The Hedda Award 2014

Eirik Hegdal, Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices for music and sound design for Hundre Hemmeligheter* (One Hundred Secrets) by Anne Marit Sæther, directed by Kjersti Haugen and Anne Marit Sæther, produced by Cirka Teater, Trøndelag Theatre, The Norwegian Touring Theatre and Trondheim Voices/the jazz centre Midtnorsk Jazzsenter:

"In a performance in which the special emphasis is on the sensuous, musical and experience-rich, it is obvious that music, sound and the performance of songs are to play on the same team as the narrative and visual and to contribute to a totality. But it is not often that we get to experience such an innovative and at the same time as successful solution as represented by this year's award winner.

Newly written music performed by five singers who almost become part of the stage design, and who with their voices and individual sound controls improvise and manipulate a musical backdrop in real time, contribute to making this performance a sensuous experience among the rarest.

This year's best audiovisual design award goes to Eirik Hegdal, Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices."

*Not yet translated into the English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.

Eirik Hegdal, Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices for music and sound design for Hundre Hemmeligheter* (One Hundred Secrets) by Anne Marit Sæther, directed by Kjersti Haugen and Anne Marit Sæther, produced by Cirka Teater, Trøndelag Theatre, The Norwegian Touring Theatre and Trondheim Voices/the jazz centre Midtnorsk Jazzsenter:

"In a performance in which the special emphasis is on the sensuous, musical and experience-rich, it is obvious that music, sound and the performance of songs are to play on the same team as the narrative and visual and to contribute to a totality. But it is not often that we get to experience such an innovative and at the same time as successful solution as represented by this year's award winner.

Newly written music performed by five singers who almost become part of the stage design, and who with their voices and individual sound controls improvise and manipulate a musical backdrop in real time, contribute to making this performance a sensuous experience among the rarest.

This year's best audiovisual design award goes to Eirik Hegdal, Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices."

*Not yet translated into the English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.

Eirik Hegdal, Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices for music and sound design for Hundre Hemmeligheter* (One Hundred Secrets) by Anne Marit Sæther, directed by Kjersti Haugen and Anne Marit Sæther, produced by Cirka Teater, Trøndelag Theatre, The Norwegian Touring Theatre and Trondheim Voices/the jazz centre Midtnorsk Jazzsenter:

"In a performance in which the special emphasis is on the sensuous, musical and experience-rich, it is obvious that music, sound and the performance of songs are to play on the same team as the narrative and visual and to contribute to a totality. But it is not often that we get to experience such an innovative and at the same time as successful solution as represented by this year's award winner.

Newly written music performed by five singers who almost become part of the stage design, and who with their voices and individual sound controls improvise and manipulate a musical backdrop in real time, contribute to making this performance a sensuous experience among the rarest.

This year's best audiovisual design award goes to Eirik Hegdal, Asle Karstad and Trondheim Voices."

*Not yet translated into the English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.

Tyra Tønnessen for the direction of Ekte kjærlighet* (True Love). Freely based on Camilla Collett by Tyra Tønnessen, produced by Agder Theatre and The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, produced by Trøndelag Theatre:

"Good direction demands a clear idea. It demands a coherent concept. It demands a readable, unique and accessible performance expression for just this concept. The director has to grab hold of the material, knead it and shape it. Then the first reading rehearsal comes along, and the process needs to start over, for now as joint work. If the concept doesn't reach the actors, into them, it will never reach the audience.

This is no simple process. Friction creates heat. In the melting pot the rehearsal period may be the director's ideas are tested, at the same time as the play and the roles are handed over to the actors.

The recipient of this year's direction award demonstrates a strong will. Her productions document thorough and distinct work, control over the totality as well as the details, whether the direction is adjusted to the text or the text shaped according to the direction's idea.

This year the direction award is given to an instructor not for one, but two, works, which together prove the range of the director's ambitions and competence.

This year's best direction award goes to Tyra Tønnessen."

*Not yet translated into the English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.

