Human to Human

Krysia Bednarek: On the website of your Grenland Friteater it is stated that you want to make theatre that ‘communicates across linguistic and cultural boundaries and it’s so strong that it is not broken by the random changes of trend’. How do you apply this statement in your work?

Lars Vik: First of all, it’s important to remember that this theatre is run by artists. Not by the administrative part, not by the financial department, not by some kind of boss at the top. We are five artists, we own and run the theatre together. Since we are all directors and performers and want to do our own projects, it means that our programme must be built around a number of very different productions. From small touring children’s shows and solo pieces to large-scale outdoor spectacles. Another very important thing is that we are outside Norway’s so-called cultural centres like Oslo or Bergen. It’s easier to concentrate on your work here and develop shows that are less affected by the latest trends.

Geddy Aniksdal: We will have our 50th anniversary next year, and I think that over the years we have made some important, fruitful mistakes. We’ve been striving, fighting and working to find a constructive way of being an artistic collective, and we have found a way to specialize in particular areas. Some of us work mostly with huge outdoor shows, some are going on smaller walking expeditions with the audience, some have specialized in directing solo pieces for women or in working with former drug users, ex-offenders, former psychiatric patients. I belong to a network of women artists, the Magdalena Project, with which we travel worldwide. We engage in a broad scope of activities.

KB: Could you elaborate a little more on those ‘fruitful mistakes’ you’ve made through the years?

GA: I can tell you about something that happened before I joined the group (I joined five years after it had been established). This French circus-company was invited to come and play for children. As it turned out, their show was not children-friendly at all: a school teacher was asked to come on stage and walk like a dog, and the actors had whips and a big case of rats that they opened up. There were fireworks and harsh shouting, a very loud and intense performance. The next day we were on the front page of the local newspaper: ‘200 Children Ran Home Crying’. We learned a lot from that evening.

LV: Another example. We were doing a lot of hard physical exercises in the first years. Very brutal to the body, one could say. We thought this was the way to do it: If we wanted to make really good theatre, we had to do really hard physical and vocal training. We would start the day at seven in the morning with two hours of hard training. After some years one of the actors started to have back trouble. He couldn’t act anymore. We asked if he wanted to leave the company. He said he wanted to start organizing a festival. We had been visiting festivals in Italy, Spain, Poland, but we didn’t have that kind of festivals in Norway. Now, the Porsgrunn International Festival has been running for 30 years. It is the largest international theatre festival in Norway.

GA: We were once asked to host a show by a Croatian ensemble. In those years we didn’t have much of an audience, so we would invite people to come and see the shows. One of us invited the local vicar. It turned out that the whole floor the group was playing on was made of Bibles. More than that, there was a naked man on the swing in the middle of the stage. He was swinging back and forth with his sexual organ coming closer and closer to the priest. We were all holding our breath. The priest never came to our theatre again.

KB: Quite striking.

LV: For the priest too.

KB: Is your audience mostly local or from out of town?

LV: I would say local. We live and work in Porsgrunn, which is a medium-scale mostly industrial city. We meet our audience outside the theatre every day — at the shop and the pub, in the park when we go playing with our kids. That means we have a very direct connection with our audience. We get some kind of feedback all the time.

GA: Whether we want it or not.

LV: That can be quite important for a company. In the beginning, we functioned more like a laboratory, inspired by Grotowski’s work and by Odinteatret in Denmark. But later on, after more or less 20 years, our work took a new direction. We started to open up; to do outdoor productions in the city, tell local stories, include the locals in our productions, etc.

KB: Being so based in your town, do you do any kind of evaluations or programming with input from your audience?

LV: We don’t do that in formal ways because we meet them all the time. We don’t have to arrange special meetings and gatherings. If people want to hang around and talk with the actors or directors, they can do that before or after a show or over a beer.

KB: How do you share responsibilities within your collective?

GA: At the moment, Grenland Friteater has 14 people on the regular payroll. We have something we call daily administrative leader. Another person is taking care of the finances. Then there is the artistic director for the PIT Festival and another artistic director, for the smaller winter festival.

LV: When we are planning, we go like this: ‘What we gonna do next year? Who wants to make a big, expensive production? You want to do it, okay. But you did one last year. Can you wait? Because she wants to do her big project.’ We try to be flexible with each other. We have been friends for a long time, we know each other well, we try to give each other space.

GA: We shifted from one artistic director, one captain, to all of us being seconds-in-command, so there’re five captains or five seconds-in-command, however you want to call it.

KB: Is it possible for a director who’s not part of your theatre to come and direct a play?

LV: It has almost never happened. There are just too many directors in our collective. We hire freelance actors, scenographers, musicians and costume designers, but when it comes to directing, it’s usually one of us doing it.

KB: Circling back to the big festival you organize, the PIT Festival, why did you decide to set it in the town’s post-industrial spaces?

GA: Because in the beginning we didn’t have anything else. No cultural house, no big theatre, no concert hall, nothing.

LV: It was a kind of mistake on the part of the city that eventually turned out lucky for us, because then we found new sites and venues we could use. We collaborated with artists that worked outside theatre in different spaces to create site-specific art.

GA: The tradition was to come dressed in warm jackets and boots rather than suits and high heels. This made the entry level much lower and gave us a completely new audience. Porsgrunn is a working-class city, people like to dress less formally. Also when they go to arts events.

