Blodsprut – 2005The Spurt of Blood – 2005
Blodsprut
Urpremiére 15. februar 2005 på Grusomhetens Teater, Hausmannsgt 34.
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Skuespillere: Hanne Dieserud, Robert Skjærstad,
Kristofer Hivju, Odille Blehr, Martha Kjørven og Lars Brunborg.
Musikk: Lars Pedersen/WHEN
Lys: Ingrid Tønder og Geir K. Johansen
Kostymer: Christina Lindgren
Make-up: Tonje Reksten
Koreografi: Lise Eger
Idé og regi: Lars Øyno[/eight_columns]
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[eight_columns]Etter Thomasevangeliet, som ble til en vekkelse for både kritikere og et stort publikum høsten 2004, kommer Blodsprut.
Det handler om kjærlighetens vilkår i vår tid. ”Blodsprut” er Antonin Artauds mest kjente skuespill fra 1925, av mange teaterfolk sett på som uspillelig. En ung kjærlighet forsøker å finne fotfeste blant samfunnskrefter som forhåner alt som er uselvisk og rent. Lars Øyno bruker dette motivet som utgangspunkt for en avslørende ferd gjennom uskyldens bilder og vrengebilder i vår tid, med Marilyn Monroes formaninger som gjennomgangsmotiv:
”I could have loved you once…”
I Antonin Artauds skuespill ”Blodsprut” fra 1925 er et ungt kjærlighetspar prisgitt kyniske og korrupte samfunnskrefter. Artauds fremstilling av samfunnsordningen er kataklysmisk, og kjærligheten er dømt til å gå under. Selv om teksten må ses i sammenheng med Artauds egen, plagede personlighet, peker den intet mindre presist på et evig aktuelt fenomen: angsten og lengselen som oppstår når enkeltmenneskets følelsesliv og samfunnets verdier kolliderer. En som har kunnet belyse Artauds tema, er Erich Fromm – psykoanalytikeren og humanisten som brakte historiske og kulturelle faktorer inn under psykologien og analyserte, mer klarsynt enn de fleste, menneskets kår i en post-eksistensialistisk verden. [/eight_columns]Mennesket, hevdet Fromm, er ute av stand til å bære ansvaret for seg selv som det har fått gjennom århundrer av opplysning og åndelig frigjøring, og søker gjerne trøst i moderne former for underkastelse. Det moderne jaget etter ”frihet” kaster oss ofte for materialismens føtter, mens vår idé om ’kjærlighet’ handler ofte om lite mer enn en form for utvidet egoisme. En uselvisk kjærlighet må derimot tåle å bli utelukket, til og med forhånet. Og likevel er selve roten til menneskets frihet og livskraft å finne i menneskets evne til å elske ubetinget.
Av den opprinnelige ”Blodsprut” er kun åpningsdialogen mellom de to unge elskende igjen. I Artauds stykke blir elskerne skilt fra hverandre av en fantastisk virvelvind, som ender med at en scarabé faller på scenen med en ”enerverende, kvalmende langsomhet”. I Grusomhetens Teaters iscenesettelse er dette motivet oversatt til hele forestillingen: en fallende verden av groteske skikkelser, rykkende av smerte eller forstillelse. Forestillingen viser disse skikkelsene i en smertefull prosess av selvkonfrontasjon, hvor en karakters fornemmelser gjenlyder i en annen, og trigger voldsomme sammenstøt. Det hele gir virkning av et slow-mo skrekkabinett, eller et uendelig utholdt dødsrykk. ”Blodsprut” har blitt både en tragisk kjærlighetshistorie og en burlesk kjærlighetens historie, hvor hallusinatoriske tablåer avløser hverandre som drømmebilder.
[nggallery id=15]The spurt of blood
Premiered at Grusomhetens Teater, Oslo Tuesday 15 February 2005.
