Lament III

By Lars Øyno

‘Lament III’ had its premiere at Grusomhetens Teater (The Theatre of Cruelty) on the 8th of September 2022. 


With an already established foundation in two earlier productions based on the same themes and structure – a returning language, in a new version of ‘Lament’, with a company that’s grown from three to nine performers. 


“Lament” means complaint, and as such, the ensemble is part of the scene’s composition, its substance and essence – the women on stage express an existential sorrow, a cry – a reaction, or response to the general systematic violence that humanity is subject to today, yesterday and tomorrow. Human existence appears to be conditioned by war – and so women grieve, as men grieve, and as all life grieves in contact with this situation. It’s an existential grief, a cry from the Earth – the core of humanity’s existence, suppressed by civilisation. A mourning ritual activates a process of release; mourning in itself is a release. A cry releases freedom, helps freedom break through. 

‘Lament III’ works with a reduced appearance, a ‘poor theatre’ if familiar with the aesthetics of the Polish, Jerzy Grotowski. 

Aside from the increased ensemble, the piece is accompanied by the Canadian jazz musician Tristan Honsinge, who previously collaborated with Grusomhetens Teater on the production of ‘Proud Cloud’ in 2016. Already in the 1970s, Honsinger was recognised for his theatrical contributions, for example in Alexander Von Schlippenbachs Globe Unity Orchestra. 

Director’s Notes

‘Lament III’ is the third version of a production where women expose their reaction towards the world. It’s a concept where the driving force of action is the actor’s physical presence, gestures, change of pace and rhythm, dissonance and contrast within the room. Order is absent. Lament means sorrow, grievance, and as such these big concepts are underlying in creating the composition, in its content – the bodies’ presence is nuanced with an existential cry, a whine, a reaction to grief, or a retaliation to the general systematic violence that humanity is subject to today, yesterday and tomorrow. Human existence seems to be conditioned by war – and women grieve, as men grieve, as all life grieves in contact with this situation. But it’s not psychological, it’s all metaphysically tinted. All the performers are dressed in long, black dresses, perhaps resembling the black-clothed, mourning women in Afghanistan, who are in despair at the sudden loss of parents, sons or daughters in a war, in a tragedy. No decor, no set design – merely the empty space – and room, but the stage lights communicate with the play – and the women communicate with each other – not through realistic actions, but through the bodies’ absorption of impulses, of rhythms and counterrhythms from other members on the floor. Soon the play is low on the ground, soon along the walls, – as if the performers desire to escape the room, through the wall – out of this world. Suddenly, all is quiet, motionless – in long periods there’s nothing on stage, just an emptiness; silence over the waves – a nothingness that only consists of breath and rest. An actor starts a motion in the periphery, the rest of the ensemble gradually create an underlying rhythm, a physical theme which lasts, all whilst the first completes their solo project, whereafter she’s relieved by another actor and falls back in unison with the others in the underlying joint composition. At the start of the performance they’re operating  on the floor, before they pull themselves up along the walls, then, – before the spectator has even managed to register it, they’re located in a corner of the room submitted to a common motion. For a while we can observe this movement which gives associations to the famous wave by the Japanese artist, Hokusais, where a flimsy vessel can be seen on the back of the foaming masses of water. Then we hear sounds from the performers, indistinct sounds, like nature’s babble. Anarchy of voices, tones and vibrations; then a scream, a lonely, drawn out, persistent wailing, which is less than words and more than thunder. Songs, melodies and cries come, as from the four corners of the world, from a nothing, which is everything. They express the soul of the universe. It’s the injury which screams, the deformed. Everything rises and sinks, gathers and transitions into a whisper. And this scream of nature is also silent, as if without its habitual power. It’s an internal scream, an inner wail which pierces; – through the material, through the bodies in the room, and which causes the spectator to momentarily feel vacant, although the stage is filled with physical presence. A head promptly falls forwards, but is caught in the downward movement, simultaneously the direction changes, and a new path opens for both actor and composition. “I’m falling, I’m falling, but I’m not afraid” the play’s new direction seems to say. 

In the show’s last tableau a shadow is revealed behind the actor, arising from the repeated and monotonous scenic composition here at the end. This shadow is the real actor; life itself, from which the fixed theatre on the ground is just a reflection. And now a type of backwards dance appears, where the nine women are more and more erased, in favour of another reality which the new regressive image reveals. 

Reviews & Commentary

“It is an experience that sits in the body like a melancholic manifestation of the times we live in, here and now, and Grusomhetens Teater serves as a dissenting voice in a society centred around comfort.”

“They act as one, a community that breathes, hisses, a living organism that does not scream  or howl, but is almost hyperventilating out loud from exhaustion, anxiety and crying spells. They gather in lumps, confused, terrified, as if existence itself is at stake.”

• Dagsavisen