New Danish Drama. Twenty-two playwrights. by Embassy of Denmark in the UK

New Danish Drama Twenty-two playwrights

WRIT TEN AND EDITED BY

Jesper Bergmann TRANSL ATION

Jonathan Sydenham PHOTO

Klaus Holsting (Portraits) DESIGN

NR2154 COVER PHOTO

Lars Horn (Concrete - Aalborg Teater) SUPPORTED BY

Danish Arts Foundation Committee for Literature Danish Arts Foundation Committee for Performing Arts Danish Arts Agency The Danish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild Embassy of Denmark, London THANKS TO

Danish Arts Foundation Committees for Literature and Performing Arts Danish Arts Agency Danish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild Nordiska Aps - International Performing Rights Agency Colombine Theatre Agency The Royal Danish Playhouse as a location for portraits Husets Teater Teater Får 302 Teater Grob Teater-V The Royal Danish Theatre Aalborg Teater Aarhus Teater Henrik Ohsten Rasmussen Christian Als Emmet Feigenberg Isak Hoffmeyer Lars Horn Miklos Szabo Jan Jul Natascha Thiara Rydvald Timm Vladimir PUBLISHED BY

Embassy of Denmark, London CONTACT

Lone Britt Christensen Embassy of Denmark 55 Sloane Street / London SW1X 9SR www.storbritannien.um.dk ISBN

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Contents Introduction by Jesper Bergmann

Peter Asmussen

Anna Bro

Joan Rang Christensen

Andreas Garfield

Kasper Hoff

Kirstine K. Høgsbro

Julie Maj Jakobsen

Erling Jepsen

Line Knutzon

Christian Lollike

Tomas Lagermand Lundme

Line Mørkeby

Thomas Markmann

Nielsen

Vivian Nielsen

Aleksa Okanovic

Jokum Rohde

Astrid Saalbach

Lærke Sanderhoff

Thomas Vinterberg

Jakob Weis

Nikoline Werdelin

Selected Works

Support Schemes

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Introduction

This publication presents new writing for theatre from Denmark. New Danish drama is enjoying vigorous growth and has been doing so for many years now; the twenty-two playwrights and thirty plays discussed here could have included many more. Artistically, those selected range widely, embracing many styles, genres and themes. The family is a central arena, and issues relating to gender, love and identity often put in an appearance. Readers will find powerful portraits of women as well as the odd damaged man. The middle-class dream of frictionless happiness is to be found as well, depicted but only to be undermined, and the selection also features social realism in the traditional sense. Finally, there are also plays with a political handle on the new global and multicultural reality.

The overall picture is a mosaic, but nevertheless many readers will pick up the particular scent of Denmark or Scandinavia, known from television series such as The Killing, Borgen, The Legacy, and 1864, or the joint Danish-Swedish venture, The Bridge. New Danish drama is manifestly rooted in the same soil as these television series. Readers will find it easy to identify a common denominator in Scandinavian psychological drama that may be traced back to Ibsen and Strindberg, where the power struggle within families or between partners sometimes fills the dramatic horizon. They will remark on an approach to character that does not shy away from the least monetisable emotions in our modern, success-oriented world: depression, deeply-ingrained guilt, and the everlasting angst to which Scandinavian actors seem particularly adept at lending body and voice. However, Denmark does play a role of its own in the Scandinavian theatre family because it is also a comedy country, where the core material shared by all the Scandi-

navian countries is injected with an element of black humour. Of course stereotypical descriptions of national characteristics must be invoked with caution, and indeed the present selection also includes works that do not match the usual conceptions. Danish drama also means The Shelter by Anna Bro, or The Sunfish by LĂŚrke Sanderhoff, both splendid contemporary examples of the kind of social realism that could almost have been Made in Britain. However, that certainly does not go for the television series The Legacy; as the The Guardian put it, If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re seeking a template for successful family reunions, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look to drama set in Denmark. This national stereotype also applies to Condolances by Erling Jepsen, in which the man being interred has been helped on his way out of life by the men of the village; they avenge the shame he brought upon the community when his incestuous relationship with his daughter came to the knowledge of the entire country. In the same article the

Guardian mentioned the long cultural shelf labelled: Wacky Scandinavian Families, and if any family deserves to be called wacky it is the one Aleksa Okanovic portrays in Modern Life. This family is not only wacky, but also exceeds all the limits of propriety in a way that goes far beyond mere sexual liberation. Although new Danish television drama and new Danish drama have evolved in parallel, there has been little direct contact between them. None of the twenty-two dramatists presented here has helped to develop the Danish television series. What we observe is separate cell systems with different writers and directors. At certain times the stage has been close to the radio drama milieu, and there is a slender connection to the film industry: playwright Peter Asmussen has written or co-written no fewer than eleven feature films, for example, and film director Thomas Vinterberg, celebrated for the film Festen, has also written a couple of plays with his co-writer Mogens Rukov. This publication presents Commune, their story of an alternative family community in the nineteen-seventies. As you would expect of a bouquet of Scandinavian plays, this selection also has its strong women: the woman in Pietà¸ the monologue by Astrid Saalbach, has a splendid business career behind her when she wakes up in a hotel room surrounded by empty bottles and with a handsome young man dead in bed beside her. The woman in A Taste of Happiness, the monologue by Kirstine K. Høgsbro, belongs to a younger generation struggling with modern middle-class expectations of a life of happiness, while Nikoline Werdelin reaches back to the eighteenth century to tell a vivid tale of female liberation in The Nightman’s Daughter. Modern man’s predicament takes centre stage in Helmer Hardcore by Jakob Weis, with its contemporary response to the question: What does Torvald Helmer do once Nora has slammed the door in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House? Modern love comes under scrutiny in Nobody Meets Anybody by Peter

Asmussen; it is hard to conceive of anything with a more Scandinavian chill to it, but this play is also a tragicomedy, and humour of a blacker hue would be hard to find anywhere. Middle-class lifestyles are a theme of several plays. In The Builders by Line Knutzon a couple are realizing their dream of a lovely house in the country, but the clumsiness and fraudulent intent of the cowboy builders sabotages everything. The respectable couple are forced to take steps, and by the time the curtain comes down they have become serial killers as well as the happy owners of the house of their dreams. In The Sauna Tomas Lagermand Lundme shows four successful, naked men and women putting their endurance and self-discipline to the test as the temperature approaches boiling point. In The Cruise by Vivian Nielsen, the hopes and dreams of a handful of people on a cruise ship off the coast of Ecuador are similarly tested. In Frankenstein Recreated, the work of playwright Kasper Hoff and composer Kenneth Thordal, boundless ambition and the dream of immortality induce a modern scientist to create the first artificial human being. Some of the plays portray society on the grand scale, such as Pinocchio’s Ashes by Jokum Rohde, a vivid tale of a country which burns books and where a judge opens the play with the line I love the smell of burning classics in the morning. In Concrete by Thomas Markmann, a rich portrait emerges of more than a century of life in an industrial town, while in Demon Julie Maj Jakobsen employs figures from classical Greek tragedy to depict a country ravaged by many years of war. Home Sweet Home by Andreas Garfield tells the realistic story of a soldier’s encounter with the studied idyll of suburban life in the home of his old friend from army college, and in The White Man – a complicated declaration of love, Joan Rang Christensen leads a discussion on racism, and the political engagement is obvious. Scandinavian playwrights are free to seek inspiration by looking westwards towards the

Anglo-Saxon world, or southwards towards Germany, home of an approach to the stage known as postdramatic. The Theatre of the Medium by Nielsen redefines the presence of the actor on stage as a medium for powers beyond his or her control as an allegory for the conditions of the individual in the globalised world. Work of Wonder by Christian Lollike approaches real life in a different way: four actors cannot agree on whether when shown on television 9/11 or famine in Africa comprises the greater work of art. In Bye Bye Yue Yue Line Mørkeby tells of a woman who bears the playwright’s own name as she struggles to embrace both the world and her own partner with love. This publication provides a snapshot of new Danish drama today. Nobody foresaw that The Killing would prove to be just the first of a number of Danish television drama successes; I hope that new Danish drama for the stage will prove just as attractive for a wider audience. In any case I should like to thank the twenty-two playwrights for agreeing to answer my questions, theatre agencies Nordiska and Colombine for their considerable assistance, and in particular the Danish Embassy in London, which came up with the idea of this publication and made it possible.

Jesper Bergmann CHIEF DRAMATURGE THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE 2008-15

IN T RO D U C T IO N

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Peter Asmussen

â&#x20AC;&#x153;He writes with an insistent earnestness but also displays a humour that is blacker than black.â&#x20AC;?

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Ingen møder nogen / Nobody Meets Anybody (2010) The opening scene is called An Ending. A man up a ladder is replacing a lightbulb. A woman is holding the ladder. He is talking about a subject that obviously matters to him: how can space stations become self-sufficient? He is particularly absorbed by the notion of vegetables floating around in weightless conditions as they grow. Suddenly he drops down dead. The woman screams. The closing scene of the play is called A Beginning and the situation is identical. A man repeats exactly the same words but this time he doesn’t die. He gets the bulb to work. However, this scene also ends with a woman screaming. Between the ending and the beginning, Nobody Meets Anybody presents a sequence of absurd, tragicomic images of a man and a woman: two people driven by longing for love and the urge to escape it. In each scene the bulb hanging from the ceiling plays a part. Sometimes it flickers. Sometimes it goes off when it is meant to go on. Making a relationship work with genuine, unreserved emotions and the light on is not easy. We see the man and the woman in five fundamental situations repeated with a wealth of variety and bearing apposite titles: Three Meetings, Three Waitings, Three Betrayals, Three Solitudes, and Two Closures. The dialogue

Several critics refer to inspiration from Pinter and Beckett, but they also note Peter Asmussen’s own, completely personal tone. His dramatizations include The Story of O by Pauline Réage, and a seven-hour version of the novels of The Gregersen Saga by Christian Kampmann. First and foremost he has created original stories and characters telling in taut, minimalist form of great passions, strong feelings, and sometimes physical or emotional violence. His characters seldom come with a backstory as such; they are simply present in the room here and now in dense, tension-filled relation to their fellows. His dialogue is minimalist and stark, a stylised everyday language employing a few metaphors laden with meaning. The theatrical space around the characters is usually defined by just a handful of elements – sometimes only one – like the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in his couplehood drama Nobody Meets Anyone. Peter Asmussen writes with an insistent earnestness but also displays a humour that is blacker than black.

often consists of rapid exchanges that are rhythmical in the way of a well-written piece of music. But we also look on as the man and woman hold each other and speak extensively of weightless vegetables in great detail. Nobody Meets Anybody is reminiscent of the theatre of the absurd fifty or sixty years ago, but the picture it paints of love and couplehood is modern to the extreme and very, very funny. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, POLAND, FAROE ISLANDS ACTORS: 1 FEMALE, 1 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: THE AGENCY, NICK QUINN, +44 (0)20 7727 1346, INFO@THEAGENCY.CO.UK

Soli Deo Gloria (2015) The three Latin words of the title mean Glory to God Alone and are a central tenet of the theology of the Evangelical church. However, the play cannot be regarded as Christian (whatever that might mean in modern drama), though it addresses themes such as suffering, pain and deliverance familiar from Christian theology, and the twelve scenes of the play tell serious, sometimes blackly humorous tales of human life viewed from the perspective of death. Soli Deo Gloria may also be a reference to Johann Sebastian Bach, who often wrote the abbreviation SDG on his scores. Playwright Peter Asmussen also refers to music in the

subtitle of the piece, Drama in twelve cantatas, and he calls the short texts that begin and end most scenes Chorales. These musical references do not mean that Soli Deo Gloria is music theatre; but the play does possess a stringently orchestrated form reminiscent of contemporary classical music. Each of the twelve scenes contains a standalone story on the lines of a tale of destiny. Several of them cover several decades or indeed entire lifespans. We meet, for example, a woman who insists on speaking of hope and the good in people as the reason she survived Auschwitz: then we relive the scene on the ramp when she was fifteen and the SS officer had already sent her parents to their deaths, but chose her to give him the love for which he suddenly yearned. The final scene is an apocalyptic vision riddled with black humour. A grumpy owl is fed up with the singing of the blackbird. The blackbird tells him People love my song. They listen to it and it makes them happy. Maybe it’ll make you happy, too? But the owl laughs at him; the humans have Gone. They’re kaput. Shot. Burnt. Exploded. As the owl sees it, there is peace at last! Soli Deo Gloria will open in Copenhagen in Autumn 2015. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 2 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: THE AGENCY, NICK QUINN, +44 (0)20 7727 1346, INFO@THEAGENCY.CO.UK

PE T E R A S M U S S E N

(B. 1957) THE LIST OF DRAMATIC WORKS BY PETER ASMUSSEN IS EXCEPTIONALLY LONG: FOUR OPERA LIBRET TI, SEVEN TELEVISION DRAMAS, SIX RADIO DRAMAS AND TWENT YONE STAGE PL AYS, WHICH HAVE BEEN PERFORMED IN THEATRES FROM SOUTH AMERICA TO FRANCE. IN ADDITION, WRITER OR CO-WRITER OF ELEVEN FEATURE FILMS, INCLUDING L ARS VON TRIER’S BREAKING THE WAVES.