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by: Antonin Artaud/Lars Øyno
With: Odille Heftye Blehr, Lars Brunborg, Hanne Dieserud, Kristofer Hivju, Martha Kjørven, Robert Skjærstad
Composer: Lars Pedersen/WHEN
Lighting: Ingrid Tønder & Geir K. Johansen
Costumes: Christina Lindgren
Make-up: Tonje Reksten
Choreography: Lise Eger
Concept and direction: Lars Øyno[/eight_columns]
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[eight_columns]Antonin Artaud’s The Spurt of Blood from 1925 is a stormy rumination on love, death and the predicaments of humanity concentrated to a few mind-boggling pages. At the core of the play is a simple and eloquent juxtaposition: love in an idealised form versus agents of dominant social forces. Artaud views the social arrangement as cataclysmic, and renders love as a doomed pursuit. Although the text is impossible to divorce from Artaud’s tortured personality, it points no less perceptively at an eternal phenomenon that configures itself anew according to the psychological climate of each era: the terror and longing that arise where societal values and the individual’s emotional life collide. One body of work that throws light upon Artaud’s theme, is that of Erich Fromm – the psychologist and humanist who brought historical and cultural factors within the purview of psychology, and identified the plight of man in the post-existentialist world more lucidly and comprehensively than most: Modern man, claimed Fromm, is unable to sustain the spiritual autonomy granted only recently by the fall of God, and seeks comfort in modern patterns of submission. It appears that the pursuit of “freedom”, more often than not, throws men at the feet of materialism. By the same token, ‘love’ in its most widespread use is coded as a model of extended egotism. However, ‘love’ understood as ‘selflessness’ – an absolute, non-acquisitive principle for life in its entirety – certainly counteracts the self-centred modern mentality, and is likely to suffer isolation, if not mockery. And yet man’s freedom and the affirmation of life in general is rooted in one’s capacity to love unconditionally.[/eight_columns] “It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born”, remarks Fromm. With such observations in mind,Theatre of Cruelty chose to leave the timeless, placeless world of Artaud behind and embark upon a historically allusive interpretation. With actors as mediums, director Lars Øyno invokes icons of liberation utopias and endearing corruption that populate our cultural memory: Hans Christian Andersen, Berthold Brecht, Marilyn Monroe. Replacing the feverish surrealism of the original text with figures such as these, Øyno seems to suggest that Artaud’s ecstatic brew has equally illuminating counterparts in our historical and cultural canon. Of the original The Spurt of Blood, only the opening dialogue between two young lovers has remained. In Artaud’s play, the lovers are interrupted by a whirlwind of mythical proportions, which ends with a scarab falling down on stage with an “exasperating, nauseating slowness”. In Theatre of Cruelty’s production, this particular motif translates into the entire performance: a declining world of grotesque characters, prickling with pretence or agony. The performance takes shape of an exigent process of self-uncovering, sensations reverberating from one character to another and triggering aggressive confrontations. The overall effect is that of a slow-mo horror cabinet, or an infinitely sustained death throe. The Spurt of Blood has become both a tragic love story and a brief history of modern love, narrated in hallucinatory images that emerge from one another, as in a dream. [showhide type=»visibility» hidden=»yes» more_text=»Click here to read critics from the Norwegian newspapers» less_text=»Hide this content»]
Disturbing dreamscapes make up a fierce short story (…) dark and misty, like the anxiety Artaud himself must have experienced. With the help of movement, sound, light, songs and music, tableaus evolve around the themes of falsehood and reality, dread and denial, love and cruelty, life and death.
The Spurt of Blood both irritates and fascinates with its jagged idiom and its direct narrative style. And Artaud is not easily captured. But the gravity of his theories and texts concerning the relationship between darkness and light, greed and innocence, devotion and loathing, death and being –
it all comes assertively across in this production.
Elisabeth Rygg, Aftenposten
Challenging, stringent avant chamber play. An experiment in visual dramaturgy and repetition rituals; an exploration of emotions in a dark, open space. The progression is slow, the effect mesmerising. The dreamlike quality of the tableaus is strong, and actors attend to their roles with intensity. Lars Øyno
possesses a remarkable, visual theatrical gift.A visit to Grusomhetens Teater is each time an encounter with something entirely unique in Norwegian theatre. This production manifests a further exploration of their idiom.
Andreas Wiese, Dagbladet
A powerful dramatic performance satiated with expressiveness (…) comes rarely close to the French theatre legend Antonin Artaud. Øyno and the ensemble use all available space and speak in gestures and voices that result in strong visual statements and poignant scenes.
Jørgen Alnæs, Dagsavisen
There is something captivating about the monotonous and desperate brutality that the characters act out against each other on stage. In spite of endless repetitions, I am eagerly present and, to my bewilderment, responsible for the fact that this massive darkness and cruelty neither distresses nor
alarms me.
IdaLou Larsen, scenekunst.no
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