The Calendar of the Heart

In Passage Nord's catalogue the following is written about Calendar of the heart:

"Six young actors, three men and three women, all employed at Oslo Nye Teater (Oslo New Theatre), chose Kjetil Skøien as director. The performance consists of thirty-one scenes, one for each day of a month. A date is torn of the calendar for each number.

The performance is filled with various elements; monologues, dance, performance numbers with objects, fragments from theatre texts, poetry, novels and not least, personal text by the actors which are the result of improvisations.

There are many themes, among them The Journey, the dream of meeting someone if one travels, but also comments on the theatre, on the actor's role, such as when scenes from Georg Büchner's Leonce and Lena are played in a melodramatic way, where the actors hold classical costumes in front of their clothes of today, and all the roles alternate, men are women and vice versa, everyone plays every role. Scenes from Thomas Bernhard's Simply Complicated are rewritten to be about Ophelia and are played with a wagon filled with candles in glass jars.

All the arrangements are choreographed and in some of the scenes the actors are dancers. Personal monologues about a grandmother who resemble oneself, or about a father who lived abroad and was only present through his postcards, or an ironic commentary to the longed-for roles Hamlet and Ophelia, where, for example, one of the men interviews three Ophelias, each of whom has a different idea of who she is and what sort of relationship she has with Hamlet.

The actors are 'thrown' in and out of a number of situations. It is about young people in transit. A place where people are in the process of change, where they are waiting to take the next step and are therefore open to chance meetings which may perhaps be fateful. They are preparing for a journey, but are at the same time ready to take quite another step than the one planned, for example, go over to the beautiful woman in the corner and ask her if she would like to go with you to Venice.

One place of transit is the railway station waiting-room. There are also those who go there with no intention of travelling, with the dream that today, at last, he will arrive with the train, or he will depart with it and take you with him. This situation is expressed in texts by Michel Butor, among other things.

The actors pour out different feelings and expressions, but not as roles in a play, always as a person in a theatre language. Often the actions and the texts do not tell why things happen or why people react and act as they do, but what they do and the way in which they do it is enough in itself. An action does not necessarily have to lead to reaction.

The actors are merely present, physical, simple and direct. The actors experience a number of situations. They are 'Everyman'. The performance is like looking into the head of one who is dreaming. Something lies hidden beneath the surface which can give a feeling of unpleasantness, in a dream one can jump from one place, one image, to a completely different one."

Sources:

Catalogue, PASSAGE NORD 1986-1996. Kjetil Skøien, performance, installation. Donated by: Kjetil Skøien, May 2010. Translation: Ruth Waaler.

Oslo Nye Teater's repertoire database, imported October 7 2011