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The Shelter LYKKE SAND MICHELSEN AND ANDREAS BERG NIELSEN IN THE SHELTER BY ANNA BRO / DIRECTED BY MOQI SIMON TROLIN / SET DESIGN BY IDA MARIE ELLEKILDE / HUSETS TEATER 2013 / PHOTO: HENRIK OHSTEN RASMUSSEN

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Anna Bro

â&#x20AC;&#x153;She is fascinated by specific locations and details. Her writing is imbued with compassionate social and human commitment.â&#x20AC;?

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Varmestuen/The Shelter (2013) Seventy-two fishing boats worked out of the harbour in its heyday and Connie’s Shelter used to be packed with fishermen who netted good catches and turned up with banknotes poking out of their pockets. Now the last fishing boat has been chocked up, but Connie and her Shelter are still an oasis for thirsty souls and fishermen who last set out to sea long ago. The Shelter is a slice of social realism full of humour and tragic depth. We meet Sven, once a fisherman but now a landlubber. He’s happy to sing a song or two but he’s never kissed a girl. Frank has, but he has also had surgery on his larynx and does not expect to make it through to Christmas. He breaks up with his girlfriend, Pia, who has always been ready for another round but whose children are waiting for her at home. Sixty-four-yearold Skipper used to be a fisherman but now he works at The Shelter, which his girlfriend Connie bought for a pittance back in the day. A young girl, Seba, wanders in with her boyfriend, who tries to persuade her to become a drug-dealer in Goa. Instead she takes a job at The Shelter and it becomes her new home. It opens at five in the morning, and Connie is the landlady who embraces each and everyone with great affection come what may. Then she has a stroke and the regulars find themselves rattling the door handle outside.

Immediately upon graduation Anna Bro wrote Forstad/Suburb with Martin Lyngbo. The production, which won a Reumert award, was a tremendous success for the little Mungo Park company north of Copenhagen and made her name. Bro took part in the 2006-7 TurboTown project run by the Royal Danish Theatre and her work has been in demand ever since. Her writing is imbued with compassionate social and human commitment, resulting in galleries of vivid characters and the lives they lead. In Sandholm (2006) she took as her starting point the Danish refugee camp that lent its name to the play. I don’t suppose I’ll ever write about ‘man and woman in an empty room’, she says, because the tangible is what fascinates me. I like writing about specific locations or worlds. However, her specific worlds can also be virtual, as in The Dark Web.

The Shelter is set in the month before Christmas and as is customary for any Christmas tale it ends with a glimmer of hope for its characters. Hope notwithstanding, the play never descends into just feel-good drama, as one critic put it. Although social realism is not at a premium in Danish theatre today, critics and audiences alike were delighted by their encounter with The Shelter’s tragic yet good-humoured universe. The play garnered the 2014 Reumert award for Dramatist of the Year for Anna Bro. ACTORS: 3 FEMALES, 4 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: COLOMBINE THEATRE AGENCY, +46 (0)8 411 70 85, INFO@COLOMBINE.SE

Det mørke net/The DarkNet (2015) There is the world wide web. There is also the deep web. A Google search will never let you into its depths because access requires codes and passwords. Corporate LANS and online banking are part of it. And then there is the DarkNet, where the encryption is massively advanced and special software may be required. It is the marketplace for drugs, arms and child pornography, and many services are available. One day there is a knock on Alice’s door. A man from Police Intelligence introduces himself. The police have learnt that an assassination has been booked via the DarkNet

and she is the victim. They do not know who commissioned the hit. They hope to find him by acting as if the killing has taken place. The policeman has brought a bag of theatrical make-up. He tells Alice to lie on the floor while she is bloodied up and has her photo taken. Alice is deeply into the world she can explore via her computer. When she gets off work she enters into the fantasy world of the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) where she has been evolving her character for three years. In the fantasy world she meets a man whose real name is Kasper and who lives with his mum. He dropped out of college when he started making big bucks on the web. Known online as Horror Pirate he is active on the DarkNet, where he has created Military Road: The biggest portal in the world to everything society’s would-be masters try to stop us from getting our hands on. Meanwhile Alice’s brother, who is mentally ill, has discovered a secret community where people live perfectly authentic lives behind a giant shield of magnetic waves that blocks any electronic communication. The DarkNet is a fantasy for anyone who has wandered into a virtual world that feels bigger, more beautiful and more exciting than everyday life. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 2 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: COLOMBINE THEATRE AGENCY, +46 (0)8 411 70 85, INFO@COLOMBINE.SE

A NN A B RO

(B. 1980) GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2004, RAPIDLY BECOMING ONE OF THE LEADING DRAMATISTS OF HER GENERATION. SHE WON THE 2014 REUMERT FOR DRAMATIST OF THE YEAR.

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J OA N R A NG C HRIS T E NS E N

Joan Rang Christensen (B. 1976) GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2004. MORE THAN THIRT Y OF HER RADIO DRAMAS AND STAGE PL AYS HAVE BEEN PRODUCED AND SHE IS AN ACTIVE SOCIAL COMMENTATOR IN THE MEDIA.

Den hvide mand – En kompliceret kærlighedserklæring / The White Man – a complicated declaration of love (2011) The writer of this play noted that The White Man was the first production in Denmark with a full coloured cast. Its actors helped to develop the playtext at workshops, and its express purpose was to reverse the camera. Whereas many Danish theatres have made serious efforts to address the country’s new ethnic diversity by putting immigrants and refugees onstage, Joan Rang Christensen and the company wanted to look in the opposite direction. The White Man is intended as a critique of the way the populist, national-

A considerable proportion of Joan Rang Christensen’s dramatic oeuvre has been written for radio, and some of her radio dramas have been produced in Germany and Norway. In 2013 her ten-part political drama Outside the Castle was broadcast by BBC Radio 4. Her work for the stage includes 69 – En Rockteaterkoncert in collaboration with Jesper B. Karlsen, which won the 2009 Best Musical Theatre award. From 2009 to 2012 she served as artistic director and co-founder of Theatre Danskdansk with the aim of reflecting the ethnic diversity of Denmark today. She is now artistic director of Johns Theatre, which she started in 2013. The company produces stage shows, satirical videos, etc. Rang Christensen also writes for newspapers, magazines and webzines on racism and adoption. She was born in Korea, and is a co-founder of the Adoptionpolitisk Forum society. Her political commitment is apparent in plays like Hånden i hjertet / The Hand in the Heart (2008) about the Korean War, and The White Man – a complicated love story.

ist-hued public debate stigmatizes immigrants and refugees. The play opens with a joint declaration of love by the cast: It is important to me to say that I love the White Man. I am saying so now so that everybody knows it, and nobody will be in any doubt later on. I LOVE THE WHITE MAN/ He is my father/He is my brother/I am married to him/He is my son. The play is an examination of that very white man’s racism, professed, concealed, and subconscious. The six actors address the usual but dubious image of Denmark as a country that was ethnically homogenous until the flood of guest workers appeared in the nineteen-sixties. In one scene they measure each other’s skulls to test century-old theories that race, intelli-

gence and the proportions of the cranium are linked. They talk about their personal encounters with quotidian racism in Denmark, and their bewilderment at the sight of merry young whites dancing about with their fists in the air singing I’m black and I’m proud. They describe this as the racist freedom of the white man to imitate the role of the oppressed black. The play and its production make a humorous but sharply polemical statement. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 3 MALE (FLEXIBLE) FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: JOAN RANG CHRISTENSEN JOAN.RANG@GMAIL.COM

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(B. 1976) DEBUTED AS A DRAMATIST IN 2000. HE ENROLLED AT THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING FOUR YEARS L ATER, GRADUATING IN 2007 AND MAKING HIS BREAKTHROUGH THAT SAME YEAR WITH HOME SWEET HOME.

Home Sweet Home is about a Danish soldier who returns home from the war in Iraq. The play was a commission. Andreas Garfield belongs to a generation of dramatists who have had to adjust to a cultural climate in which many theatres commission works on predetermined subjects. Garfield says If a theatre wants a dainty comedy, a farce or a musical I am not their first choice, but I am on the shortlist when they commission plays on more serious subjects. If a theatre specifies a subject, he is happy to provide realistic, character-driven plays with edgy plots and well-honed dialogue: Garfield has written about soccer hooligans and Danish men from the far north of the country who marry women from Thailand, for example. However, his work also includes The Glass House, a youth play performed to date in Denmark, Canada and Norway, and he also develops his own projects. In 2015 he received a Reumert nomination for the Dramatist of the Year award for The Elephant Man.

Hjem kære hjem / Home Sweet Home (2007) Home Sweet Home was written for Teater Grob, a Copenhagen company with a repertoire of realistic new research-based plays. It describes the encounter between a Danish soldier home from the front and Danish everyday life. It premiered a few months after Danish forces pulled out of Iraq. Kim and Iben have just moved into a house in a middle-class Copenhagen suburb. Kim’s friend Carsten, just back from Iraq, is coming for the evening. Kim is an ex-serviceman and attended military academy with Carsten but now he works in IT. When he met Iben

Kim lied to her that he had served in Kosovo on a NATO mission. He is looking forward to seeing his friend again, and he is full of memories of the days when he and Carsten were young and he had not yet met Iben. Iben is unable to conceal her opposition to the war in Iraq and would rather have waited until all the boxes were unpacked before asking anyone over. The doorbell rings and the encounter between the homecoming soldier and the married couple is awkward from the word go. Home Sweet Home is the story of the clash between cotton-wool-padded life in everyday Denmark and a soldier’s awful experiences; of the soldier’s discomfort at this picture

A NDRE A S G A RFIE LD

Andreas Garfield

of suburban idyll and of the preconceptions held by two ordinary Danes about the war. Iben tries to understand Carsten but she regards war as an insane man’s game, whereas Kim has always admired Carsten and wants to renew their camaraderie. Carsten has a need to talk about soldiers who have returned from the war and performed acts of violence. He himself has changed too. Andreas Garfield received a Reumert talent award for the play. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, SWEDEN, NORWAY, NEW YORK ACTORS: 1 FEMALE, 2 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

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K A S PE R HO FF

Kasper Hoff (B. 1972) GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2001 AFTER HAVING PREVIOUSLY GAINED A SOCIAL SCIENCE DEGREE. HE WRITES AND TRANSL ATES PL AYS, RADIO DRAMAS AND CHILDREN’S BOOKS.

Frankenstein Genskabt / Frankenstein Recreated (2013) Victor Frankenstein’s life and career have not lived up to the dreams he entertained when he was one of the university’s young lions. But the Fallen Angel, the production’s singing narrator, tempts him with promises of world fame and eternal life. Mary Shelley’s classic tale is translated into the present day with added rock music and a Mephisto determined to defy God by giving man immortality. The play premiered at the Royal Danish Theatre in 2013 and received its second production at a major Swedish theatre in autumn 2015.

Only two years after graduating from the Playwriting School Kasper Hoff won the prestigious Prix Italia for his radio drama Brazil. He is a prolific writer; in addition to eight radio dramas, he has written some fifteen stage plays and eighteen children’s books. His superb feel for language has also resulted in commissions for translations for major shows, including My Fair Lady and Cabaret. Realism bores him and he says I don’t regard any one art form or genre as superior to the others. He is a Tarantino fan and draws inspiration from comics artists like Hugo Pratt, Enki Bilal and Francois Bourgeon, as well as Zygmunt Bauman’s theories on postmodernity. I am convinced that ‘the truth’ and ‘reality’ are social constructions that are always subject to negotiation, he says, and applies this philosophical argument to the theatre: Psychological realism is just as much based on conventions as Noir or folk tales. Kasper Hoff writes original plots with imaginative twists. He doesn’t eschew vulgarity, but always employs it with serious intent.

