Artistic Director Bergdís Júlía Jóhannsdóttir recently performed in this viking fuelled music video by Arctic Roots as a mythological water deity.
VIDEO "UNFORGETTABLE NIGHTMARE FUEL"
We are immensely proud of this new collaborative project between our artistic director Anna Korolainen and 3D artist Louis Crevier who has been a consistent collaborator of us since Carroll: Berserkur.
Check out their article in The Creators Project:
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/fuel-your-nightmares-with-hyper-surreal-digital-short-menetys
COMPLETE
“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” - Lewis Carroll
We wanted to thank everyone who came to Carroll: Berserkur at Tjarnarbíó - our first full length participatory theatre production.
We are currently negotiating with European venues and universities to find suitable destinations for our physical theatre workshops. The workshops build on our devising method of working from the Self and exploring and strengthening aspects of our movement and voice we tend to shy away from.
- Sóla Eva
Q&A CARROLL: BERSERKUR
After each performance of Carroll: Berserkur there is a Q&A with our cast and creatives.
Your thoughts, impressions and experiences are important to us as a growing theatre company and we will share our answers to the most frequent questions here.
Tickets are still available to our limited run at Tjarnarbio: http://midi.is/atburdir/1/8849/
Where did the characters come from, how was the casting process?
We started by working from the individual. We did psycho-physical exercises focused on the Self, sometimes we worked with particular phases of our lives such as child, teenager and adult. We were curious about the choices we had made and how our self image had changed through those years: what we chose to hide and what we chose to show. Finding taboos within ourselves that we could really play with was a key theme we wanted to explore from Alice in Wonderland. We discovered that the teenager was particularly fragile as many decisions we made in those years affected so strongly who we are today.
From watching each other do and present these exercises we experienced similar emotions and atmospheres that we identified with particular characters and events in Alice in Wonderland. "Hmm, that feels like the Queen - I think this quality would be very interesting for the Cat."
From there those discoveries were worked further into quite grotesque and stylised characteristics, which were supported with symbolic and playful costumes and scenic design. The performers researched and devised their own scenes and texts based on these discoveries. Some had early on had an idea of what taboo they wanted to work and experiment with. Somehow casting became an effortless fit within our company.
Where did the end scene come from?
Because the costumes came from those stylised taboos, those sides of ourselves we normally hide but for the purpose of the show exaggerated and presented on stage, we wanted to take the costumes off and show what was underneath. That it is OK to have these darker sides, these "different shadows of Alice" as we call them in our rehearsals, because everyone has them (and plenty more). That this one quality is not what defines a person. We wanted to show different bodies together on stage in a raw manner and simply share these sides of ourselves, accept, and leave the costume, our taboo, behind for the audience - knowing that it's still a part of us.
Where did the confessions come from?
These are real confessions we gathered through a survey. Everyone in our company participated as well, and then we divided the confessions between the characters as we thought best suited their qualities and dramaturgy. So they are hopefully all truthful, and some were in fact so crude we unfortunately couldn't find a place for them onstage.
I did not enjoy sitting on a damn flower pot for a whole scene... Will that change as you continue adapting the performance?
Of course we want everyone to feel safe and enjoy themselves at our production. However, we are interested in exploring what else Alice experiences on her journey through these nine different three - five minute character scenes. How she shrank, grew, and was challenged differently by each character. We want to see how theatre can offer these different emotions and experiences rather than only being a comfortable place you enter, sit down and perhaps even fall asleep, grab a drink during break and then continue the second act in the dark. We hope that the audience experience themselves as Alice and can embrace these different confrontations, but of course we need to provide that experience in a safe manner.
Are there limitations to audience participation, how free can we be?
We decided to have certain limitations, for example how the chess pieces guide you through the space in three different groups rather than the audience walking freely. But it is an exciting challenge for us to embrace the audiences in whatever way they want to play with us, and we are eager to practice and learn from what you have to offer us.
RADIO FM957
Bergdís Júlía and Sólveig Eva discussed Carroll: Berserkur on Iceland's Radio FM957. The interview is available in Icelandic on the link below.
- Sóla Eva
VIDEO CARROLL: BERSERKUR
This video overview of our full production by Louis Crevier and Marco Schott was initially intended strictly for festival submissions, but we decided to leave it here for anyone interested to provide a deeper insight into our work.
REASEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTION SUMMER 2014
For a full overview of our process from beginning to end, here are the pictures from our Research and Development run at Drayton Arms Theatre, London, the summer before.
Sponsored by Evrópa Unga Fólksins (Erasmus+) and Reykjavíkurborg
- Sóla Eva
RADIO RÁS 2
Listen to Bergdís Júlía and Sólveig Eva discussing Carroll: Berserkur on The Icelandic National Broadcast's Rás 2, Síðdegisútvarpið earlier today.
They are introduced 1 hour and 25 min into the following video:
http://www.ruv.is/sarpurinn/ras-2/siddegisutvarpid/20150407
- Sóla Eva
TICKETS CARROLL: BERSERKUR
Bergdís Júlía and Sólveig Eva are currently on their way to radio FM957 to chat with Ósk Gunnarsdóttir about Carroll: Berserkur, but our Dress Run will be tomorrow and premiere on Thursday at Tjarnarbíó.
If you're in Reykjavik catch your ticket at http://midi.is/leikhus/1/8849/Carroll_Berserkur
- Sóla Eva
MUSIC CARROLL: BERSERKUR
It's end of week three, everyone is working hard and scenes are emerging from the chaos. We have assembled a team of thirty creative individuals to work with us which makes this our largest project yet, in addition to being our first full length theatre performance.
We wanted to share with you the work of our musicians.
In addition to using the original score created by Pekka Koivisto, we have accordion player Arnardóttir and musicians Jófríður Ákadóttir and Sigrún Harðardóttir creating the soundscape for the various performance spaces.
We asked composer Pekka Koivisto for something warm and embracing for our theme music. A grounding score that might encourage self reflection.
The White Rabbit, played by Hrefna Lind Lárusdóttir, leads the audiences through an anxiety ridden mindful meditation session. When the audiences pass her a second time her world has collapsed.
Here is the track from Pigeon's room, played by Sólveig Eva, which is focused on mixing a pleasant surface with an electric undercurrent, as the Pigeon supresses her urges to fulfil her motherly role.
The Cheshire Cat, played by Ástþór Ágústsson, is a master manipulator who holds the key to increased confidence and success. He shares those secrets and practice tips with you during a tea party. The three different audience groups come together for his talk show mid production.
The Selkie, played by Agnes Wild, is our Nordic take on the sorrowful Mock Turtle from Alice in Wonderland. The Nordic myth tells of a seal woman who can no longer return to her former self and her family at sea.
Bergdís Júlía Jóhannsdóttir takes on motherhood through the role of the Duchess, using dark undertones of Icelandic folk songs in her soundscape.
The final score combines elements from the production with the ocean wave washing everything away, as the performers remove their costumes in front of the audience and exit the stage.
I will end this article with a thank you to graphic designer Kristín Edda who managed to source an immense amount of eggshells today for the Pigeon scene's installation. The visual component of our production is under the supervision of Hallveig Kristín Eiríksdóttir who treats each room as an extension of the character's inner life.
- Sóla Eva
CARROLL: BERSERKUR AT TJARNARBIO
With the support of the European Union Erasmus+ and Reykjavík City funding we are now able to launch a full length version of our production Carroll: Berserkur at Iceland's independent theatre hub Tjarnarbio.
Tjarnarbio (Pond Cinema) was built in 1913 and was originally an ice storage for fishermen, the backstage was then used as Reykjavík's fire station, in WWII it was turned into a cinema, from which it became a lecture hall and a theatre. This versatile though small house is full of corners, floors, turns, spaces you need to crawl into to open sky ceiling hallways, which makes it an ideal location for our recontextualisation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland set to focus on the theme of identity: that which we hide, that which we present, the multifaceted nature of us all and our ever changing notion of Self.
In addition to our production we will now be able to travel with our workshop series The Performer and the Self which are centred on self acceptance, experimentation with different parts of your identity - in particular we encourage working with aspects we normally shy away from or choose not to present and finding the playfulness and performative potential within this fragment of our being. We are on a mission to create a feminist training practice, rid of hierarchy which embraces the entirety of the human instrument without value judgment on the various movement and vocal qualities. We believe the entirety of the human instrument must be explored playfully in order to portray a truthful range of human experiences.
We look forward to seeing you at our immersive theatre performance at Tjarnarbio this spring,
- Sóla Eva