Vidar Magnussen for the role of the M. C in Shockheaded Peter by Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott, directed by Erik Ulfsby, produced by The Norwegian Theatre

"One of the truly difficult assignments an actor may have is to enter an agreement with the audience to play on the same team. This is demanding, because an open proposal will swiftly be turned down by the auditorium. In this exercise one needs more than a solid talent. The actor has to balance between his professional knowledge and his professional skill. A not at all small musical sense of timing is also a good assistant.

This two-way communication between stage and auditorium, plus scene presence in interaction with the other performers, constitutes an extraordinary difficult theatrical balance act without a security net. This year's award winner performed this demanding act steady as a mountain.

This year's best leading actor award goes to Vidar Magnussen."

Mariann Hole for the role of Lulu in Lulu. Pandora's Box - A Monster Tragedy by Frank Wedekind, directed by Victoria Meirik, produced by The National Theatre:

"Some find that the best performances are dependent on what is called charisma. A better term is energy, the visible energy onstage. The performances of all the nominated for the best leading actress award are characterised by such energy, and the control of it.

The theatre mirrors society. Leading female roles are often about defining one's own identity in a world where men are way too willing to do it for you. To be an actor is also about being seen. The character is created by the actor, but can only be read in the glance of the audience.

This year's Hedda Award winner made just this play into art. Her character doesn't just act on her attractiveness, she acts on her consciousness of her role as desired. She creates an identity based on the glance of men and of the audience. She explores her freedom through insisting on it.

It is not herself she undresses. It is us, as she forces us to become conscious of our defining eye.

The best leading actress award of the year goes to Mariann Hole."

Hundre Hemmeligheter* (One Hundred Secrets) by Anne Marit Sæther, directed by Kjersti Haugen and Anne Marit Sæther, produced by Cirka Teater, Trøndelag Theatre, The Norwegian Touring Theatre and Trondheim Voices/the jazz centre Midtnorsk Jazzsenter:

"The best production for children and youth award covers a wide and open field. There is necessarily a great difference between productions for the smallest children and the youth approaching life as adults. This year's winner addresses the youth, but at the same time, through a simple narrative effect, manages to describe the stages in a young life, from childhood to youth.

Through the merging of a fairytale-like fable and everyday life we are brought along on a journey through childhood and take part in events having shaped the child's mind and attitudes towards the moment when a crisis has to be handled - not by an uncomprehending child, but a reflected youth. Such a performance, with existential sombreness describing a child in development, is rare fare in Norwegian theatre.

The best production for children and youth award goes to Hundre hemmeligheter* (One Hundred Secrets)."

*Not yet translated into the English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.

Bård Lie Thorbjørnsen for costumes and stage design for The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, directed by Tyra Tønnessen, produced by Trøndelag Theatre:

"Henrik Ibsen's detailed stage directions testify that one of the foremost playwrights in the world knew that on a theatre stage the things, too, speak to us. Sometimes they confide us more than what the lines are able to tell us.

The recipient of the best costume design and stage design award proves that casting roles and creating an environment within which the action may take place at its best is about engaging the objects in dialogue. The winner lets the costume design and stage design breathe life into the action, through letting them reveal and hint at underlying, hidden motives - and as such, contributing to drive the performance forward.

This year's best stage design/costume design award goes to Bård Lie Thorbjørnsen."

Alan Lucien Øyen and Andrew Wale for the script for Coelacanth, directed by Alan Lucien Øyen, produced by Winter Guests, Bergen International Festival, The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, Carte Blanche, The Norwegian Touring Theatre:

"The theatre is assigned to tell stories. How wonderful wouldn't it be to see a performance containing most of what a stage text may room: Reality and fiction, sombreness and humour. In addition close-ups of individuals and insight into the complex interaction between people. And imagine if this story also had room for a story about making this performance, all of it presented with spoken theatre, with dance, and with music and imagination-triggering stage design.

This year's recipient of The Hedda Award in the best stage text category has created just such a bottomless treasure chest, a story for the stage one could wish would never end. The performance is like a journey with unnumbered detours from the itinerary without ever losing sight of the destination.

The best stage text award goes to Alan Lucien Øyen and Andrew Wale."