Not even Albert, his assistant and only friend, can banish Frankenstein’s suicidal thoughts. Then The Fallen Angel sends Elena onstage and everything changes. She is young, beautiful, and although she comes from the far reaches of Russia, Frankenstein has always been her idol. She has a plan that will immortalize his name: he is to create the first artificial human. Her uncle happens to have a castle in town with a fully equipped, state-of-the-art laboratory. Frankenstein is dazzled, but Albert is by no means thrilled. The conflict between the two friends steps up, and one night Frankenstein finds Albert’s corpse dangling from a tree in the forest. The Fallen Angel is behind Albert’s death, but Frankenstein thinks his friend committed suicide, and now he is ready to create

an artificial human being. He wants his friend back, and he creates the Monster, who looks like Albert, but without his unassertive nature. On the contrary: the Monster is exceedingly ambitious and will not let anything get in his way, including Frankenstein. Meanwhile the Fallen Angel pulls the strings. Kasper Hoff wrote Frankenstein Recreated and Kenneth Thordal provided the music and lyrics. The songs are all sung by the Fallen Angel. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, SWEDEN ACTORS: 1 FEMALE, 5 MALE + A ROCK GROUP PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

Frankenstein Recreated DANICA CURCIC, JOHAN OLSEN AND NIKOL AJ KOPERNIKUS IN FRANKENSTEIN RECREATED BY K ASPER HOFF / DIRECTED BY HEINRICH CHRISTENSEN / SET DESIGN BY PALLE STEEN CHRISTENSEN / THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE 2013 / PHOTO: CHRISTIAN ALS

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(B. 1979) KIRSTINE K. HØGSBRO HAS WRIT TEN FOR SATIRICAL RADIO PROGRAMMES AND STAND-UP COMEDY SHOWS. SINCE HER DEBUT AS A DRAMATIST IN 2013 SHE HAS WRIT TEN THREE PL AYS AND IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A MODERNIZATION OF THE LYING-IN ROOM, THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DANISH CL ASSIC BY LUDVIG HOLBERG, FOR THE MAIN STAGE AT THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE.

On leaving school Kirstine K. Høgsbro became a dancer, studying modern dance at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London. She returned to Denmark, read psychology at university, and began to write satirical pieces. Her plays are about couples and her own generation’s hectic pursuit of happiness. Her academic background in psychology is apparent in a newspaper interview in which she discusses her basic themes: Modern human beings choose couplehood because we are so detached from everything that we seek recognition of the self. The love we find in a stable relationship is the kind of love that tells us most strongly that we are okay and actually belong in this world.

K IRS T INE H Ø GS B RO

Høgsbro is an acute, witty observer of contemporary life. For me humour arises when logic collapses. Things cease to make sense and so become funny, she says. She received a Talent award at the 2014 Reumert ceremony.

Kirstine K. Høgsbro Lugter det lidt af lykke? / A Taste of Happiness? (2013) A monologue delivered by a woman in her thirties fed up with the way people go on and on about being happy. Almost as fed up as she is with not being as happy as she would like to be. She sets off in pursuit of happiness in a form that combines the dramatic monologue with stand-up comedy. You know what it’s like when it suddenly hits you that being happy and enjoying life is compulsory? That pleasure and happiness are your civic duty? That if you say no to pleasure you are a freak? Know what it’s like when it suddenly hits you that there is an implicit imperative in the current bout

of creepy neoliberal capitalism that keeps going ENJOY? She spins the wheel of fortune. When it stops it points at notions such as friends, kids, career, health, money, spirituality … and love: Someone once told me that love was like a mass movement. But with just two people. It’s the best mass movement I’ve ever been in, honey. I’ve never ever had such an intense desire – like, on behalf of the movement – to expand, recruit, and move into bigger premises. Just get me – taking total responsibility for the growth of this mass movement, me who’s never taken responsibility for anything in her life! Know what? The next logical step if we’re really real about this? Houses, honey – shitloads of

houses: summerhouses, outhouses, Wendy houses, detached houses, houses in the Dordogne, you name it. And kids. The woman fantasizes about invading the streets with her myriads of children in the name of love, the movement, but especially happiness. A Taste of Happiness? is a young dramatist’s morbid, satirical take on contemporary society. ACTORS: 1 FEMALE FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: KIRSTINE K. HØGSBRO HOGSBRO@HOTMAIL.COM

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(B. 1982) GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2010. ONE OF THE LEADING YOUNG DANISH DRAMATISTS, NOMINATED AS DRAMATIST OF THE YEAR IN 2013 FOR HER YOUTH PL AY, FUCKING FATTIG / SO FUCKING POOR.

I consider myself to be a fairly classical dramatist. My plays aren’t particularly experimental. All that really interests me is the characters. Form and all the other stuff emerges from there. Julie Maj Jakobsen sometimes chooses familiar subjects as her starting point: in So Fucking Poor the financial crisis provides the backdrop for a story about Emma, a teenager whose mother has lost her job, and in Honningkagebyen / Gingerbread Town (2012) the plot involves the little town of Christiansfeld, famous for its gingerbread and its evangelical congregation. I want to expand our ability to perceive and experience real life the way it is: contrasting, astonishing, ugly, and wonderfully beautiful. This does not mean she aims for realism: Realism has nothing to do with real life. In two plays she looks to material from antiquity in order to address modern themes: in Oedipus of Crete (2012) we meet the deposed king, now a single dad. In Demon she examines the traces war leaves in people long after it has ended.

Daemon / Demon (2015) The cast list includes a number of celebrated figures from Ancient Greece, familiar from Homer and the classical tragedies. They include Penelope and her son Telemachus waiting for the return of Odysseus, and Elektra and Orestes, who kill their mother, Clytemnestra to avenge the murder of their father, Agamemnon. We are among the victors a few years after the destruction of Troy. Society is still severely marked by the war. Demon is a largescale, ambitious retelling of ancient material in which war is a collective nightmare that has entered the blood, or indeed the genes,

of everyone affected. The play is the work of a young dramatist from a country that embarked on a militarist foreign policy only a few years ago, turning Denmark into an active partner in every war fought by the West since 2001. Paris carried Helene off to Troy, triggering the war. Was she abducted or was she a willing seducee, as many people believe? Now she is back with her husband, Menelaus, and the powerful Penelope leads those who chorus for her execution in order to purge them all of the shame of the war. Elektra’s pacifist attempts at a rebellion fail, and the logic of war and violence seems inexorable.

The plot embraces the times of the Ancient Greeks and the present day. Murder is done by knife or sword, not guns, but Telemachus writes a blog with 3400 likes an hour, enjoys McDonald’s, and refuses to obey his mother as she tries to keep him off the fast food. Demon’s original touch lies in its combination of the bitter, universal, modern power struggle waged by families and married couples and the portrait of a nation trapped in the shadows of war. ACTORS: 6 FEMALE, 4 MALE, 1 BOY PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

J U LIE M A J JA KO B S E N

Julie Maj Jakobsen

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Erling Jepsen

â&#x20AC;&#x153;A seductive narrator who delights in leading his unsuspecting audiences from a comfortable starting position to a point at which normality has long since fallen apart.â&#x20AC;?

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Med venlig deltagelse / Condolances (2007) Allan lives in Copenhagen. He is happily married and has a daughter. He is a writer who has written about his childhood in a village near the German border, far from the capital, where his father sexually abused Allan’s sister on the sofa in the living room. His father cut him off out and he has not been home for nine years. But now his father is dead and it is time for the funeral. Condolences is a stand-alone continuation of The Art of Crying, Erling Jepsen’s autobiographical novel that was turned into an international award-winning feature film. It is a psychological drama full of humour and tension while providing a comprehensive portrait of a village and its secrets. Allan sends a wreath accompanied by a card bearing the standard, impersonal courtesy message, ‘Condolences’. His mother is moved by this, and she gets in touch with her longlost son. Allan decides to go home, determined to settle family accounts. He discovers that his father collected newspaper cuttings about him and his writing career for many years. Allan is moved. It must mean that his father loved him after all. On the other hand, his mother seems rather too pleased to be rid of her husband, and the neighbours also appear to be delighted. Allan begins to suspect that his father may

Over the first two decades of Erling Jepsen’s career more than thirty of his works were produced for radio, television and the stage. He is a puckish storyteller who delights in leading his unsuspecting audiences from a comfortable starting position to a point at which normality has long since fallen apart. He is a seductive narrator with beautifully fashioned plots and precise dialogue. Around the millennium he began to write novels based on his own upbringing in a dysfunctional family in a country village. The Art of Crying (2002) enjoyed huge success with critics and readers alike, reinforced by an award-winning feature film; some of his subsequent novels have also been made into films, including Terribly Happy (film 2008). Nowadays he likes to work simultaneously on a novel and a play based on the same subject matter: this applies to Hovedløs sommer / Lost Heads and Med venlig deltagelse / Condolances. He continues to create stories solely for the stage also.

not have died a natural death, and uncovers evidence that seemingly incriminates his mother, the doctor, and the neighbours. But the clues all prove to be dead ends and Allan is finally convinced he has been imagining things. He returns to Copenhagen without learning how his father died. He never realizes how cruelly the local men exacted their revenge for the lasting shame Allan’s descriptions of his father’s incest brought upon the village. Condolances presents a wealth of great parts, particularly that of Allan’s mother, which was a huge triumph for Ghita Nørby, the grand old lady of the Danish stage, at its premiere by the Royal Danish Theatre in 2007. ACTORS: 5 FEMALE, 9 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

Hovedløs sommer / Lost Heads (2012) Twenty-four-year-old Emilie is at art school. Her parents attend the opening of her first exhibition and are shocked: one of Emilie’s collages of subjects from a summer ten years earlier shows her mother having sex in the bathroom with her young gardener. Another work depicts a carrier bag. In it, Emilie says, is the young man’s head. Her parents are indignant. They want to know just what Emilie is up to. Why is she talking about

blood, and why has she called her exhibition Parent-raising? The action takes us back to that summer, when Emilie’s parents underwent a trial separation: Her mother moves into an old house in the country with fourteen-year-old Emilie and her ten-year-old brother. Emilie is sure she will be bored without her friends from Copenhagen, but during a thunderstorm one evening Anders appears in the garden. He peers through the window. Emilie’s energetic mother grabs a baseball bat, runs outside and strikes him down. But her conscience troubles her and the young man’s explanation sounds innocent: he loves the house. He grew up there, and that is why he was peering through the window. Emilie’s mother allows him to spend the night, and then hires him to do the gardening. She and Emilie both fancy him. He reveals his secrets to Emilie, and shows her what he has secreted beneath the floorboards in the house and in concealed cavities in the garden. Emilie makes her sexual debut and is certain she has won the contest for Anders, but her mother sends him packing before going away on a wellness weekend with a girlfriend, and Anders reappears. Now the plot really takes off. Lost Heads is a mixture of psychological drama, horror, and comedy. ACTORS: 4 FEMALE, 4 MALE + 1 BOY PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

E RLING J E P S E N

(B. 1956) ERLING JEPSEN HAS ENJOYED TWO SUCCESSFUL CAREERS AS A WRITER. HIS RADIO DRAMA DEBUT CAME IN 1977 AT THE AGE OF TWENT Y-ONE. TWENT Y-FIVE YEARS LATER, HE WROTE A BESTSELLING NOVEL, AND HIS BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED IN 12 COUNTRIES.

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The Builders SOFIE GRÅBØL IN THE BUILDERS BY LINE KNUTZON / DIRECTED BY NIKOL AJ CEDERHOLM / SET DESIGN BY KIM WITZEL / THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE 2008 / PHOTO: ISAK HOFFMEYER

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(B. 1965) IN THE EARLY 1990’S LINE KNUTZON EARNED HER REPUTATION AS THE SUPREME PORTRAITIST OF HER GENERATION, BUT TODAY IT IS APPARENT THAT SHE IS MORE THAN JUST THAT. SHE IS A PROFOUNDLY ORIGINAL DRAMATIST WITH A NEO-ABSURDIST QUALIT Y OF HER VERY OWN.

Line Knutzon is genuinely funny and everyone knows it. Television personalities refer to her work as a benchmark for how funny something is. Her humour is not about one-liners: it runs deeper and Beckett is an obvious source of inspiration. She depicts human beings fundamentally uncertain of their own identities and place in the world, such as the young female lead of her debut play A Splinter in the Heart (1991), so ungrounded that she accepts the welfare state’s offer of a Closet Mom, a woman who steps out of the closet in the young woman’s flat but proves to be more self-centred than maternal. Knutzon’s dialogue is based on spoken language but the yearnings, pent-up anger and phobias of her characters break out to comic effect, exposing a sudden fundamental existential angst within them.

