Annine Hasselberg (singer), Mona Solhaug, Thomas Valerur (guitar), Voices: Arild Vestre, Tore Vagn Lid, Ragnhild Gudbrandsen, Scenography assistant: Gunnhild Mathea Olaussen, Stage manager: Kirsti Aksnes and Sara Bruteig Olsen, Produced in co-operation with BEK
* "Ressentiment" is built up as a "visual radio play", where the main "Character" - the Candidate - is played by a mobile (wireless) loudspeaker, and where two of the three musicians are staring as loudspeaker elements in a chamber musical setting. "The Committee" evaluating the candidate is recorded voices, professional actors, media professionals and amateurs. The musical core material of the drama is composed around Maurice Ravel ”Pavana for a dead princess”, Heitor Villa-Lobos ”Bachianas Brasilieiras nr. 5”, Antonio Vivaldis ”Concerto for luth and orchestra”, Ludvig van Beethoven ”Symfoni nr. 7”, Zager/Evans ”2525”, Big Stars ”Space”, Johnny Cashs ”The beast in me”.
Co-producer: BIT-Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Black Box Teater (Oslo), Den Nationale Scene (Bergen), Supported by Norsk Kulturråd, Kunstloftet, DKS, Bergen Kommune
Performance dates:
Stamsund International Theatre Festival – (Pre- premiere) 5. June 2010
Black Box Theatre (Oslo) 29 Sept. – 3 Oct. 2010 (Premiere Oslo)
BIT – Teatergarasjen (DNS Småscenen): Week 47 (Premiere Bergen) – 2010
[20.02.2010] Doctorate in music theatre
Theatre director and author – Tore Vagn Lid who is also Artistic Director of Transiteatret-Bergen defended his doctoral thesis on 12 February 2010 at the famous Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany – a centre that since the 1980s has contributed to establishing the premises for many of the most interesting events that have taken place in German theatre during the past decades.
Lid’s doctoral thesis is closely linked to his work as a theatre director with a special interest in music. The key word has been to investigate in what ways theatre and music can work together to make the theatre into a room for insight, criticism and reflection. How can the theatre room be enlarged and developed into a polyphonic room of text, music and images in such a manner that it can extend its potential as a critical room of experience? This question is the governing idea in all of Mr. Lid’s work. And here Lid sees the answers to what a modern music theatre can do, which film and feature or debate articles are not able to. By examining – not only one’s own conceptions – but also a whole range of central contemporary and historical strategies for music theatre, Lid tries to open up, develop further and arrange for a direction and a dramaturgy that can make the most of the inherent potential of music theatre work. At the same time he tries to find out why some theatre institutions succeed in organizing such exchanges while others do not manage to take care of the possibilities of seeing the music in the theatre and hearing the theatre in the music.
In a particular way the institute for Applied Theatre Studies unites practical theatre work with theoretical reflection. Teachers and students at the institute include names like Heiner Müller, Robert Wilson, René Pollesch and the director team behind “Riminiprotokoll”. For the time being the institute is headed by the composer and theatre director Heiner Goebbels.
Tore Vagn Lid defended his thesis in Giessen on 12 February 2010 and received the grade/designation Summa Cum Laude – which is the highest possible grade/distinction within the German university system.
The members of the doctorate committee were as follows:
Heiner Goebbels
Gärt Rinecker (Humbolt University)
Knut Vennesland (University of Bergen)
Jürgen Schläder (Maximillian University, Munich)
[17.01.2010] The theatre name of the decade!
In a New Year’s comment the culture editor of Bergens Tidende, Jan Landro, strikes the balance of the theatre scene in Bergen during the first decade of our millennium, and the culture editor singles out Transiteatret-Bergen and its art director as the most exciting name:
“The most exciting thing that has taken place locally, however, has been orchestrated by Tore Vagn Lid and Transiteatret-Bergen. Here we can talk about a scenic renewal.[...] it is tempting to call him the theatre name of the decade!” (BT 09-12-30)
[17.01.2010] Excerpts from "Passacaglia" by Tore Vagn Lid. (Contemporary festival, Oslo 2009)
[01.12.2009] New production by tt-b / Tore Vagn Lid coming 2010
"Ressentiment - Pavane for a dead princess" will be the title of Tore Vagn Lid`s new play with production start jan -10. The pre-premiere of the play will take place early in June 2010. (Time and place to be announced soon.) The play will be produced by tt-b in co-production with BIT-Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Black Box (Oslo) and Bergen Senter for Elektronisk Kunst (BEK).
