THE LADY

Independent production about the mythology of Lady Macbeth. A visual movement from solitude to power. The show played first time at Artisten, Gothenburg on Dec 14th 2011.
Created and performed by Maja Clementsen


Visuals by Joakim Lindberg

Thanks to Högskolan för Scen och Musik/Göteborg, Per Nordin, Peter Melin, Sofia Landström

LOOK AT ME NOW HERE I AM #2

VISUALS BY IOANNIS LELAKIS

DYING IS FUN....(Vera Nabokov)

"DYING IS FUN.....(Vera Nabokov)"

A show exploring the supposed personal struggle growing inside Vera Nabokov as her dying husband, the famous writer, asks her to burn the unfinished manuscript of his last novel; "The Original of Laura."
Having spend all her married life transcribing Nabokov's manuscripts and acting inspiration as well as non-inspiration for his female characters, Vera plunges into a deep moral and personal dilemma. The novels are partly her and most of the works are dedicated to her. Burning it would be betraying herself - not doing it would be betraying her husband's dying wish.

Vera locks away the 138 little handwritten index cards that is "The Original of Laura" in a safe. For more than 20 years, she refrains from deciding upon anything, roaming about in the shadowy crimescene realm of the deepest corners of her mind.

Of course the contents of this show are purely fiction and loosely based on the events following the death of Vladimir Nabokov in 1977. The focal point of this show is visualizing and staging the deep mind of a widow being haunted by the creatures of her dead husband's imagination. These becoming an inescapable curse of love and hate for the fictive women that shaped her life - and whose lives she shared and inspired.

Played at Norwegian Theatre Academy, January 2010
Created by Jon Skulberg and Maja Clementsen Hansen
Performers: Maja Clementsen Hansen, Ingrid Rusten, Karen Tømte 
Tutor: Reinart Mithassel


Photos by Jon Skulberg

 

Nostalgia #3: TYREFÆGTER

"TYREFÆGTER"

Played at BASTARDEN, TeaterHUSET - June 18 - 21st 2008

Director: Mads Schaltz
Actors: Magnus Christensen, Piet Gitz-Johansen, Maja Clementsen Hansen, Kristine Elmedahl Johansen
Lightning Design: Kristoffer Lumbye
Playwrights: Emilie Bendix, Nicholaj Siltan, Sarah Otte, Pernille Jespersen, Julie Kirkegaard 



This performance event was curated by DRAMATORIET (an open lab for upcoming playwrights in KBH).
Each playwright had been given the task of producing a short text dealing with the theme Bullfighting (Tyrefægtning). The 5 texts would then be given to a team, consisting of 4 actors and a director, that would stage a show based on these works - adjusting and rewriting the drafts in close collaboration with the writers.

The five pieces varied from each other quite a lot in both genre, style and length;  some dealing directly with the act of bullfighting, others with the associations or contexts of bullfighting, still others only touched upon the theme, vaguely hinting at the ritual of a death match between man and beast.

The show required the actors to take on several parts, as the action moved from dreamy ritualism, to a deadly cartoonish tango, through kitchen sink drama and slapstick comedy, ending up on a death bed overlooking the bullfighting arena.
It dealt quite thoroughly with the mythologies linked to bullfighting as a social event, and how the themes of this often infamous ritual seems to reflect the choices and behavioural patterns of our daily interactions with the people surrounding us.

http://www.teater-huset.dk/newsite/index.php

LOOK AT ME NOW, HERE I AM

"LOOK AT ME NOW, HERE I AM" - played June 7-9th 2011 at Black Box (NTA)

Director: Joao Garcia Miguel
Text: Gertrude Stein
Actors: Jessica Berg, Kyuja Bae, Mikkel Rasmussen Hofplass, Liv Phlug, Piet Gitz-Johansen, Maja Clementsen Hansen, Josephine Kylén-Collins, Lars August Jørgensen

Scenography, Costumes and Light : Sarah F. Jahn, Simona Bieksaite

".... a complet change has come about. People no longer thinks as they were thinking. But no one knows it. No one recognizes it. No one really knows it except the creators. The others are to busy with the business life. They cannot feel what happened. But the creator. The real creator. Does nothing. He is not concerned with the activity of existing. He is not active. That is to say as he is not concerned with the activity of existence he is sensitive enough to understand how people are thinking. He is not interested in knowing how they where thinking. His sensitive feeling is concerned in understanding how people are live as they are living"


- Gertrude Stein


DIRECTOR'S COMMENT:
"This performance deals with the reasons for being an artist in the present days. It is also about someone who has a limited vision of the world and feels an urge to step unto the social arena as an individual. It is a performative portray of a person with a need to transform life into something positive, exciting and mysterious.
(...)The main source of inspiration for this performance is Gertrude Stein and especially her literary portrays of the painters Picasso and Matisse

Photo by Sarah Funch Jahn 2011


www.hiof.no/scenekunst
http://www.joaogarciamiguel.com/