The Hedda Award 2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The stories of our time make the strongest impressions when they, like the fairytales of the past, gives room for reflection and recognition. This is such a story. In the way the art of the moment is stretched in time and challenged by space, one can barely see how the smallest analogue or technological detail could have been let go of.

With a miniature world at the core, the winner allows tiny parts to grow into a decentralised monumental work surrounding memories of and form our own time; painful, beautiful and irrevocable. And for every light diode and every musical anchor, the spectator grows increasingly connected to the piece's irreversible vision.

With the precise fingerspitzengefühl of a musical conductor, the director lets lighting and sound designers, musicians, photographers, visual artists and technicians carry a documentary reconstruction with theatre at its fundament, a deepgoing art work about ourselves at a given time: July 22, 2011.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The best direction award goes to a seamless, tightly woven production, in which the theatre's artistic expressions are united in a masterful visual, musical and theatrical composition. It is grand and uncomfortable, recognisable, and intimate.

In the award winner's direction, we meet actors with a particular stage expression and movement pattern, all of it developed into a shared, rhythmic teamwork. From a seemingly realistic form, the performance moves gradually towards an expressive, absurd universe. From the intimate and close to the main stage's most broad, deep and powerful effects.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

When this year's winner contributes to presenting his relevant character and the text with scary topicality, it is because he lets doubt and faiths literally whip the self-deception and self-recognition until he draws blood.

Fever-heated and never resting, not even when he sleeps, he is perfect in the realisation of what seems as much a marathon as a nightmare. In the character's maniacal flight from himself and the thought of his own actions, euphoria and bottomless despair make up the extremities of the palette. Between these, the winner balances the text with intense physical activity, in a visual frame in which not a drop of sweat, not a twitch or a burst blood vessel can be hidden for the spectator. The camera lens is as claustrophobic and ruthless as the void the character stares into, masterfully interpreted by an actor who grabs hold of the challenge with great courage.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

This year's winner has nerve and pulse, and she masters the role with intensity from the start until the end. With the tiniest details, she captures the rhythm of the text and the strength of the playwright's narrative power. The stile is coherent, both when it is quite quiet and when the voice rises to a louder level. The movements are tiny or a bit more visible, the voice whispers, wheezes, but also calmly tells a story, the body is stiff-legged and heavy, but also upstanding and light. She is the marvellous storyteller who sees the long lines in a story of people who loved each other, and she is a towering force in the performance.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

Combining tempo, silent moments, action and room for the audience's own examinations, is a demanding task. The winner has made it. In an exciting, varied stage design, involving several rooms and landscapes, we are brought into a strange world, in part recognisable and in part surprising. This is a performance that accepts small people's need to be involved without being invaded. To be led further and further into imagination and the game, while being allowed to participate for themselves.

Almost without words, but filled with body language and movement, the ensemble bring sus along on a little more than half an hour's journey, switching between the sensuousness of dance and the narrative art of theatre, all of it clad in an exquisite visual and auditive whole, in which large amounts of sticky, crackling and twisty tape makes up an important ingredient.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The winner in the best production for youth category is about the good-hearted will we all have to do something, but where most of us fail in actually doing something. It is a production about the difficulties in uniting our ideals and good wishes with democracy and majority decisions. The production is political, satirical, parodical and at time hyper-realistic. And it makes us ill at ease, embarrassed of ourselves and our lack of courage. It laughs at us, and we join in the laughter, in what we think is a fictional universe.

We rarely see the theatre treat a topical issue in a better way than this. And we rarely experience that political theatre is more involving. The production is innovative, daring and provocative - and it is told in a way that reaches youth, and everybody else, very well.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The best stage design award goes to a production in which the action, content, themes and visual look melt together into a complete whole. The piece is deeply existential, and the stage design adds an extra experience, both shaking one up and inviting to silent reflection at the same time.

Here, each and every spectator is forced to think through his or her own life, his or her own choices - and the place love and reconciliation have in it all. Placed in each their lowered niche, the spectators become silent observers from the kingdom of death, and from this grave marker perspective, a large room for new reflection on the content of a complex text opens.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

The characters of the nominated in the best supporting actor category are all performers within masculine, suffocating parameters. Even if comedy simmers beneath the surface, they all, each in his way, contribute very much to the mysterious fear the different performances are characterised by. The one who impressed The Hedda Jury the most in this regard shows, like the rest of the ensemble, an intense presence in which every twitch at the side of his mouth becomes significant. He may seem to flatter, but the audience soon realises that he is also fatally dangerous. As a sadistic cat's play with the mouse, he drags out the main person's suffering.