LINE K N U T ZO N

Line Knutzon’s plays have been staged frequently in Scandinavia as well as the rest of Europe and North America.

Først bliver man jo født / First You’re Born (1994)

20 We begin with a young man and a young woman on a park bench. They have to shout, because the birds are singing excessively loudly: Bimsy: Strange…Strange how the birds are singing Axel: Singing? Seems to me more like they’re screeching Bimsy: I didn’t know birds sang when it’s overcast. Axel: What did you say? Bimsy: I said: I didn’t know birds sang when it’s overcast. (pause) It’s not like last year. Axel: What? Bimsy: I said: it’s not like last year…when we met the sun was shining and everything was peaceful and serene…Maybe it won’t ever stop (bird song stops) Now it’s stopped! Today things on the bench are not like when they met and fell in love either. Axel tells Bimsy he wants to break up. And he does. Bimsy is distraught. A bashful young man tries to comfort her. He tells her how he sees life: Well, first you’re born. Thousands of threads become entangled in your life…unavoidable threads, that’s how it is. And when you grow up and meet other people, who also, each and everyone, have thousands of threads, then…if you get too close – the threads start to get tangled up. And these threads, they’re long. First You’re Born is about six young adults who are short of self-esteem and whose

entry into adult life is decidedly crooked. One of them recalls his childhood: When everything was hard, but crystal clear. Now everything is easy, but muddy. This charming existential comedy about six people who possess the clown’s easy descent into despair but equally easy access to hope and passionate dreams has a happy ending, and is a marvellous opportunity for six young actors. First You’re Born won a Reumert award in 1999. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, SWEDEN, NORWAY, ICEL AND, FINL AND, ROMANIA, FRANCE, ENGL AND, CANADA AND THE US ACTORS: 3 FEMALE, 3 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

Håndværkerne / The Builders (2008) Jonathan and Alice have moved into a house in the country and are looking forward to their future there, but the house is seriously in need of TLC. They have hired a gang of moonlighting builders led by Glen: a big mistake. There have been unfathomable delays but by Saturday it will all be over, or so the builders say. Jonathan hopes he will never see another builder. Not even other people’s builders or builders in the street. What matters to Alice is what the kitchen

tiles will look like. Her interior designer dreams know no limits. Of course new delays occur. But Glen can explain. It is those pesky building regulations governing the electrics. Difficult to understand for the man in the street, Glen realizes that, but he’ll need an extra grand to finish the job. One day Jonathan comes across a builder taking a nap in the master bedroom. Jonathan is enraged and matters get out of hand. The builder falls down the stairs and dies. Jonathan is a peaceable man, a professional violinist, and he panics. He wants to call the police but Alice intervenes. No dead builder is going to come between her and her dreams. The corpse will just have to be hidden in the cellar and Alice knows exactly how to use the builder’s chainsaw. The problems continue to pile up and gradually Jonathan and Alice kill off all five builders with growing relish. Jonathan’s mother pays a visit and not even she discovers anything amiss. The Builders is a farce proving how the combination of lifestyle dreams and cowboy builders can turn an ordinary middle-class couple into serial killers. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, FINL AND (7 PRODUCTIONS!), SWEDEN (5!), NORWAY, THE CZECH REPUBLIC, AND SLOVAKIA ACTORS: 4 FEMALE, 6 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

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Line Knutzon

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everyone knows she is genuinely funny, and her humour is not about one-liners, it runs deeper.â&#x20AC;?

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Christian Lollike

â&#x20AC;&#x153; As soon as something is branded inhuman, he gets the urge to absorb it, to get inside it and find out what it is. That is the job of the artist as he sees it.â&#x20AC;?

(B. 1973) CHRISTIAN LOLLIKE GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2001. HE IS STAGE DIRECTOR, DRAMATIST, AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE SORT/HVID (BL ACK/WHITE) THEATRE, COPENHAGEN.

Christian Lollike is one of the most prominent playwrights of his generation, the recipient of many awards, and many of his plays have been staged outside Denmark. His output is often controversial: his Manifesto 2083 (2012) about the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik met with extreme, politically-motivated criticism, but nevertheless garnered the Special Jury Prize at the annual Reumert awards ceremony in Copenhagen. Lollike says: As soon as something is branded inhuman, I get the urge to absorb it, to understand it, to get inside it and find out what it is. That is the job of the artist, in my view. This impetus has led him into the arms of prostitutes (Kødkarrusellen / The Meat Carousel), nursing home residents (Undskyld Gamle / Excuse Me Old Man) suicides (Service Selvmord / Service Suicide) and Islamic terrorists (Underværket / The Work of Wonder). He draws inspiration from the German post-dramatic theatre tradition, but his plays also include elements of stand-up comedy and the occasional whiff of Monty Python.

Underværket / Work of Wonder (2005)

ages of global disasters. In the second we are in the midst of the victims and their suffering. In the third a man appears. He addresses us: Mohammed Atta, the man who led the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

The planes that slammed into the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001 is the greatest work of art ever. Karlheinz Stockhausen says so himself. What the celebrated German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen actually said and what he meant by his statement has been much disputed, but Christian Lollike’s play takes the statement seriously: It was spectacular, dirty and awesome. It transgressed the frontiers of fiction and exposed the religious and political schism of the 21st century. The work cost lives, approximately 3,000 of them, but still managed to steer away from becoming a simple bloodbath or from the exaggerated use of torn body parts. We see four people on stage. They are meant to be putting on a show that will persuade the rest of us to support charities, but something else is casting its shadow:

The play is morally engaging without being moralising. In form Work of Wonder belongs to the postdramatic theatre tradition of continental European drama. It was originally written for the stage but a radio production of the piece won first prize at the 2006 Prix Europa festival of international radio and television. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, SWEDEN, NORWAY, FRANCE, GERMANY, ENGL AND AND AUSTRALIA. RADIO PRODUCTIONS ALSO IN ICEL AND AND CZECH REPUBLIC ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 2 MALE (FLEXIBLE) PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

Det normale liv - eller Krop og kampplads / Normal Life - or Body and Battlefield (2011)

I’ve always considered famine in Africa the ultimate work of art because the work is more beautiful and abstract. Drought. Mile-long stretches. The torn surface of the earth. HELLO, it’s a bigger work of art because the artist doesn’t indulge the audiences craving for action but relies completely on slowness, like an old Chinese painter. NEVERENDING AFRICA is a much bigger piece of art than THE TWIN TOWERS.

We meet three characters on a mission. They are meant to be celebrating life and the wealth of opportunities for self-realization modern society provides, but something is not right. They feel they are being watched, and the play opens with the line They’re following me. The question is, just who?

The play is in three parts. In the first we meet the four as they savour mass media im-

A woman is at home. The phone rings. Her new boss wants to know if something is

wrong, because she isn’t her usual bubbly self. In another scene a mum and dad are keeping a beady eye on each other to ensure the best possible upbringing for their daughter; the overprotective mother helps her daughter on the climbing frame, and her father thinks this is to the detriment of the little girl’s motor skills. A third scene is about the Internet: That’s the nice thing about the Internet. You can always find someone who’s afraid of exactly the same thing you are afraid of too. Normal Life presents a series of pictures demonstrating modern man’s fear of not living up to explicit or tacit rules and norms, and introduces a new concept, borrowing the term for the secret police in what was East Germany: Lollike’s characters talk of their Inner Stasi: The INNER STASI is the organ that controls your inner management, that is to say, it ensures that you are capable of managing yourself in a way that will benefit you and the community at large. There is satire, humour and pain in the play’s portrayal of normal, modern life in which we are constantly being watched through other people’s eyes, or by our own eyes on ourselves. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, GERMANY, SWEDEN, FRANCE, AUSTRIA, NORWAY AND CANADA. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 1 MALE OR 1 FEMALE, 2 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

C HRIS T I A N LO LLIK E

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(B. 1973) AUTHOR, PL AY WRIGHT, VISUAL ARTIST, COMMENTATOR AND CURATOR. A GRADUATE OF THE ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, AND THE DANISH ACADEMY OF CREATIVE WRITING.

Tomas Lagermand Lundme has penned forty plays for children, youth and adults, along with radio dramas, screenplays for a couple of short films and twenty-two books. Since 1990 he has also exhibited drawings, photographs, paintings, textiles, ceramics, sound, video, text and performance art in Denmark and abroad.

TO M A S L AG E RM A ND LU NDME

In his debut as a dramatist in 2001, the radio play Heidi and Mum, Lagermand Lundme was already absorbed by themes of gender and identity. One critic remarked that his dramatic oeuvre possessed poetic brutality, an expression that makes good sense to the author: I insist on talking in pictures, in poetry, he says, not just as something of beauty but of something cruel, ugly and prickly, with characters of whom I am terribly fond even though they behave nastily and do horrid things. My texts also examine my own ethical standards – and twist them. Because I suppose I always write about stuff that’s relatively close to me but is also suffused with courage that I don’t have.

Tomas Lagermand Lundme Saunaen/The Sauna (2008)

ill? They have come to sweat out the fat, the grime, the misery, and perhaps the guilt.

What happens when two men and two women from society’s upper echelons reveal all? Four people who cultivate unlimited self-discipline only to find that the temperature in the pine-panelled sauna is gradually reaching boiling point?

They have made ten rules: 1. Nobody may leave the sauna for twelve hours. 2. Nobody knows anybody. 3. Nobody recognises anybody. 4. No names allowed. 5. Everybody is naked. 6. Nobody may have sex. 7. Nobody is to bring any water. 8. No cell phones. 9. The door must remain closed at all times. 10. In case of doubt everybody helps each other to hold fast.

They met up via a website and now they get together at a remote sauna a few hours’ drive from Stockholm far from their stressful everyday Danish lives. The past is off-limits and none of them knows the identity of the others. They are obsessed by health, but why? Why not just be happy they are not

The Sauna is a story about four people in a locked room, as in Sartre’s No Exit. But losing the key was not part of the plan, and nor was the stove going out as the wolves howl outside. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 2 MALE FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: TOMAS L AGERMAND LUNDME TOMASL AGERMAND@HOTMAIL.COM

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(B. 1977) STUDIED ART HISTORY AND DRAMA AT COPENHAGEN UNIVERSIT Y 2000-04. GRADUATE OF THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING, 2007. SOME TWENT Y-FIVE OF HER PL AYS HAVE BEEN STAGED.

My writing is very wide-ranging. There is no one discernible tone, no clear voice; perhaps because I haven’t found one yet, or perhaps because I simply don’t want to occupy one particular chair! Line Mørkeby has supplied theatres with plays commissioned on predetermined themes: I am both a kitchen sink realist and imaginatively theatrical. I write personally, and I write many plays that I develop in collaboration with the director and cast and hence are more impersonal. She enjoys being part of collective creative processes, but that does not mean she is short of themes personal to her. One of them she describes as chaotic youth and chaotic identity portrayed with ironic earnestness, such as in 6 P LR K / PRON OR WYFM, awarded as Children and Youth Production of the Year in 2010. Bye Bye Yue Yue held completely new meaning for her as a playwright and she says that the play may be a new departure for her.

Bye Bye Yue Yue (2014) We see a man and a woman perform a dramatic sadomasochist sex game. On the face of it both parties seem to want and enjoy it. In mid sex the woman turns to the audience: This is exactly what you need to see. To look down into the abyss. You need to see that the world is a nasty place, that there is no hope, and that the human race is depraved. So hop in. You too, mum and dad! The man’s name is Dick, and Danish theatre-goers know very well that in English the word means more than just a boy’s name. The woman is the leading character and her name is Line, like the playwright, to show

that she is writing the play we have come to see. Bye Bye Yue Yue was written in the continental European tradition often referred to as postdramatic, where the characters comment on the plot and the ideas behind the play, on the basis that the modern world cannot be fully portrayed through a plot involving characters on a stage. Our consciousness is inextricably entangled with the world as a whole and thus always extends beyond the specific situation. The woman warns us that the show will contain degrading situations. She tells us stories from the world press about little girls subjected to neglect, sexual abuse or violence. One of them is the Yue Yue of the title. Images of the two-year-old Chinese girl

who got run over by a car and whom the first twenty passers-by failed to help went viral in 2011. Bye Bye Yue Yue inhabits a borderland between dream and fantasy, with the woman trying to embrace the big wide world with engagement and affection as she experiences love one-on-one with a man called Dick. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 1 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

LINE M Ø RK E BY

Line Mørkeby

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T HO M A S M A RK M A NN

Thomas Markmann (B. 1971) GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2010 AND FROM DRAMATIKER VÆKSTHUS (DRAMATIST GROWTH-HOUSE) IN 2007. DRAMATIST OF THE YEAR, 2015.

