Tore Vagn Lid

Tore Vagn Lid defended his thesis in Giessen on 12 February 2010 and received the grade/designation Summa Cum Laude, the highest possible grade/distinction within the German university system.

Tore Vagn Lid also is cand.phl with emphasis on dramaturgy/musical dramaturgy, aesthetics and music from Norway and Germany. He has several prize-awarded productions behind him, including Operation Almenrausch (Agder Theatre/Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra) awarded the Norwegian theatre award The Hedda Award in the category of best theatre event of the year 2009, Man Equals Man (Transiteatret-Bergen/Rogaland Theatre), awarded with the Hedda Award for best theatre project in 2008, plus the visual audio play Polyphonia.

Tore Vagn Lid also stood behind the Nordic premiere of Brecht/Eisler's The Measures Taken during The Bergen International Festival 2007. With this production he was invited to participate in the Junge Regisseure program during the Salzburg Festival 2008, Austria.

Tore Vagn Lid's works have received the jubilee award from Performing Arts Hub Norway (2007), the award Bergensprisen from the newspaper Natt & Dag (2001, 2006, 2007) and he has been allocated the government work grant for directors (Statens Kunstnerstipend) and the bank Sparebank 1 Vest's artistic grant for 2006.

Lid has been artistic director for tt-b since the foundation in 2001. The company has received several awards.

When Tore Vagn Lid and Operation Almenrausch won the Hedda Award in 2009, the Hedda Jury reasoned as follows:

"This category announces a performance that is an event outside of the ordinary! This goes for the winner of the year to a high degree. The original stage concept goes far in breaking down the divide between spectators and performers, technically advanced effects, not immediately connected to the theatre, are used exactly to fortify and develop the theatre as an art form, while the true story being told brings important, well-documented knowledge about a forgotten episode from our near past, while placing important ethical dilemmas in front of the spectator. The production awakens enthusiasm because it succeeds in confounding our notions of what theatre is to be.

The event of the year is Tore Vagn Lid's Operation Almenrausch."

Man Equals Man by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Tore Vagn Lid, produced by Rogaland Theatre in collaboration with Transiteatret, won The Hedda Award 2008 in the category of theatre project of the year.

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason:

"The production of the year, obviously, is to be of high artistic quality. But the project is also to be an event in its own effect. It is to be of current interest, and to be expressed originally. The production of the year satisfies all these demands, and the director has managed to unite the classic professionalism of the theatre institutions with the independent companies' modernity and innovation.

The result is a virtuoso stage game in which an exuberantly comical sound image, an imagination-triggering installation, excellent use of video and powerful acting join forces in shaking to pieces the classic theatre's illusion of reality.

The theatre project of the year is Man Equals Man, a collaboration project between Rogaland Theatre and Transiteatret, directed by Tore Vagn Lid."

Transiteatret's Polyphonia, written and directed by Tore Vagn Lid, was nominated for The Hedda Award 2008 in the category of best production for children and youth. In 2013 his Kill them all!, which was performed at The National Theatre, was nominated for The Hedda Award in the production of the year category.

Tore Vagn Lid also was given The Norwegian Critics' Award 2012/2013 for Kill them all!.

In her speech during the award ceremony Anette Therese Pedersen said the following, among other things, on behalf of The Norwegian Critics' Association:

"The production, opening at The National Theatre in February, is a rare example of how the theatrical space may function as an arena for reflection and discussion, without compromising with artistic quality.

(...)

The statistics over the unemployed and the homeless, and not least, the suicide statistics, are given faces and voices. But they also represent larger groups, and this way the production treats themes such as the lack of power and a social crisis, intellectually and emotionally, pointing forward and backwards in time. Through extraordinary sharp precision the performance keeps its clarity as well as its complexity, balancing empathy and distance, so that the spectator holds onto deep concentration from the start until the end."

The complete speech (in Norwegian only) can be read at the webpage of Norwegian Critics' Association.

Tore Vagn Lid received The Hedda Award 2016 in the best direction category for Our Power/Our Glory (The National Stage 2016). With Cecilie Løveid, he the award in the best stage text category for the same production the same year.