In 2010 tt-b will also be touring with Polyfonia, Elephant Stories part IV: Passacaglia and more. (Please contact us for further details.)
[08.11.2009] Sensational reception of Lid`s ”Operation Almenrausch” at the Meteor Festival 2009.
(foto:Magne Turøy)
The Bergen premiere of Tore Vagn Lid’s “Operation Almenrausch” triggers off the BIG DEBATE about Norwegian war history, about the sufferings of our forgotten war heroes and about historical concealment processes:
“Gooseflesh from start to end” (Throw of dice: 6) -writes Charlotte Myrbråthen in BA (Bergensavisen):
“This is an important story, directed in a masterly way […] Hedda Award winner Tore Vagn Lid has succeeded in creating important, documentary, informative, debate –promoting and aesthetically excellent theatre”
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“Powerful, important and good theatre” -writes BT’s (Bergens Tidende’s) Jan Landro:
[...]"Because this is the story that the historians were silent about; the tale of the Big Deceit against some of our leading resistance fighters. […]The audience is constantly drawn into what is happening. […]The actors are running around among us, we can reach out a hand and touch them if we want to. And to let us feel the dilemmas these patriots were confronted with, some of the spectators are given buttons to press to decide whether a possible German provocateur shall be executed for security reasons or be allowed to live. This completes the “interactivity”. […] And now we have come to the big deceit: The Norwegian State’s deceit and the Norwegian Communist Party’s deceit against the real heroes of the resistance. “Operation Almenrausch” erects a pillar of shame over a cowardly state scared of Communists and over a cynical political party, and indirectly over a couple of generations of un-heroic Norwegian historians. It is powerful, but clearly justified.”
Maybe even more important than 15 crowded houses and brilliant reviews is the BIG DEBATE that the Bergen premiere of “Operation Almenrausch” has created in Western Norway. Academia, artists, authors and a broadly composed audience were discussing into the small hours in the venerable premises of the Logen Theatre. Local newpapers bring out hushed up family names, and feature articles exceed reviews in extent and length.
(Visit the Meteor Festival here)
[30.08.2009] Also in 2009 Artistic Director of “Transiteatret-Bergen”, Tore Vagn Lid, receives the Hedda Award.
This year Lid receives the prize for “The Event of the Year” for his play “Operation Almenrausch”. The performance was produced by the Agder Theatre commissioned on the authority of Vest–Agder County by Sissel Grafer. Lid was also nominated for the Ibsen Playwright Reward for the same play.
The grounds of the Hedda Award jury 2009:
THE EVENT OF THE YEAR
The following category announces a performance which is an event out of the ordinary! It applies in a high degree to This Year’s Winner. The exceptional scenic concept breaks down the barrier between the audience and the actors; technically advanced effects, which are not immediately associated with theatre, are used here just to strengthen and enlarge the theatrical art, while the true story told brings important, well documented knowledge about a forgotten episode in our recent past, at the same time as it confronts the audience with important ethical dilemmas. The performance creates enthusiasm because it successfully shakes up all our adopted opinions about what theatre should be. The Event of the Year is Tore Vagn Lid’s “Operation Almenrausch”.
[15.06.2009] “Elephant Stories” sets off broad debate about contents, form and political relevance.
The Bergen Festival production of “Elephant Stories” by Tore Vagn Lid has prompted a vehement debate among theatre audiences and newspaper readers. The play’s problematizing of a view of man and society which is presented in light of modern genetics and neuroscience is creating engaged debate about biology, new theatre forms and politics in the Festival City.
