Thomasevangeliet – 2004The Gospel According to Thomas – 2004
Grusomhetens Teater 2004/2005, PIT Porsgrunn InternasjonaleTeaterfestival 2005.
Idé og regi: Lars Øyno
Medvirkende: Hanne Dieserud, Robert Skjærstad, Silje Breivik, Martha Kjørven, Lars Brunborg, Anne E. Kokkinn og Kristofer Hivju, Lars Eirik Nilsen,Tuva Moen, Kaja Ringerike, Elias Bakken Johansen, Miriam E. Dieserud, Oskar Guthushagen, Anna Ladegård, Vilde Olsen Rommetveit, Daniel Aamodt Brox og Aleksander Thorkildsen
Musikk: Lars Pedersen
Scenografi: Christina Lindgren og Thor Eriksen
Lys: Ingrid Tønder/Geir K. Johansen
Koreografi: Cecilie Bertran de Lis
Regiassistent/inspisient: Ingvild Hogstad
«Den som finner seg selv er større enn verden.»
Thomasevangeliet ble funnet ved en tilfeldighet sammen med flere andre verdifulle religiøse skrifter i Egypt – Nag Hammadi i 1945. Alt var bevart i en leirkrukke under sanden. Thomasevangeliet består av 114 sitater av Jesus. Forskere mener at det er nedskrevet på gresk rundt år 50, altså en førstehåndsbeskrivelse av Jesus gjennom de ord han sa. Halvparten av sitatene finnes i lignende ordlyd i Det Nye Testamentet, men de som kun finnes hos Thomas handler om erkjennelse og selvinnsikt, noe som den kristne kirke etter hvert fant opprørende og farlig. Det ble erklært forbudt, og forsøkt tilintetgjort.
Det føles naturlig etter oppsetningen av «Peer Gynt» å gripe tak i problemstillinger omkring den materielle verden kontra hva som til syvende og sist betyr noe for oss i livet.
«Den som drikker av min munn vil bli som jeg og jeg vil bli som ham. Og det som er skjult vil bli åpenbart for ham.»
Med denne introduksjonen begynner vår sceneversjon. Det er likhetspunkter mellom Artauds visjoner om livet i teatret og Thomasevangeliet. De har et felles mål; – å skape en forandring hos det verdslige menneske.
Forestillingen, som er Grusomhetens Teaters 14. produksjon, er støttet av Norsk Kulturråd, Fond For Lyd og Bilde, Fond For Utøvende Kunstnere og Fretex.
[nggallery id=14]The gospel according to Thomas
Grusomhetens Teater 2004/2005, PIT Porsgrunn InternasjonaleTeaterfestival 2005.
With: Hanne Dieserud, Robert Skjærstad, Silje Breivik, Martha Kjørven, Lars Brunborg, Anne Kokkinn, Kristofer Hivju, Lars Eirik Nilsen, Tuva Moen, Kaja Ringerike, Elias Bakken Johansen, Miriam K. Dieserud, Oskar Guthushagen, Anna Ladegård, Vilde Olsen Rommetveit, Daniel Aamodt Brox, Aleksander Thorkildsen
Music: Lars Pedersen/WHEN
Scenography: Thor Eriksen & Christina Lindgren
Costumes: Christina Lindgren
Lighting: Ingrid Tønder & Geir K. Johansen
Choreography: Cecilie Bertran De Lis
Make-up: Trude Sneve
Concept and direction: Lars Øyno
Premiered at Grusomhetens Teater, Oslo Thursday 28th of October 2004. Duration: 1 h 30 min.
“He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him”. Logion 108
The Gospel According to Thomas was discovered among a number of Gnostic scriptures in a tomb of Nag Hammadi, Egypt as late as in 1945. It consists of 114 logia – sayings, prophecies, proverbs and parables of Jesus. Dating it as far back as the second half of the first century, some scholars believe that the Gospel According to Thomas is closely related to “Q”, the source of the synoptic Gospels – or even Q itself.
At any rate, there is a growing consensus that this is in fact the earliest account of Jesus – an unadorned record of his own sayings.
Many of the sayings in The Gospel According to Thomas are echoed in the canonical four Gospels of the Bible. Significantly, not those that speak of the efficacy of individual revelation and of divine power lying hidden inside each man.
In one of the logia, the crucial term metanoia recovers its original meaning: ‘a
change of knowing’ – not ‘repentance’, as it has so fatefully been mistranslated later. It transpires that wisdom, not submission, is the road to salvation. The Gospel According to Thomas reinstates Jesus the philosopher, revealing insights long obscured by the myth and worship of the person. This first Gospel contains no story of the birth and resurrection; devoid of judgement and fear, it is a culmination of life in the present, independent of death.
Branded as heretical in the third century and later expelled from the Christian canon, the Gospel has survived sixteen centuries in an earthenware jar under the sands of Egypt, untouched by Roman-Pauline theological influence. Its message remains controversial in the true sense of the word.
Grusomhetens Teater has chosen 20 of the logia for a theatrical examination of the Gospel’s resonance and challenge in our time. To a certain extent, these lines illuminate the figure of Antonin Artaud, to whom the company owes its name: both his detection of the Western society as contaminated, and his relentless self-scrutiny. More interestingly, the Gospel According to Thomas resembles a spiritual archetype for Artaud’s ideology of theatre: an art that seeks indeed to “make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside” (logion 22) and thus aspires to grow into a compendium of consciousness.
It was a dream of life that fuelled Artaud’s revolt against the Apollonian theatre and its desensitising rationality. From behind a veil of inscrutability, Jesus the philosopher and Artaud the theatre-maker both seem to call for ‘a knowing of the self’ as something fundamentally opposed to the established forms of knowledge and social beliefs.