The Memoirs of a Breadman part 2: Ellis Iland

The Memoirs of a Breadman part 2: Ellis Iland (SIC) is a play/visual audio play by Johan Harstad. The play consists of long monologues as well as parts with traditional dialogue.

As in The Memoirs of a Breadman part 1: Akapulco and The Memoirs of a Breadman part 3: Mattrhorn the title of Ellis Iland also is misspelled. In this play the audience meets several of the characters of Akapulco anew, but the action has been moved 40-50 years back in time, and takes place in New York City in the years of 1905-1916.

In the main part we find Dave Barker, the bookkeeper’s son from Bremen who arrives in New York the summer of 1899, settling in Downtown Manhattan in hope for a job. Here he meets Rosalita Martinez, an already notorious woman who will later be his wife, either he wants to or not. The parents of Rosalita monopolises the waste management services and long traditions in navigating the sewage systems underneath the streets.

Slowly, but surely Barker is forced from the dreams of bookkeeping into the sewage. Soon it becomes clear to him that the conditions aboveground and sub-ground are about to become scarily similar. In addition there are signs the local baker has too much power in the neighbourhood, and that there are uncomfortable connections between the long lines outside of the bakery, the increasingly clean sewage tunnels and the sudden blossoming of available flats in the city, for sale for a price too high, from the realtor of Martinez & Co.

In Ellis Iland we also get to know the character Stoklitsky, a tone-deaf, untalented Ukrainian musician who has come to New York to break through as a composer. His idea is to compose a major work consisting exclusively of fifths. Stoklitsky speaks broken English and his lines are written in helpless, broken Norwegian, causing misunderstandings and involuntary comic moments.

The character Dave Barker is the man the man character of the first part, Akapulco, referred to as The Breadman.

The Memoirs of a Breadman is an expansive work which has grown through several years of writing, workshops and test performances/previews.

The Memoirs of a Breadman was nominated for The Norwegian Ibsen Award AKA The Ibsen Prize 2012.

Sources:

Wikipedia, wikipedia.org, 30.06.2011, http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brødmannens_memoarer_del_2:_Ellis_Iland

Sceneweb on The Norwegian Ibsen Award AKA The Ibsen Prize, http://www.sceneweb.no/en/award/11725/The_Norwegian_Ibsen_Award_AKA_The_Ibsen_Prize