“I feel overloaded” wrote BT’s critic Jan Landro in his review of the play. (BT 30.05)
On the contrary it is precisely the complexity and form BA’s critic Nils Olav Sæverås emphasizes in his very positive review:
"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."(...) “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.” (BA 29.05, read full review here)
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“An artistic masterpiece”, is the title of one of the contributions to the following newspaper debate (Lars Magnus Rong) printed in BT 14.06:
“In “Elephant Stories” Lid demonstrates how several fields like medicine, psychology, psychiatry, neurology are distorted and are cited in support of political standpoints. Our comprehension of human nature is reflected in the current debate on social affairs and it concerns us all, no matte what level of knowledge and sources.”
“The governing idea of the play follows up an argumentation story: Statements are composed and become a series of arguments. The arguments are among other things quotations representing ideas that are parts of an opposite series of arguments. This is not a quotation technique in the classical sense, but artistic freedom to follow a series of arguments. This gives the theatre quite a unique form and possibility of social analysis and reflection. No conclusion is given. It is the audience who decide whether the elephant Topsy McVeigh shall be executed, and here the play ends with reference to Stanley Milgram’s famous social psychological experiment from 1961.”
“For a theatre that does not want to be outdated it is crucial to be of relevance to our own times and dare to pose questions of current social interest. That is what “Elephant Stories” does!”
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Senior scientific officer of philosophy, Anne Granberg, emphasizes in her contribution the philosophical potential inherent in the form of this performance:
“What is most characteristic of Lid’s performances in general is the fact that the audience always - almost brutally - is forced into thinking. Nothing is served digested or is unambiguous, and no character allows the spectator to linger in an identification position. It’s quite the opposite; as spectators we are presented with a polyphony that demands constant reflection.”
“What I found to be by far the most interesting thing about “Elephant Stories” is that it in addition to criticizing this type of social biologisation it also shows that things one should think were incompatible conceptions of mankind, are acting together in apparent harmony: on the one hand a biologistic objectivation and on the other the emphasis on the totally subjective responsibility of the individual.”
“The play is not at all an attack on the biologists (…) but an attack on a reductive view of man which is about to crystallize as a general form of thinking. From this point of view Lid’s performance has arrived at the place where a potent theatre should be; not only on a level with its own times, but one step ahead.”(BT 12.06.09)
[18.04.09] New production by tt-b/Tore Vagn Lid: Elephant Stories: On Animals by Elfriede Jelinek / Passacaglia by Tore Vagn Lid
Premiere May 28. at the Bergen International Festival 2009 - (Transiteatret-Bergen in coproduction with the BIF an National Theatre.) Elephant Stories will also be presented at the Contemporary Stage Festival at Nationaltheatret (Oslo) in September -09 and at Black Box Teater (Oslo) 2010.(New dates to be announced spring 2010) (Visit the Bergen Internation Festival: here)
Die Massnahme at the Salzburg Festival 2008 (Slideshow)
[01.12.07] Die Massnahme to the Salzburg Festival 2008
- Tore Vagn Lid is together with his company tt-b invited with "Die Massnahme" by B.Brecht (The Measures Taken) to the young directors programme at Salzburg Festival - aug 2008. (For more information click here)
[26.08.008] TT-B receives Hedda Award for "Production of the year 2008": "Mann=Mann" B. Brecht directed by Tore Vagn Lid at Rogaland Teater (a collaboration between Transiteatret-Bergen and Rogaland Teater)
Read the grounds of the Hedda Award Jury 2008 (here , in norwegian)
[20.06.07] Fantastic Reviews of Brecht /Eisler's "Die Massnahme" (The Measures Taken) after the Nordic premiere at Bergen International Festival 2007.
Reviews:
Dagbladet: "The Brutal Questions " (English translation)
Verdens Gang: "Intense Objectivity" (Throw of dice: 6) ( English translation)
Dagsavisen: "Die Massnahme" (English translation)
Nachtkritik.de: - Ändere das Theater, denn es braucht es! (In German)
Berliner Zeitung: - Die Massnahme in Bergen (In German)
Productions by tt-b/Tore Vagn Lid 2001 - 2009
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