Thomas Markmann was a journeyman plumber and held a variety of jobs before he took up playwriting. His gifts were obvious from the start and he was familiar in theatrical circles from professional readings of his work even before he enrolled at the Danish National School of Playwriting. Beton / Concrete (2014) provided his major breakthrough, but his dramatization of the novel Oh Romeo (2012), his modernization of Schiller’s play Røverne / The Robbers (2013) and his play Brøl / Roar (2013) were also remarkable. He describes his work as realistic and down-to-earth but not naturalistic. He effortlessly combines the clearcut dramatic situation with epic forms; fluid, fast-paced dialogue with monologue-like passages; and the fictive story with elements from real life, but always on a bedrock of realism. He says he writes drama intended to intervene in and reach out into the world and contemporary life; plays that never shy away from the historical or the political. One national newspaper critic wrote in his review of Concrete that This play by Thomas Markman was not only new drama: it was also local drama elevated to national art.

Beton / Concrete (2014)

minerals for cement production; he tells the farmers that they must look to the future.

An extensive collective narrative portraying a century and a half in the life of a community and the stories of a number of its residents during the same period, the play was written for the regional theatre in Denmark’s fourth-largest city, Aalborg, which is synonymous with the production of cement and concrete. In 2015 its author won the Reumert award for Dramatist of the Year.

The story continues to the present day when we meet a Polish labourer who ends up in Aalborg in his search for work in the EU, and a Danish manual worker faced with the realization that cement dust ruined his lungs some thirty or forty years ago. We follow the gang of Danish cement workers who lose their jobs and livelihoods when a Polish company takes over, and we meet a group of men in Italian suits from the international consortium that bought out the factory a few years later.

The play is a mosaic. It tells of the businessman who tries to persuade local farmers to sell their fields to the cement factory and become factory workers: in 1886 the land yields poor harvests but it is ideal for extracting

The play is based on documentary material but it is more than just an account of the

decline of an industrial city. It presents a modern myth of people as children of their time, told in a lyrical, non-chronological form, with a chorus inspired by classical Greek drama. Concrete succeeds in portraying individuals while simultaneously providing a broader picture of the people who both generated and were affected by the march of historicy on a grander scale. ACTORS: 9 MALE FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: THOMAS MARKMANN THOMASMARKMANN@GMAIL.COM

Concrete ANDREAS JEBRO, JØRGEN W. L ARSEN, CASPAR JUEL BERG, ALL AN HELGE JENSEN, MADS RØMER BROLIN-TANI, MARTIN RINGSMOSE, HENRIK WEEL, STEFFEN ERIKSEN AND MARTIN BO LINDSTEN IN CONCRETE BY THOMAS MARKMANN / DIRECTED BY NICOLEI FABER / SET DESIGN BY CHRISTIAN ALBRECHTSEN / A ALBORG TEATER 2014 / PHOTO: L ARS HORN

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The European Media TAMMI ØST IN THE EUROPEAN MEDIA BY NIELSEN / DIRECTED BY ELISA KRAGERUP / SET DESIGN BY PALLE STEEN CHRISTENSEN / THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE 2012 / PHOTO: MIKLOS SZABO

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Nielsen

In 2001, the Danish author, performer and human being Claus Beck-Nielsen was declared dead. In 2002, the enterprise Das Beckwerk was created, and the nameless body left behind by Claus Beck-Nielsen was employed as a subject for experiments. In 2012 the body reacquired the name Nielsen â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the commonest surname in Denmark â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and joined the Nielsen Movement. Nielsen now appears most frequently as Madame Nielsen. Nielsen is no man, but neither is she a woman. Maybe Nielsen is just a human being.

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(B. 1963) NIELSEN IS ONE OF DENMARK’S LEADING DRAMATISTS AND NOVELISTS, BUT HE (OR SHE) IS MORE THAN THAT. NIELSEN IS IN HIS (OR HER) OWN WORDS: AUTHOR, ARTIST, PERFORMER, DIRECTOR AND WORLD HISTORY ENACTOR, COMPOSER, CHANTEUSE, CULTURAL CRITIC, PARTISAN, ACCUSED, DAMNED AND HIGHLY PRAISED.

Nielsen has written some twenty plays, was the recipient of the 2003 Reumert for Dramatist of the Year, and two of Nielsen’s novels -The Suicide Mission (2006) and My Encounters with The Great Authors of Our Nation (2014) - were shortlisted for the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize. Nielsen has very much turned his (or her) own identity into an on-going performance formulated, evolved and played out in literary and artistic projects. In 2001 Claus Beck-Nielsen the individual ceased to exist and the nameless body was employed by a fast-growing enterprise called Das Beckwerk. Nielsen’s homepage explains: a transglobal enterprise working inside and outside Europe and often in states of emergency like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the U.S. and Egypt, creating stories about the common man and his heroic attempt to influence the creation of world history. One artistic action took place in 2004 when Das Beckwerk crossed the frontier from Kuwait into Iraq before travelling there for a month with a metal suitcase containing democracy. Das Beckwerk shut down in 2011 with Funus Imaginarium, the Death of Identity and the State Citizen. Nielsen now appears most frequently as Madame Nielsen: Nielsen is no man, but neither is she a woman. Maybe Nielsen is just a human being.

Mediernes Teater / The Theatre of the Medium

Theatre of the Medium the individual is exposed to forces far greater than him (or her).

Nielsen’s pentalogy The Theatre of the Medium provides a new definition for the work the actor does onstage. The actor is present under his (or her) own name and identity, and elements of his (or her) personal life may form part of the performance. The actor does not play parts but is a medium for others: other people, corporations, or memes such as Google, Nike or the Market. The first work in the pentalogy was The Language of Hope (2009), a show based on Barack Obama’s Victory Speech. Actor Olaf Johannessen stepped onstage as a medium for Obama, the world’s most powerful politician, who immediately declared:

De europæiske medier / The European Media (2012)

“I am not here. I am represented by a local medium. Mr…(looks at a piece of paper) Olaf Johannessen. Who he is, I don’t know. I’ve never met Olaf Johannessen. I’ve never seen Olaf Johannessen, I haven’t even heard of Olaf Johannessen and I never will. And yet, today he will do his very best, he will give his life and his time to be what I am.” In The Theatre of the Medium the actor is a human being who serves as a medium at the disposal of great powers he or she cannot control and which may intervene in his (or her) performance onstage at any moment. The actor’s bank manager may also appear and speak through her, for example. In The

The European Media is the second part of The Theatre of the Medium. Rupert Murdoch has bought many media all over the world. Now he steps onstage in a location he does not know and in which he has no interest in becoming acquainted. However, he is not present in person, but by way of a medium he has paid for: the actor. We also see the Boat Person, burdened with a fate we Europeans have no desire to mitigate but demanding to hear from the medium about the medium’s latest successful purchases and wonderful holidays. The medium/actor is compelled to reveal his (or her) extravagant personal lifestyle as an exemplary European. Other actors appear as mediums for The Next Terrorist in Europe, or Google and Nike and what they have to offer modern man, and finally we meet China, the global dominator-to--be. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, GERMANY. ACTORS: 4 FEMALES, 4 MALES (FLEXIBLE) PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

De elskende / The Lovers (2013) The third part of The Theatre of the Medium pentalogy is a chamber play, a romance in which it helps if the two actors live in permanent relationships and have children of their own. A man and a woman have fled from their families, jobs and everyday lives. They are staying at a house by the sea: they are alone but for each other, the sound of the waves, and the wind so thick and full of salt. However, their love is interrupted when their own children and partners appear through them; in the show, the actors use the names of their own partners and children. A kilometre from their sanctuary the woman comes upon a horse stretched out across the road as if it has come down to earth from another world. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, GERMANY. ACTORS: 1 MALE, 1 FEMALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

NIE L S E N

WWW.NIELSEN.RE

NE W DA NIS H DR A M A

V I V I A N NIE L S E N

Vivian Nielsen (B. 1962) VIVIAN NIELSEN GRADUATED FROM DRAMA SCHOOL IN 1987. IN 1998 SHE PL AYED THE TITLE ROLE IN ASTA – DIE ASTA, HER OWN PL AY ABOUT SILENT MOVIE STAR ASTA NIELSEN. THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF AN EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL WRITING CAREER.

Vivian Nielsen’s oeuvre of more than twenty stage plays includes numerous stage adaptations of novels and films, among them film director Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and plays based on the lives of historical characters. In Kvindernes hævn / The Women’s Revenge (2007) she chose Lysistrata (Aristophanes) as the skeleton for her story of resolute women during a fictitious war between Denmark and Sweden. Nielsen may take existing material as her starting point but she certainly has a voice of her own. She writes about contemporary society with a sharp, critical eye, often from a woman’s point of view. In 2006 she received a Reumert award for Brandes, a play about the celebrated late nineteenth century literary critic Georg Brandes who defined subjecting problems to debate as a literary ideal. In 2010 theatre critic Anne Middelboe Christensen quoted this definition in an address: If there is one thing Vivian Nielsen does, it is to subject problems to debate. Indeed in her plays it is almost all she does, no matter how varied they are, with an approach to the world and to the stage driven by anger, bewilderment and annoyance.

Krydstogt/The Cruise (2013)

the dramatic events taking place right now, whereas she wonders whether preserving the moment is possible at all.

Adriana and her husband Zeljko are on a cruise. Their marriage has hit a rough patch and they decided to go on the spur of the moment. Adriana is a writer, and to her, real life and fiction tend to merge into one: the past keeps cropping up and her ailing mother is always on her mind. Particular images from her childhood featuring her father who died when she was five also appear again and again. Her husband, on the other hand, is more concerned with what is going on in the world. As a photographer he travels to the hotspots to cover the conflicts there. Adriana says he is a war junkie, hooked on

The ship is off Ecuador when revolution erupts on the mainland and the captain decides to stay at sea. The cruise guide is a young woman, Sandra. We also meet Elisabeth and Poul, another couple on board. The cruise was really far too expensive for them but Poul is seriously ill; he only has a few years left to him and the couple want to live in the moment but that isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Cruise is a poetic, psychological drama. At first the characters seem to be in the doldrums, but then Poul disappears: determined

to defy his illness and present life he launches a lifeboat during a storm and sails away. Zeljko goes too, to look after him, leaving the four women behind: Adriana’s mother, young, enthusiastic Sandra, and the two middle-aged ladies, Adriana and Elisabeth. The Cruise is an existential drama that examines the moods and portraits of six people at a turning point in their lives. ACTORS: 4 FEMALE, 2 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK.

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(B. 1973) AT TENDED FILM SCHOOL IN PRAGUE AND THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING. HELD THE ROYAL COURT’S RESIDENCY FOR EMERGING PL AY WRIGHTS, 2010.

Aleksa Okanovic made a tremendous impact with his plays Restaurant d’Amour (2003), Diamond/Dust/Shoes (2006) and Modern Life! (2008). These works led to participation at the Festival of International New Drama (F.I.N.D.) at the Schaubühne, Berlin, and a residency at the Royal Court Theatre, London. Okanovic has written a number of radio plays, sometimes drawing on his own experience as a refugee from Tito’s Yugoslavia. One of his themes is male identity against the background of the death of patriarchal culture. Another is the family. I have a passion for naturalism, Strindberg and Ibsen, he says. Yet in Aleksa Okanovic’s works this does not mean quiet drawing rooms with hidden secrets: I am interested in the extreme, people who are or who cultivate the extreme. In my plays the extreme, the traditional and the familiar meet, often over dinner – the kind of scene I most enjoy writing. When people are dining they often fight their greatest battles. Okanovic has had a couple of years away from the stage but has two new plays in the pipeline: Testosteron and VHS versus Betamax.