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason for the direction award:

"This year's direction winner is a balance artist, with the ability to combine stylistic effects and formal elements from different planes of action and time epochs in one collective, coherent and complex expression, rich in information. He has proven a strong will to discuss complicated, many-sided issues in his production, and he does this again this year. This year's winner likes to call himself an auteur, and the term is apt. His theatre has character of gesamtkunstwerk, with a very conscious relationship to the source material as well as to the effects to express it through."

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason for the stage text award:

"A classic play is a small world in itself, with its own language, its conventions and not least, the playwright's biography as a backdrop. This year's award goes to a unique collaboration project which uncomprimised and bravely contextualise the work of one of our greats. Through expansive research mixed with poetry and politics, they write up the story of his life, work and contemporary controversy. This way, they create new political theatre and not least, new art."

Tore Vagn Lid wrote and directed U-dub - Exercises in the art of surviving a state of emergency for Transiteatret in collaboration with Dramatikkens hus and Prosjektprogram for kunstnerisk utvikling (Oslo National Academy of the Arts). The production, which premiered in 2016, was nominated for The Hedda Award 2017 in the best production for youth category.

He made the concept for, composed the music for, and directed 03:08:38 - States of Emergency for Transiteatret in 2019. The production was nominated for The Hedda Award 2020 in the production of the year category. The team behind it won the award in the best audiovisual design category. The award went to Tore Vagn Lid for the audiovisual design, composition and music, Anders Elsrud Hultgreen (camera), Øystein Nesheim, Arvid Pettersen, Fredrik Rysjedal and Tor Christian Bleikli (light) for the visual effects film, drawing and light, Mathias Grønsdal for the sound and Terje Isungset and Per Jørgensen for the music. Tore Vagn Lid won The Hedda Award 2020 in the special artistic achievement category.

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason for the special artistic achievement award to Tore Vagn Lid:

"With this year's award, the jury wants to honour an artist for his distinct performing arts project, realised with consequence in a form developed into what one must almost call a personal genre. With inspiration from one of the twentieth century's great playwrights, among others, and with a particular emphasis on the theatre's auditive potential, the award winner has combined artistic innovation and political engagement, as is clearly documented in this season's prominent work: 03:08:38, a stage and auditive examination of the three hours when the political terror came to Norway.

The special artistic achievement award this year goes to Tore Vagn Lid for the artistic direction of the project 03:08.38 - States of Emergency - Transiteatret-Bergen in collaboration with Det Vestnorske Teateret and Vega Scene."

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason for the best audiovisual design award:

"The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011."

SOURCES:

Tore Vagn Lid/Transiteatret-Bergen

The Hedda Award

Norwegian Critics' Association, www.kritikerlaget.no, 13.11.2013: http://www.kritikerlaget.no/nor/pages/852-teaterkritikerprisen_20122013

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 12.06.2016, http://heddaprisen.no/pub/heddaprisen/main/?aid=1465

The Hedda Award, www.heddaprisen.no, https://www.heddaprisen.no/nominerte/2017

The Hedda Award, www.heddaprisen.no, 16.07.20, https://www.heddaprisen.no/nominerte/2020

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

Doctor at Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany.

Cand.phil. with emphasis on dramaturgy/musical dramaturgy, aesthetics and music from Norway and Germany.

• Tore Vagn Lid/Transiteatret Bergen - Auteur (from 2000 to )

• The Hedda Award 2020 - Special artistic achievement
• The Hedda Award 2020 - Best audiovisual design
• The Hedda Award 2016 - Best direction
• The Hedda Award 2016 - Best stage text
• Pernillestatuetten 2016 - Pernillestatuetten
• Norwegian Critics' Award 2012/2013 - Norwegian Critics' Award (theatre)
• Bergen kommunes kunstnerpris 2012 - Bergen kommunes kunstnerpris
• The Hedda Award 2009 - Theatre project of the year for Operation Almenrausch

• The Hedda Award 2020 - Best audiovisual design
• The Hedda Award 2016 - Best stage text
• The Hedda Award 2016 - Best direction
• Natt&Dag-prisen. Årets Beste 2015 - Natt&Dag-prisen. Årets Scenekunst Bergen
• Norwegian Critics' Award 2012/2013 - Norwegian Critics' Award (theatre)