Tore Vagn Lid & Transiteatret-Bergen (tt-b)

The Company
Transiteatret-Bergen works under the artistic direction of director and musician Tore Vagn Lid with the development of a contemporary and critical theatre in the intersection area between theatre and music. Based on the fundamental criterion of a consistent theatre-music synthesis – or what has been called “the music in the theatre and the theatre in the music” – the ensemble has during the last ten years carried out a series of scenic experiments in and outside Norway.

 

Biography

The work of Transiteatret- Bergen (tt-b) is committed to a breed of music and theatre that opens and enables a critically experimental theatre directed towards crucial questions of what is at stake in contemporary society. Starting from the idea of theatre as a synthesis of stagecraft and music, tt-b has through the conceptual and directorial lead of Tore Vagn Lid presented a range of performances touching on, and always continuously developing, themes of relations between man/woman and what seems to be dominating forces of our economical and cultural surroundings.  In the performances this often appears through a displaying of  the subtle and unsubtle demands made on the individual in an increasingly mediatized, capitalized, and perhaps too a critical extent, human-alienating world. 

 

Through the early major performances "Opus 1. Maktens Anatomi" (2001), "Walk, Cat, Walk!" (2003/2003), and "Maybe it´s too nice?" (2004), a highly developed dramaturgical thinking, and theatrework of unique and solid character made its mark in the norwegian theatre-landscape. A mark which proved to be continuously deepening and widening through the more recent productions of "Polyfonia" (2007), "Die Maßnahme" (2007) and "Mann=Mann" (2008). These performances broke still new ground for tt-b, as seen through an increasing appreciation of their work by critics, as well as a norwegian and european audience, for being remarkably thought-provoking work that still offers an atmosphere of amiability and humour in its approach to the audience. Not the least, the performances tends to come through as reminders of how artistic approaches to the political and ideological workings of society, can reveal and discuss these workings in crucial ways - beyond the realms of politics and news-reports, where the individual is challenged to question and possibly refigure its role in the bigger social-political picture our cultural surroundings carry.  

 

Die Massanhme

With the sucess of the 2007 production of "Die Maßnahme", director Tore Vagn Lid also brought his already genuine affiliation with Bertolt Brecht´s ideas for the theatre to broad daylight, in which his respect  for the composition of theatre-partitatures as realised through the co-creation of works by Brecht and composer Hanns Eisler plays a major part. In terms of the ´brechtian heritage´, Vagn Lid picks up the strings that many other´s have left behind; the idea of addressing questions of ideology through the principles of the "lehrstuck", and not the least through the rooms of resonance created through the dramaturgical play between text, music and a rythmical approach to the audience´s receptional senses. The play that has been banned from performances for more than a half century, got its new premiére through Vagn Lids carefully daring reworkings of both its formal and historical themes, making it into a grand performance of music-theatre. This unique reawakening of a still potential form of politically concerned theatre, was one of the main-events of the Bergen International Festival of 2007, and moved on to the young director´s programme of Salzburg Festspiele the same year, where the work stood out as "not the work of a young man, but of a young master" (Die Welt).

 

Transiteatret was with "Die Maßnahme" the first appearance of a norwegian production at the legendary Festival of Salzburg 2008 - performing .

 

Read reviews on the production of  "Die Maßnahme" here:  

 

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)

 

"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." Dr. Dirk Pilz, critic and editor of Theater der Zeit (Berlin)

 

Awards

In 2008 the production of "Mann ist Mann" was awarded as "Theatre performance of the year", by the jury of the Hedda-prize (Yearly national awards for outstanding achievements in the professional norwegian theatrelandscape). The production was in particular praised for its ability to combine the resources and traditions of the institutional theatre with the will to experiment of an independent theatre constellation. In 2009 Tore Vagn Lid also received the Heddaprice for the second time for his play "Operasjon Almenrausch", produced by Agder Teater - he also was nominated to the national Ibsen Award for "The play of the year".