Modern Life! (2008) There is no end to the beautiful touches in architect couple Sebastian and Marie’s fashionable summer residence. The table has been laid for an exquisite supper, guests have been invited, and twelve-year-old daughter Mathilde has been told to take a shower. Then aspiring author Michel arrives with Ariane, his girlfriend. Modern Life! employs fluent, witty dialogue to lay the groundwork for bizarre happenings to come, and the plot fully meets the expectations thus aroused: Ariane is the only character unaware of what is afoot; nor does she know that the supper was arranged at the

exclusive Pier Paolo sex club in Paris. Michel was visiting the club to do research for his next novel, and met Sebastian there. Michel says I want to feel desire pouring out! Desire that escapes from its cell, desire that doesn’t build barriers but feels free to do absolutely anything at all! Michel has a dream which he shares with the wealthy owners of the house; a dream about a day in the near future: The day we are given a film to watch that is both loving and sexy, and which tells the love story of a paedophile. Once Ariane has gone to bed the agreement can be fulfilled, and it comes as no surprise to little Mathilde that it involves sexually abusing her.

A LE KS A O K A NOV IC

Aleksa Okanovic

Modern Life! is a modern grotesque about people who firmly believe that we betray ourselves if we fail to indulge any appetite or any desire. According to one critic, This is a revolting play. It punches you in the face. In the gut. It is unbearable (…) But it is also a very moral play. ACTORS: 3 FEMALE, 2 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

NE W DA NIS H DR A M A

Jokum Rohde

“He writes in a flamboyant, rhetorical style peppered with direct and indirect quotations from literary or philosophical classics – or from B-pictures, popular songs or books for boys.”

NE W DA NIS H DR A M A

(B. 1970) JOKUM ROHDE HAS WRIT TEN TWENT Y-FIVE PL AYS. FROM 2008 TO 2013 HE WAS PL AY WRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE AT THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE. IN THE WORDS OF THE POET SØREN ULRIK THOMSEN THE DRAMAS OF ROHDE ARE DREAM PLAYS CHOCKFULL OF BRICKED-UP DOORWAYS IN A CAPSIZING UNIVERSE.

Jokum Rohde creates big, juicy parts providing marvellous opportunities for the cast in plots packed with drama and intellectual ambition; but he also has a penchant for vulgar action. His dialogue is rich in words presented in a flamboyant, rhetorical style peppered with direct and indirect quotations from literary or philosophical classics – or from B-pictures, popular songs or books for boys. He writes with a degree of irony that allows him to present great pathos at the same time. Rohde’s talent for juggling genres, thoughts and ideas with such stylistic aplomb inspires some critics to regard him as a postmodern dramatist. In the words of Søren Ulrik Thomsen, though, he may also be described as balancing between Kafka and pulp fiction.

Pinocchios aske / Pinocchio’s Ashes (2005) The opening lines of the play are a fanfare: Judge Wolff is standing at his open window: I love the smell of burning classics in the morning. Céline, Hamsun, Benn, Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt. It’s the smell ... of liberation. The thoughts of millennia up in smoke! Lifeworks, myths, ideas older even than humanity itself, finally laid to rest. You can hear it from deep within the soft crackling of the old, stained and spotted books ... let go. Let us go. Thank you. We are in the fictitious town of Kongstad, a provincial riverside town ruled by an oligarch for the last fifteen years. Art is banned; as Alexander Trocchi, the public prosecutor, explains, Art had resulted in total equality between people, a communism of the night. Police spy Marc Doutroux’s job is tracking down artists. He detains cabinetmaker Werner Brown, and hauls him before the courts on charges of practicing art. The evidence is the Pinocchio marionette of the title. When Judge Wolff flatters Werner Brown about the artistic value of the puppet, Brown confesses his crime, but insists that there was no malice aforethought. Nevertheless Judge Wolff convicts Brown of negligent art and sentences him to have his hand cut off. By this stage we are only a quarter of the way into the play and soon an unexpected alliance emerges between Brown the artist and Wolff the judge.

Pinocchio’s ashes is pitched in tones of ironic comedy but it is also as dark as an old Gothic tale and as dramatic as a graphic novel. It smacks of philosophical essay, too, as it embarks on its copiously worded, rhetorically colourful discussions on the state, democracy, and the meaning of art. Jokum Rohde won the Dramatist of the Year award at the Reumert ceremony in 2005. PERFORMED IN: DENMARK, SWEDEN, NORWAY, L AT VIA, ITALY, USA ACTORS: 3 FEMALE, 5 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: COLOMBINE THEATRE AGENCY, +46 (0)8 411 70 85, INFO@COLOMBINE.SE.

Darwins Testamente / Darwin’s Will (2008) A Gothic tale from Victorian London featuring amongst its dramatis personae Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria, no less, although the play is very free with the historical facts. On the Origin of Species is part of the plot, providing the fulcrum of speculation by several of the characters as to the existence of a deep organizing power. Some of them believe that natural selection as described by Darwin should be the guiding principle for human society, but Inspector Bartholomew of the Yard speaks of a very different clandestine power, namely the Yellow Moray, a figure he suspects of the murders of many of England’s most prominent scientists.

Darwin’s Will combines deliberations on human evolution and the organization of society with a colourful Gothic plot. The play begins with Queen Victoria – with no foundations in history – presenting an award of distinction to Charles Darwin, whereupon Darwin delivers a speech with political overtones that does not amuse her majesty. In the next scene we are in the company of Inspector Bartholomew and the mutilated corpse of Dr. London, a scientist who created the London Project to counter the political, social Darwinist application of Darwin’s theories: The way the project focused on surroundings and upbringing as the precondition for human and moral improvement was repugnant to the modern sciences – the sciences that talk of a natural order of the weak and the strong. Darwin is detained as a suspect, but is released by order of the queen, and finally Darwin’s daughter rises from her grave. Darwin faces a dilemma: he can only be reunited with his beloved daughter if he agrees to renounce the theory of evolution. Darwin’s Will is a colourful gallery of characters in a Gothic universe employing copious dialogue borrowing from Darwin’s books but also sources such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The play juggles political and philosophical ideas while revelling in the stock-in-trades of the classic horror story. ACTORS: 3 FEMALE, 5 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: COLOMBINE THEATRE AGENCY, +46 (0)8 411 70 85, INFO@COLOMBINE.SE

J O K U M RO HDE

By way of a sideline Rohde is also a regular supplier of playtexts for the Royal Danish Theatre’s large-scale outdoor family shows; most recently a highly original retelling of Robin Hood that sold more than 100,000 tickets.

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A S T RID S A A LB AC H

Astrid Saalbach (B. 1955) A DRAMA SCHOOL GRADUATE, ASTRID SA ALBACH DEBUTED AS A RADIO DRAMATIST IN 1981 AND WRITING FOR STAGE IN 1986. SHE HAS WRIT TEN ELEVEN PL AYS FOR THE THEATRE, A NUMBER OF RADIO AND TELEVISION DRAMAS, SIX NOVELS, AND A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES.

Pietà (2007) A middle-aged woman wakes up in a hotel room in the middle of the night. There are empty bottles on the floor and she feels terrible. She can’t remember a thing. Is this even her own room? She notices a naked man in the bed. She catches a whiff of his aftershave. Nice! Did they have sex? She tries to cast her mind back. She is a key account manager at a successful company and she works seventy-hour weeks. The minibar tempts her. She takes out a small bottle of white wine. She wants some time alone. She shakes the man to rouse him but he is dead. She tries to raise the alarm

Astrid Saalbach has received a large number of awards and her plays have been staged in more than twenty countries. She takes a penetrating, critical view of society and our times, but rarely addresses themes that slot directly into the current political debate. Her intellectual ambitions are high, and she happily depicts the broader canvas of society. She enjoys experimenting with form and never adopts an existing realistic or social realistic genre. She is adept at describing couples or families and their relationships, and her work always points beyond the individual characters and their stories. Her plays include multi-strand plots with several parallel narratives of equal importance in the overall picture, and some of her work tends towards the style of a dream play, clearly inspired by Strindberg. In Pietà her formal approach is that of psychological realism, where she nevertheless places the universe of the play beyond the psychological space.

but it is 5.27 in the morning and reception isn’t picking up. What has happened and what will people think? She comes across his boxer shorts. Perhaps she should dress him? She goes through his pockets. He is Spanish, thirty-four years old, sixteen years younger than she is. She gets out some more wine. She fantasizes about life as his mistress. She phones her ex-husband. She tells him she is going to marry a Spaniard. As she empties more glasses of wine we learn that she has lost her job. Was it because of her drinking or because the men at work could not come to terms with a successful woman? She talks to her grown-up daughter. She says they are alike. Things are not working out for her daughter

either. Finally the woman is tempted to flee the hotel but she decides to sit down to wait for the chambermaid and exposure. Pietà refers to images in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus. PERFORMED IN: SWEDEN, DENMARK, CANADA, ESTONIA, FINL AND, CZECH REPUBLIC, ITALY, NORWAY AND THE FAEROE ISL ANDS. ACTORS: 1 FEMALE, 1 MALE (NON-SPEAKING ROLE) PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: COLOMBINE THEATRE AGENCY, +46 (0)8 411 70 85, INFO@COLOMBINE.SE.

Pietà DORTHE HANSEN CARLSEN IN PIETÀ BY ASTRID SA ALBACH / DIRECTED BY ANDERS LUNDORPH / SET DESIGN BY KRISTIAN VANG RASMUSSEN / A ARHUS TEATER 2008 / PHOTO: JAN JUL

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(B. 1976) GRADUATED FROM THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING IN 2004. SHE AT TENDED THE DANISH NATIONAL FILM SCHOOL’S TELEVISION SERIES MASTER CL ASSES. SHE WRITES REALISTIC PL AYS WITH CONSIDERABLE EMPATHY AND WEALTH IN THEIR DEPICTIONS OF PEOPLE AND THEIR SET TINGS.

Lærke Sanderhoff likes to abandon her keyboard in favour of real life. On graduating she directed two documentary films about the lives on the road of three long-distance lorry drivers, and a club for old age pensioners. She enjoys underpinning her writing with research: I try hard to create authentic human beings and descriptions of their lives, she says, sometimes by way of dialects and sociolects. I enjoy telling the stories of ordinary men and women, the kind of people who don’t like to make a fuss. She has already told several stories from the northern reaches of the Juttish peninsula, where she was born and grew up. The Sunfish is set in the present in a fishing village there, whereas Hjardemål takes place in 1970 in the village of the same name and portrays a young Christian girl’s dramatic encounter with the residents of a well-known hippie community nearby. Sanderhoff writes with a well-developed feel for the concrete, realistic situation and hones everyday language into incisive, dramatic dialogue.

L Æ RK E S A NDE RHO FF

Lærke Sanderhoff

Klumpfisken / The Sunfish (2008) Like his father and grandfather before him Kesse is a fisherman. He sails from a small fishing port on the North Sea coast but money is tight. He has just got a divorce and he has let his ex-wife have far too much. One day on the quayside he meets Gerd, a woman from Copenhagen. The Sunfish brought a slice of life in Denmark to the stage of a kind unprecedented in Danish drama. The play depicts a community that regards the capital as pure devilry and the marine biologists who limit the fishermen’s catches as the enemy. But it is also

a romance, providing a rich, multifaceted psychological portrait of middle-aged Kesse. The bank tells Kesse he must sell his house. He may have to sell his boat, too. To start with, he will certainly have to sack Little Lars, his friend and employee of many years, who is also very interested in Gerd. As expected, Little Lars is distraught at losing his job. He is also furious. Meanwhile Kesse and Gerd are falling more and more in love. What Kesse doesn’t realize is that she is a marine biologist. For Little Lars’s sake Kesse takes the boat out one night on an illegal fishing trip. Gerd finds out. Shortly afterwards, Kesse is reported to the authorities for illegal fishing.

He is livid. He thinks Gerd is responsible, but finds out that he was actually betrayed by Little Lars getting his own back. Kesse goes to Copenhagen in search of Gerd. The Sunfish is a heart-warming comedy with dialogue, setting and character portrayal that is uncommonly full-flavoured. It received a Reumert award and was filmatized in 2014, garnering several awards for its cast and Best Screenplay for Lærke Sanderhoff and the film’s director. Its story will touch a nerve anywhere beleaguered fishing communities are at odds with the authorities. ACTORS: 1 FEMALE, 2 MALE FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: L ÆRKE SANDERHOFF fussi45@hotmail.com

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(B. 1969) GRADUATED FROM THE NATIONAL FILM SCHOOL OF DENMARK IN 1993. A MEMBER OF DOGME95. THOMAS VINTERBERG DREW UP THE MOVEMENT’S VOW OF CHASTIT Y WITH L ARS VON TRIER. HIS INTERNATIONAL BREAKTHROUGH CAME WITH FESTEN IN 1998. DEBUTED AS A PL AY WRIGHT IN 2010.