This year's winner creates an involving, comical and deeply human character, in a role calling for shivers after having witnessed it.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

A supporting role is a significant part of most theatre production. It is about co-acting and to contribute to the quality of the performance. The nominated within the female category have most different roles, but whichever time perspective and age, they share some traits: They are all searching, they are vulnerable, and they are driven by their erotic forces. They stumble between the old phenomena"sense and sensibility" and cynicism, with a dose of egotism mixed in.

The winner shines in expressing her role's vanity, aggression, and battle to be loved, physically or artistically - she would best like both. She stands forward as the diva she plays in the performance of juicy, tender lines, but also in the unsaid, through her looks. There is plenty of spite and lusciousness in this woman, a timeless character from the late 1800es.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

A text for the stage can be so many things: The script by a playwright, a disposition for improvisation on a theme, or the adaptation of an already existing classic. The category is as wide as performing arts in itself.

The best texts for the stage liberate energy, force and playfulness in the venue, with the actors, during rehearsals and in the auditorium, during the performance. The best texts for the stage show us the world in a new was, while pointing out a direction for the artists.

The best text for the stage this year is such as work. It is, in its way, both a guideline for use and a work of art, while it is made in collaboration between the director, the dramaturge and the actors. They have moved into a classic while making it their own - and our.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

A text for the stage can be so many things: The script by a playwright, a disposition for improvisation on a theme, or the adaptation of an already existing classic. The category is as wide as performing arts in itself.

The best texts for the stage liberate energy, force and playfulness in the venue, with the actors, during rehearsals and in the auditorium, during the performance. The best texts for the stage show us the world in a new was, while pointing out a direction for the artists.

The best text for the stage this year is such as work. It is, in its way, both a guideline for use and a work of art, while it is made in collaboration between the director, the dramaturge and the actors. They have moved into a classic while making it their own - and our.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

A text for the stage can be so many things: The script by a playwright, a disposition for improvisation on a theme, or the adaptation of an already existing classic. The category is as wide as performing arts in itself.

The best texts for the stage liberate energy, force and playfulness in the venue, with the actors, during rehearsals and in the auditorium, during the performance. The best texts for the stage show us the world in a new was, while pointing out a direction for the artists.

The best text for the stage this year is such as work. It is, in its way, both a guideline for use and a work of art, while it is made in collaboration between the director, the dramaturge and the actors. They have moved into a classic while making it their own - and our.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

All of us who work in the theatre know that our profession, our art form, is a practical discipline, or rather - a collection of different, complementary practical disciplines. And that the unifying of all these disciplines, when they are brought together into a higher unity, is what creates the art. In this unifying, what directors and others like to call the conception, another term is central, and that is theory - the exercise of reflecting on what theatre is and what theatre can be, given specific circumstances. Not least, it is about seeing where the theatre stands in relation to its own history. Which are the expressions carried by tradition, which are the new ones we now see, and not least, how do we think theatre will look in the future?

This year, The Hedda Committee wants to honour two very central figures in modern Norwegian theatre history, who have both, each from their perspective and with each their role, used their entire adult lives in searching for this: Where is theatre, performing arts, going - what happens, and how can we best convey to the audience what the most interesting right now is?

The first of them is to be regarded as a father figure. As early as the 1970es, he travelled across Europe and was able to observe near all the new tendencies at the international festival arena, of which he also diligently reported to the daily press. Eventually, he was seated at the institute for theatre studies at The University of Bergen, and this was where his work really got significant. There are many dramaturgs, directors, artistic directors, actors and other theatre practicians who found all or at least part of their education at what almost became his "school" in Bergen. The list is long, and it contains central names in newer Norwegian theatre history.