LV: In Norway, theatre has always been a bourgeois thing — the stage arts belonged to the bourgeoisie historically. Not in our town though — our audience is much more differentiated. We got this beautiful compliment once at the bar from a local hardworking guy. He was a bit drunk when he leant on my shoulder and said: ‘Theatre is a shitty, boring stuff, man!… but not when you do it.’ I guess he had experienced something that connected with him.

KB: Are your festival audiences different from the regular ones?

GA: Out-of-town visitors constitute around 10% of the audience.

KB: And how do you build the programme?

GA: We are not a repertory theatre. We create a programme for the whole year which includes our own main productions and shows we invite. Some of our smaller productions have been touring, at home and abroad, for many years.

LV: The summer festival is international, we invite lots of companies and artists from different countries. There are shows and happenings all over town, indoor and outdoor. Then we have the Winter Festival. We hold it every second year in February, hosting contemporary Scandinavian productions, interdisciplinary discussions and work in progress. It’s a rare opportunity for theatre people to meet and network.

KB: Is Norwegian independent theatre strongly networked?

GA: This has changed a lot over the years. When we became part of the network of independent companies in the early 80s, I knew all the other companies. And they were steady. Now artists get together to make and tour one production and then they split. There is a distinction between what we once called an independent theatre-company and today’s projects.

KB: Why do you think people don’t form permanent groups anymore?

LV: My theory goes like this: young people don’t want to work so hard for so long for so little. If you choose this kind of life, you will not get famous or rich, but maybe you will be happy.

GA: There is another side to it — it’s very difficult to get long-term funding nowadays. There’s a big fight for the money.

KB: How have you managed to stay together for such a long time?

GA: I think that we came to understand that we needed to change our course over the years and adopt new strategies. Again and again. We’ve managed to give each other artistic space and growth opportunities. Fortunately, we were wise enough to see that we were better as a collective.

LV: We’ve been quite good at striking a balance between freedom and solidarity. Without freedom it would be impossible for our company to exist for 49 years. But we’ve also been completely dependent on those working with us at any given time and feeling solidarity with the project called Grenlad Friteater.

GA: Most of us have had stints working with other companies or living in another country. That kind of experience changes the dynamic of a collective, usually in a good way.

KB: In what way can the state help independent groups in Norway?

LV: By giving them a working space, a cheap one. We have been based in abandoned churches, former factories, Salvations Army spaces, and so on. In the early years, we paid no rent at all, which was decisive in the beginning. Having your own working space 24/7 is vitally important.

GA: In the beginning, Grenland Friteater got no support from the state. Now we are funded by the state, the county and the municipality under the same agreement. We also earn money by performing, touring and teaching. We have a rather large turnover for an independent company.

KB: Did Norwegian grants enable you to network with European theatres?

GA: We’ve taken part in some interesting European arts projects, also through Erasmus, funded by the EU. We are deeply involved with the Magdalena Project, a dynamic network for women in contemporary theatre.

KB: Is fringe theatre in Norway more politically or storytelling oriented?

LV: When we started out in the late 70s, it was very political. Especially left-wing activists, who were writing protest songs, publishing underground magazines, doing agitprop theatre, and so on.

GA: Before I joined Grenland Friteater, I was in the Oslo-based street-theatre group the Cucumber Brigade, campaigning against the decisions of the Norwegian government. We used theatrical methods to get attention. But I remember that when I came to Grenland Friteater in 1981, you said that you were not political.

LV: Because the political theatre at the time was very left-wing oriented, very maoist and dogmatic. Very uninteresting, boring art was coming out of this.

GA: I do not agree that it was all boring, but at that time, I guess, it was important for Grenland Friteater to have a stronger focus on the skills of acting and the art of the actor.

LV: These days I find it kind of uplifting that young people use theatre when they need to grab attention. They often use old-fashioned theatrical methods when they demonstrate, block construction work, stop pollution, etc.

KB: What kind of theatre interests you right now?

LV: I have developed a laid-back attitude towards the field. It’s not very important for me to perform every week the whole year through. I still enjoy performing or directing, but I don’t have to be at work all the time. I like to join or develop smaller projects. Low-tech projects focused on meeting people, doing something together with the audience as opposed to presenting a finished result to them. Maybe you can call it work against the hierarchy of artistic power, searching for a rather flat structure.

GA: I am strongly connected to my dear Magdalena Project, where we meet and exchange and share. We also have an editorial board and I write a journal every now and then. Also, I have become very attached to a group of amateur theatre actors who are former drug-addicts or ex-criminals here in Porsgrunn. We make very personal shows that we share with audiences in all kinds of circumstances: in a church, at the market, in a prison. Work that is demanding and rewarding at the same time.

KB: What do you think the future holds for groups of young independent theatre artists?

GA: I cannot see any other option but to be optimistic. I’m not sure if the independent groups will flourish in the future, but the coming together for shorter or longer residential periods in spaces or venues that, for example, our theatre can offer is hopefully one good way forward.

LV: I’m also hopeful. With all the social media thing, we need theatre more than ever. We need to be together in the same room and to meet other humans face-to-face. This is a fundamental human need. I’ll finish with a quote from Meyerhold. We came across it when we started Grenland Friteater 50 years ago and it’s been with us ever since: ‘You must make people pay you well to do the theatre they want. But you must pay out of your own pocket to do the theatre you want.’

GA: It means that you have to do what you want, go for it. It will cost you, but maybe it’s worth something in a currency other than money.