Kollektivet / Commune (2011) Erik has inherited a lovely old house in a wealthy Copenhagen suburb. He moves in with his partner, Anna, and their teenage daughter Freja. But this is the mid nineteen-seventies and Erik and Anna are dedicated to the spirit of the times, so they refuse to be prisoners of the nuclear family. Instead they set up a commune with Erik’s friend Ole, the guitar-playing Frenchman Virgil, naïve Mona with her bubbly laughter, and Ditte and Steffen, a couple who are experienced veterans of the commune world. The ambiance is gentle and hippie-like, and although Erik owns the house he is happy

The first stage adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov’s screenplay Festen appeared just two years after the release of the film. Festen has been staged by nearly twenty theatres in German-speaking countries alone. David Eldridge wrote the English playtext, which Rufus Norris directed in an award-winning production in London in 2004. A few years later Matthias Hartmann, the director of the Burgtheater, Vienna, persuaded Vinterberg and Rukov to write a continuation of the story. This play, The Funeral, opened in Vienna in 2010, directed by Vinterberg. It tells the story of the family ten years on where Helge, the patriarch, is dead, and the family gathers once again. The second result of this collaboration with the Burgtheater was Commune, premiered in 2011, and which Vinterberg has now rewritten for the screen. The film is slated for release in January 2016.

to give up his power and influence in favour of the house meeting, where Ole takes the chair and is only a little bit manipulative, and decisions are made by a simple majority vote. This works out just fine until the day Erik falls for twenty-four-year-old Emma and wants her to move in. How will the commune handle the issue? Can Emma’s membership be approved? Although love is meant to be free, nobody can help thinking of Anna, who is now Erik’s ex. Erik has to put his foot down and exercise the authority he had otherwise relinquished. His young girlfriend moves in and Freja has lessons in make-up and gender roles. But Erik’s ex continues to suffer amidst all the free love.

The play is an affectionate description of the left-wing communes of the nineteen-seventies but it also speaks of ideals colliding with real life and individuals clashing with group ideology and expectations. Thomas Vinterberg wrote Commune with Mogens Rukov, who also co-wrote Festen and The Funeral. PERFORMED IN: AUSTRIA, GERMANY, DENMARK ACTORS: 5 FEMALE, 4 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683. INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

T HO M A S V IN T E RB E RG

Thomas Vinterberg

Commune SOFIA NOLSØE, MIK AEL BIRKKJÆR, L ARS RANTHE, ASBJØRN KROGH NISSEN, JULIE AGNETE VANG, MADS WILLE AND MET TE HORN IN COMMUNE BY THOMAS VINTERBERG / DIRECTED BY EMMET FEIGENBERG / SET DESIGN BY KIM WITZEL / THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE 2012 / PHOTO: NATASCHA THIARA RYDVALD

NE W DA NIS H DR A M A

Jakob Weis

â&#x20AC;&#x153;His dialogue is stylistically aware, frequently combining the lyrical and pensive with the hard-hitting and vulgar in stories where male identity is a recurrent theme.â&#x20AC;?

NE W DA NIS H DR A M A

Håndbog i overlevelse / Survival Manual (2006) Little Leo is in his regular seat at the restaurant serving Copenhagen’s venerable trotting track. He is wearing his tired old suit and his glass of port is in front of him. He has opened his Racing Times, and across the table there is an untouched glass of white wine. Now Emilie appears, a middle-aged lady, stylish and moneyed, but visibly frayed at the edges. They have been sitting at this table beside the screens displaying the day’s odds every Sunday since the tragedy twenty-six years ago when Emilie’s daughter died. By now the dream of the huge win that will bring new hope to his life has lost its magic for Little Leo, but even a modest windfall can still cheer him up. The third participant in this Sunday ritual is Romeo, a younger, restless, well-dressed fellow with traces of cocaine under his nose. He is in debt to the gangsters whose heavy-handed ways of collecting their dues mean that he is in urgent need of the readies. If he fails to win on the horses he has another option: for a fee he can take to the trotting track lavatories to satisfy Emilie’s need for a man. The three characters are trapped in a pocket of time and an atmosphere of lives unlived. But there’s a new barmaid, Un, and she

In 2016 Jakob Weis debutes as a librettist with the opera Hamlet – in absentia. He says that versatility is essential if you want to survive as a dramatist, and his work always bears his unmistakeable personal imprint. He creates powerful leading characters in plots based on realistic situations that aim to take the pulse of contemporary society. One of his recurrent themes is that of male identity. His dialogue is stylistically aware and fast-paced, frequently combining the lyrical and pensive with the hard-hitting and vulgar. His latest work is what he calls his National Faction trilogy: the initial pieces are about the controversial artist Kristian von Hornsleth and a Danish stand-up comedian and television star, and the third part of the trilogy is von Trier – persona non grata, based on film director Lars von Trier’s notorious remarks about Hitler at a press conference in Cannes. Jakob Weis has received several awards, including the Reumert for Dramatist of the Year 2007 for Helmer Hardcore and Survival Manual.

arouses thoughts and dreams in the men and jealousy in Emilie. A new idea occurs to Little Leo. A phrase in a book has impressed him: Do not make your life a journey between the past and the future. He wonders if it is possible to live between the ghosts of the past and the feverish dreams of the future. Can happiness be found by living in the now? Survival Manual is an atmospheric, character-driven drama about the pursuit of happiness and dreams of the future. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 2 MALE FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: JAKOB WEIS JAKOBWEIS@GMAIL.COM

Helmer Hardcore (2007) What happened after Nora walked out at the end of A Doll’s House, and the door slammed behind her? What became of Torvald Helmer, her husband? Helmer Hardcore is set in the present day. As in Ibsen’s play, Helmer is a bank manager. We never see Nora, though we do hear a single line from her on the phone. However, we do meet Nora’s friend Kirstine and a character referred to as the Doctor, based on Dr. Rank, the ailing friend of the family in A Doll’s House. Forsaken husband Helmer is the absolute centre of the play. He remains on stage from

start to finish. The set is the impressive lifestyle bathroom in Helmer’s present-day home where he holes up after Nora has left and disaster has struck. There is an au-pair, Svetlana from Ukraine, who looks after the children, runs the household and quite probably has designs on Nora’s place. But Helmer has another agenda: he wants to sort out the chaos within him. A man makes an unexpected and unwelcome appearance: Mr. Chinaman, an archetype to our European way of thinking and in Helmer’s mind, too, the aggressive alien rival who threatens Helmer’s position. Mr. Chinaman has also forged an unexpected alliance with Kirstine, who spies her chance to further her position. Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House over a century ago. Gender roles have changed since then; women are no longer tied to the home, and husbands are no longer the natural omnipotent masters of the house. Helmer is suffering a crisis but now another man steps into the bathroom: Helmer’s friend the Doctor, whom everybody thought was dead. He steps out of the sauna with a large Cuban cigar in his mouth to offer Helmer sympathy and perhaps his help. Helmer Hardcore is slated for London production in autumn 2015 by the international theatre company [Foreign Affairs]. ACTORS: 2 FEMALE, 3 MALE, 1 BOY FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: JAKOB WEIS JAKOBWEIS@GMAIL.COM

JA KO B WE IS

(B. 1970) JAKOB WEIS HAS WRIT TEN MORE THAN THIRT Y SCRIPTS SINCE HIS DEBUT IN 1992. HE CHAIRS THE JURY OF THE DRAMATISK DEBUT SCRIPT-WRITING COMPETITION AND TEACHES AT THE DANISH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PL AY WRITING. JAKOB WEIS HAS WRIT TEN FOR THE STAGE, THE CINEMA, RADIO, ANIMATION AND ELECTRONIC GAMES.

Helmer Hardcore JENS JØRN SPOT TAG IN HELMER HARDCORE BY JAKOB WEIS / DIRECTED BY PELLE KOPPEL / SET DESIGN BY NIKOL AJ HEISELBERG TRAP / TEATER V 2007 / PHOTO: TIMM VL ADIMIR

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(B. 1960) DRAMATIST, DIRECTOR AND COMIC STRIP ARTIST. NIKOLINE WERDELIN LEAPT TO PROMINENCE WITH HER POPULAR NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIP IN THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES AS AN UNERRING, HARD-HITTING OBSERVER OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE. SHE IS REGARDED AS ONE OF DENMARK’S LEADING PLAYWRIGHTS. TWICE WINNER OF THE REUMERT AWARD FOR DRAMATIST OF THE YEAR.

The titles of Nikoline Werdelin’s most celebrated comic strips, Café and Homo Metropolis, also apply to the first phase of her output as a dramatist: she penned and painted modern urbanites seldom far from a pavement café. Her earliest comic strips already manifest the clear depiction of person and setting and the succinctly captured remark that imbue her plays with such quality. Her work also contain a special mixture of humour and gravity: I am interested in placing light, laughter, humour and darkness, grief and tragedy as close to each other as possible, she says. The characters in her early plays have been described as narcissistic: contemporary human beings with wavering self-esteem challenged by love or indeed any kind of attachment to others. Since Martas tema / Martha’s Theme (2005) she has taken her plays into historical settings. Werdelin’s basic themes are love and the space of possibilities and impossibilities, but now she locates her plots in epochs where the dictates of society and the lack of freedom are apparent.

Natmandens datter / The Nightman’s Daughter (2006) An ambitious modern play in which the playwright manages to create an entire eighteenth-century universe. The writer’s extensive research shines through: The Nightman’s Daughter is full of accurate, witty details that imbue an imaginative comedy with genuine authenticity. Poverty-stricken, orphaned, illiterate maidservant Louise has to conceal her background in order to find work. Her father was one of Copenhagen’s nightmen, the caste that performed society’s most dishonourable, despised function: removing the city’s night

soil and disposing of the bodies of the city’s deceased. Louise works as a widow’s maid but her labours also include helping out at Frederik’s Hospital. That Louise works at Frederik’s Hospital is no coincidence, because the play was written for a Copenhagen summer company that plays in the courtyard of the buildings in which the hospital once lay. But it has been staged by several other companies in Denmark also and is one of the most prolifically produced dramas for years. Louise of the title is the hero of the piece. We also meet two sisters as they are reconciled after years of enmity and separation; a baker stricken by grief and overcome by

NIKO LINE WE RDE LIN

Nikoline Werdelin

insanity when his wife dies in childbirth; a young journeyman carpenter whose gambling finds him in debt to a loan shark of the type who lops off fingers and crushes knee-caps when people fail to pay up. The Nightman’s Daughter has a wealth of characters and a colourful plot. Its foundations in classic comedy are apparent, but its plot is more drastic than those of its precursors. As one critic wrote, A summer show that is both sensual and mean, bellicose and wonderfully funny. ACTORS: 3 FEMALE, 5 MALE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: IPR - INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING RIGHTS LTD, SISSI LIECHTENSTEIN, +44 (0)20 3305 5683, INFO@IPRLTD.CO.UK

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Selected Works Peter Asmussen Soli Deo Gloria - 2015 * Det Der eR/Wall – 2015 Døden er en anden slags musik/Death is Another Kind of Music – 2012 * Ingen møder nogen/Nobody Meets Anybody - 2010 * Alle hans gerninger/All His Deeds - 2003 *Forbrydelse/Crime - 2003 *Værelse med sol/A Sunny Room - 1997 *Isbrandt - 1997 Vold/Assault – 1995 *Dans med mig/Dance With Me - 1995

Anna Bro

Det Mørke Net/The DarkNet - 2015 Varmestuen/The Shelter - 2014 Spartacus -2013 Børn er dumme/Kids Are Stupid – 2012 * BCNU (for young audiences) - 2011 * Sandholm - 2007 Love! - 2006 Forstad / Suburb (cowriter Martin Lyngbo) - 2006 Jægergårdsgade - 2004

Joan Rang Christensen Wings - 2016 Lillys Danmarkshistorie / Lily’s History of Denmark (cowriter Daniel Wedel) - 2015 * I nat kommer krigen hjem/ Tonight the war comes home (cowriter Kristian Erhardsen) - 2015 The Falling Man - 2014 * Den hvide mand – en kompliceret kærlighedserklæring / The White Man - A Complicated Declaration of Love - 2011 69 - A rock theater concert (cowriter Jesper B. Karlsen) - 2008 Den forsvundne fuldmægtig /The Missing Clerk - 2008 * Hånden I hjertet / The Hand in the Heart - 2008