Among others, it also contains the name of the second person we wish to honour here tonight. And also in this, a look at the international arena is central. The thought that something happened out there, something lacking at home, first materialised in a festival - Bergen International Theatre Festival - and later in a garage, Teatergarasjen, where a curatorial sound judgment and incomparable international knowledge could delight the Norwegian audiences while challenging and inspiring Norwegian performing artists. Few Norwegian theatre venues, if any, become as directly part of contemporary European theatre history as the arena this man created. Or, as these two men created, one of them standing on the shoulders of the other. Today, there is a symbiotic relationship between the theatre theoretician and the theatre practician, bringing them together into a higher unity.

It is with great joy and gratitude that The Hedda Committee gives Honorary Hedda 2020 to Professor Knut Ove Arntzen and artistic director Sven Åge Birkeland.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

All of us who work in the theatre know that our profession, our art form, is a practical discipline, or rather - a collection of different, complementary practical disciplines. And that the unifying of all these disciplines, when they are brought together into a higher unity, is what creates the art. In this unifying, what directors and others like to call the conception, another term is central, and that is theory - the exercise of reflecting on what theatre is and what theatre can be, given specific circumstances. Not least, it is about seeing where the theatre stands in relation to its own history. Which are the expressions carried by tradition, which are the new ones we now see, and not least, how do we think theatre will look in the future?

This year, The Hedda Committee wants to honour two very central figures in modern Norwegian theatre history, who have both, each from their perspective and with each their role, used their entire adult lives in searching for this: Where is theatre, performing arts, going - what happens, and how can we best convey to the audience what the most interesting right now is?

The first of them is to be regarded as a father figure. As early as the 1970es, he travelled across Europe and was able to observe near all the new tendencies at the international festival arena, of which he also diligently reported to the daily press. Eventually, he was seated at the institute for theatre studies at The University of Bergen, and this was where his work really got significant. There are many dramaturgs, directors, artistic directors, actors and other theatre practicians who found all or at least part of their education at what almost became his "school" in Bergen. The list is long, and it contains central names in newer Norwegian theatre history.

Among others, it also contains the name of the second person we wish to honour here tonight. And also in this, a look at the international arena is central. The thought that something happened out there, something lacking at home, first materialised in a festival - Bergen International Theatre Festival - and later in a garage, Teatergarasjen, where a curatorial sound judgment and incomparable international knowledge could delight the Norwegian audiences while challenging and inspiring Norwegian performing artists. Few Norwegian theatre venues, if any, become as directly part of contemporary European theatre history as the arena this man created. Or, as these two men created, one of them standing on the shoulders of the other. Today, there is a symbiotic relationship between the theatre theoretician and the theatre practician, bringing them together into a higher unity.

It is with great joy and gratitude that The Hedda Committee gives Honorary Hedda 2020 to Professor Knut Ove Arntzen and artistic director Sven Åge Birkeland.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

Sometimes we need performances that are almost too much. That the will to take a risk, artistic ambitions, playfulness, and sobriety go together in such an elevated unity, that the spectators after are unable to understand what hit them.

The winner in the production of the year category is characterised by such sensational actors' work that we are unusually entertained and emotionally involved. At the same time, the use of unusual performing venues and a compiled aesthetic constantly remind us that it is acting we see. In this range between proximity and distance, a febrile, thought-provoking work is created, treating a number of highly topical themes from the time we live in: It lets us reflect on what drives young men to justify their violent tendencies, and discusses through clever use of video what theatre is and can be.

The combination of an unusually coordinated and energetic artistic team, inspired director's choices, topical issues and courageous artistic exploration are the reasons the production of the year award goes to Raskolnikov - The Norwegian Theatre and Det Vestnorske Teateret.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020

With this year's award, the jury wants to honour an artist for his distinct performing arts project, realised with consequence in a form developed into what one must almost call a personal genre. With inspiration from one of the twentieth century's great playwrights, among others, and with a particular emphasis on the theatre's auditive potential, the award winner has combined artistic innovation and political engagement, as is clearly documented in this season's prominent work: 03:08:38, a stage and auditive examination of the three hours when the political terror came to Norway.

The special artistic achievement award this year goes to Tore Vagn Lid for the artistic direction of the project 03:08.38 - States of Emergency - Transiteatret-Bergen in collaboration with Det Vestnorske Teateret and Vega Scene.

SOURCE:

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 21.09.2020, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2020