Andreas Garfield Elefantmanden/The Elephant Man (for young audiences) - 2014 Vi elsker thaidamer/We Love Thai - 2013 Eksil/Exile – 2013 Taasinge/Elvira Madigan & Sixten Sparre 2012

Drømmenes Rige/Kingdom of Dreams – 2011 Parasomnia – 2010 X-periment – 2008 En plads i mit hjerte/A Place in my Heart 2008 * Hjem kære hjem/Home Sweet Home - 2007 * Glashuset/The Glass House (for young audiences) - 2006

Kasper Hoff Frankenstein Genskabt/Frankenstein Recreated – 2013 Robin in the Hood (cowriter) - 2013 Stakkels Kenneth/Poor Kenneth - 2011 Mirakel/Miracle - 2008 Miraklet/The Miracle - 2007 Og Fanden tager de sidste/The Devil Take the Hindmost – 2007 De Små Marginaler/Tiny Differences – 2006 Spis Eller Bliv Spist, (Yeah!)/Eat or Be Eaten – 2006 Den Tredje Tango/The Third Tango - 2005 Smagen af Jern/The Taste of Iron - 2000

Kirstine K. Høgsbro Barselstuen 2.0/The Lying-in Room 2.0 2016 Alle Elsker Kærlighed/Everyone Loves Love – 2014 Hvor er du egentlig grim, når du er liderlig/ You’re So Ugly When You’re Horny – 2014 Lugter det lidt af lykke?/A Taste of Happiness? - 2013

Julie Maj Jakobsen Daemon/Demon - 2015 7 – 9 – 13/Touch Wood (for young audiences) – 2014 Det Dybeste Sted/At Bottom (opera libretto) – 2013 * Fucking Fattig/So fucking Poor (for young audiences) - 2013 Honningkagebyen/Gingerbread town - 2012 Ødipus på Kreta/Oedipus of Crete, 2012 Forsamlingshuset/Village Hall – 2011 Voksne kan også blive bange/Grown-ups Can Be Scared, Too (for young audiences) – 2011 Fanø - 2010 Lidt før Søndermarken/The Park on the Hill – 2009

Erling Jepsen Hovedløs sommer/Lost Heads - 2013 Med venlig deltagelse/Condolances - 2007 Manden fra Estland/The Man from Estonia - 2004 Anna og tyngdeloven/Anna and Gravity 2001 * Manden som bad om lov til at være her på jorden/The Man Who Asked for Permission to Exist - 2000 Snefnugget og øjeæblet/Snowflake and the Apple of Her Eye - 1999 Muhammad Ali svigter aldrig/Muhammad Ali Never Fails - 1997 Når bare det kommer fra hjertet/From Bottom of Your Heart - 1995 Elskende i et fodgængerfelt/Making Love on a Zebra Crossing - 1992 Næste år bliver øllet bedre/The Beer Will Be Better Next Year - 1991 * Med dame på og hele lortet/Out on a Heavy Date - 1990 * En farlig mand/A Dangerous Man - 1987

Line Knutzon Gruppe 8/Group 8 – 2014 * Den luft andre indånder/ The Air Others Breathe - 2009 * Håndværkerne/The Builders – 2008 Guitaristernes jul/The Guitarists’ Christmas – 2008 * Guitaristerne/The Guitarists - 2006 Torben Toben/Torben Two-legs – 2000 * Snart kommer tiden/The time is coming - 1998 * Først bli’r man jo født/First You’re Born 1994 * Det er så det nye/The Latest Thing - 1993 De usynlige venner/The Invisible Friends 1992 * Splinten i hjertet/A Splinter in the Heart - 1991

Christian Lollike * Living Dead – 2016 * All my Dreams Come True - 2013 * Skakten/The Shaft - 2013 * Kagefabrikken/The Cookie Factory - 2013 Manifest 2083/Manifesto 2083 - 2012 * Det normale liv/Normal Life - 2011 * Fremtidens historie/The History of the Future - 2009

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De smukkeste mennesker/Beautiful People - 2004 * Parlamentet/The Parliament - 2003 Thoratorium (opera-libretto) - 2002 En sidste sang/The Last Song - 2002 * Ci-vi-li-sa-tion/Ci-vi-li-za-tion - 2000

Tomas Lagermand Lundme

Vivian Nielsen

Folkeskolereformen/The Schools Reform 2015 Fiaskomonologerne/The Fiasco Monologues – 2014 * Tre kvinder og Anne Lise Petersen/ Three Women and Anne Lise Petersen - 2014 Trofast/Faithful – 2014 Rindal - 2013 * Hate crime/ Hate Crime - a love story - 2012 Træt af kunst/Tired of Art – 2009 * Saunaen/The Sauna – 2008 Solidaritet/Solidarity - 2007 Dueslag/Pigeonhole – 2006

No Planet B - 2015 Anne Marie Gift Carl-Nielsen/Mrs Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen – 2015 Krøyers yderste nat/Krøyer’s Extreme Night – 2014 * Krydstogt/The Cruise - 2013 Hjorten/The Hart – 2009 * Jeanne/Joan - 2008 Forføreren/The Seducer – 2008 Breaking the Waves (after David Pirie/Lars von Trier/Peter Asmussen) – 2007 Brandes! - 2006 En ikke ubetydelig historie/A Not Insignificant Story – 2003

Line Mørkeby Grinet & Døden/Death and the Laughter - 2015 Når det skærer i hjertet/When Your Heart’s Cut Too (for young audiences) - 2014 Perkercabaret/Nignog Cabaret – 2015 Bye Bye Yue Yue - 2014 Das Unheimliche - 2013 * Lykke Bjørn/Joy - 2010 Jeg mig fuck dig/Me Fuck You (for young audiences) – 2012 Valkyrien/The Valkyrie – 2010 6 P LR K/PRON OR WYFM (for young audiences) – 2008 Musical (for young audiences) - 2008

Thomas Markmann Små forstyrrelser/Ripples – 2015 Beton/Concrete - 2014 Zappa - 2014 Forever Young (radio play) - 2013 Røverne/The Robbers (after Schiller) – 2013 * Brøl/Roar - 2013 Oh Romeo - 2011 * Den arabiske solsort/The Arabian Blackbird - 2010 * Far, far krigsmand/He Was a Soldier - 2010 * Død mands kvinde/Twenty Minutes After Death - 2009

Nielsen Mediets teater/ Theatre of the Medium – a quintology: I. * The Language of Hope – 2009 II. * De europæiske medier/The European Media – 2012 III. * De elskende/The Lovers – 2013 IV. The Justice V. Markedet (er ikke noget sted)/The Market (is no Place) - 2015 The Language of Freedom 2004-08

Aleksa Okanovic VHS versus Betamax - 2016 Testosteron - 2016 Dette er ikke et bryllup/This Is Not A Wedding – 2013 Confessions - 2011 * Modern Life! - 2008 Fyrsten/The Prince – 2008 Wunschtraum - 2006 *Diamond/Dust/Shoes - 2006 Restaurant d’Amour - 2003

Jokum Rohde Kong Arthur/King Arthur – 2016 Dukkelise/Baby Doll – 2013 * Manson – 2011 Hvem myrdede Regitze Rio/Who killed Regitze Rio? (A burlesque murder mystery) – 2009 Rød Oresti/Red Orestia (after Aeschylus) – 2008 * Darwins testatemente/Darwin´s Will – 2008 Thor – 2006 * Pinocchios aske/Pinocchios´ Ashes – 2005 Kirken/The Church (after L.F. Céline) - 2003 * Nero - 1998

Astrid Saalbach Frisørerne/The Hairdressers – 2014 Lille Soldat/Little Soldier - 2013 * Rødt og grønt/Red and Green - 2010 * Pietà - 2007 * Verdens ende/The End of the World – 2003 Det kolde hjerte/The Cold Heart - 2002 Aske til aske, støv til støv/Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust - 1998 * Det velsignede barn/The Blessed Child - 1996 * Morgen og aften/Morning And Evening - 1993

Dansetimen/The Dancing Lesson - 1986 Den usynlige by/The Invisible City – 1986

Lærke Sanderhoff Traditionen Tro/According to Tradition – 2014 Alting mødes/Everything Will Meet – 2014 Verdens lykkeligste folk/The Happiest People in the World – 2014 Lille Danmark/Little Denmark (co-written with Søren Balle) – 2012 Dagens ret/Today’s Menu – 2012 Vildt voldsomt venskab/Friendship – 2011 Hjardemål – 2010 Merlin - 2009 Klumpfisken/The Sunfish – 2008

Thomas Vinterberg * Kollektivet/Commune – 2011 * Begravelsen/The Funeral - 2010 * Festen/The Celebration (stage adaptation by Bo hr. Hansen of Vinterberg and Rukov’s screenplay) – 2002 * Festen (stage adaptation by David Eldridge) – 2004

Jakob Weis Den onde lykke/Evil Fortune - 2016 Døden i Venedig – Drengen i Venedig/The death in Venice – The Boy in Venice - 2016 Von Trier – Persona non Grata - 2015 Casper Christensen Komplekset/The Casper Christensen Complex - 2013 Bang og Betty/Berlin, my Love – 2012 Diva min/My Diva - 2012 Udslet Hornsleth/Erase Hornsleth - 2011 Pitbull - 2009 * Helmer Hardcore - 2007 Håndbog i overlevelse/Survival Manual 2006 Extrem Sport/Extreme Sports - 2003 Pelsjægerne/The Fur Hunters - 2001

Nikoline Werdelin Visen om Sidsel/The Ballad About Sidsel 2015 Pigen, der rejste sin vej/The Girl Who Upped and Left (for young audiences) – 2007 Natmandens datter/The Nightman’s Daughter - 2006 Martas Tema/Marta’s Theme – 2005 Akvariefuglen/The Aquarium Bird - 2005 * Boblerne i bækken/The Robin-Anthems 2002 Mine to søstre/My Two Sisters - 2001 Den blinde maler/The Blind Painter – 1999 Liebhaverne/In the Market – 1997

* ENGLISH TRANSL ATION AVAIL ABLE

S E LEC T E D WO RKS

* Kosmisk Frygt eller den dag Brad Pitt fik paranoia/ Cosmic Fear or The Day Brad Pitt Got Paranoia – 2009 Nathan - 2007 * Service Selvmord/Service Suicide - 2006 * Underværket/Work of Wonder – 2005

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Support Schemes

Literary Translation Fund

Sample Translation Fund

Performing Arts Fund

The Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Literary Project Funding’s Translation Fund provides support to foreign publishing houses that publish works translated from Danish and foreign theatre companies staging Danish plays in translation.

Foreign translators, theatres, and publishers may apply for support to finance sample translations of Danish literature.

The Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Performing Arts Project Funding aims, among other things, to support, promote and raise the profile of Danish performing arts internationally. The committee supports activities, that promote and create awareness of contemporary Danish drama, including travel expenses, readings etc. Application can be sent in by either partner in a project.

Support is provided for works of drama, fiction, general works of non-fiction, comics/graphic novels, and children’s literature translated by professional translators. Applications for support can only be made after the applicant has acquired the rights to the work and signed a contract with the translator. THERE ARE THREE ANNUAL APPLICATION DEADLINES. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND DEADLINES VISIT: WWW.KUNST.DK/ENGLISH/FUNDING/SUBSIDIES/ TILSKUD/ TRANSL ATION-FUND/

THERE IS NO APPLICATION DEADLINE, AND APPLICATIONS WILL BE PROCESSED AS QUICKLY AS PRACTICABLE. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND DEADLINES VISIT: WWW.KUNST.DK/ENGLISH/FUNDING/SUBSIDIES/ TILSKUD/ TRANSL ATION-FUND/

THERE ARE TWO ANNUAL DEADLINES, AS WELL AS AN OPPORTUNIT Y TO APPLY FOR SMALLER PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES ON A CONTINUOUS BASIS. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND DEADLINES VISIT: WWW.KUNST.DK/ENGLISH/FUNDING/SUBSIDIES/ TILSKUD/PERFORMING-ARTS-INTERNATIONALACTIVITIES/

Organisations

Danish Arts Foundation & Danish Arts Agency The Danish Arts Foundation works to promote the arts in Denmark and Danish art abroad. The Danish Agency for Culture is the adminstrative arm of The Danish Arts Foundation.

Embassy of Denmark, London The culture section at The Danish Embassy works to promote Danish art in the UK, and forms cultural links between Britain and Denmark.

The Danish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild (founded in 1906) is an association for theatre, radio, television and film scriptwriters. It has approximately 300 members.