Alan Lucien Øyen and Andrew Wale for the script for Coelacanth, directed by Alan Lucien Øyen, produced by Winter Guests, Bergen International Festival, The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, Carte Blanche, The Norwegian Touring Theatre:

"The theatre is assigned to tell stories. How wonderful wouldn't it be to see a performance containing most of what a stage text may room: Reality and fiction, sombreness and humour. In addition close-ups of individuals and insight into the complex interaction between people. And imagine if this story also had room for a story about making this performance, all of it presented with spoken theatre, with dance, and with music and imagination-triggering stage design.

This year's recipient of The Hedda Award in the best stage text category has created just such a bottomless treasure chest, a story for the stage one could wish would never end. The performance is like a journey with unnumbered detours from the itinerary without ever losing sight of the destination.

The best stage text award goes to Alan Lucien Øyen and Andrew Wale."

Sigmund Sæverud for the role of Lucky in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, directed by Bjørn Sundquist, produced by The Norwegian Touring Theatre and The Norwegian Theatre:

"This year's supporting actor is a very experienced actor who has been part of most of it. In its time he took part in establishing one of our regional theatres, and the experiences he there made in creating theatre that is understandable for others than those in-the-know, he has brought with him to the full in this performance.

To make characters from the theatre of the absurd clear and intelligible is a great challenge, one that this year's award winner masters extremely well. His performance of the monologue in which the withheld is suddenly visible, and in which the silent person who is apparently without substance all of a sudden seems a whole person, is a whole little production in itself.

This year's best supporting actor award goes to Sigmund Sæverud."

Renate Reinsve for the role of the teacher in The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, directed by Tyra Tønnessen, produced by Trøndelag Theatre:

"In a production with an expansive role gallery all performers should preferably be clear and complete persons. But to achieve good ensemble play, it is also important that no character becomes more than the role intends. This is an extremely fine balance, and it is mastered to the full by this year's award winner.

In this absurd, but still pretty realistic performance people are confronted with existential challenges, and from being great humanists and principled in their choices, we see how they, one by one, give in to money and pragmatism. This gradual metamorphosis is presented with particularly great identification, clarity, comical talent and Fingerspitzengefühl by the award winner.

This year's best supporting actress award goes to Renate Reinsve."

Honorary Hedda goes to Verdensteatret. The Hedda Committee gives the following reason:

"This year Honorary Hedda goes to an oeuvre that has, since the beginning of the 1980es, contributed to internationalising Norwegian theatre. First through importing impulses from European art theatre, later through setting a new standard for this theatre in Europe, USA and Asia.

Wherever they have travelled they have left deep traces, and traces of these journeys have also been brought back into the productions. With an expression as deeply anchored in music and visual arts as in theatre they have bridged art forms, places and generations- and it is not a random coincidence that their next production has been given the title Bridge over Mud. Difficult to categorise, but easy to recognise

Unique in its form, but undisputedly theatre. Undisputedly as Verdensteatret.

The Hedda Committee gives The Honorary Hedda to Verdensteatret."

Perplex by Marius von Mayenburg, directed by Glenn André Kaada, produced by Rogaland Theatre:

"The winner of The Hedda Award in the best production category is a playful, thoughtful and intelligent performance, succeeding in making complex philosophical problems and reflections accessible for the audience without turning to simplifying.

The director and the actors have realised the text's potential through using the theatre's options in creating a world where one may twist and turn reality. The result is an imaginative, entertaining staging, which invites the audience to examine the idea that categories such as identity, time and space are not as stable as we like to believe.

The production is not just rewarded because it pulled the audience with it into a world in which reality is dissolved and constantly changing. It also deserves recognition because it shows what artistic value there is in a successful collaboration between director and ensemble.

The production of the year award goes to Perplex."

The full ensembles of the productions The Lady from the Sea and Perplex at Rogaland Theatre:

"The jury is free to decide if to give out a Hedda Award in the special artistic achievement category. This year the jury wishes to do so. The award doesn't go to a director, stage designer or playwright. Nor is it given to a single actor. Based on two productions at one and the same theatre the award goes to the full cast for their ensemble play.

The jury wants to honour the interaction between actors; the collective process lifting the individual's strong performance to theatre experiences of particular quality and value. One of the productions is a classic, the other a modern play. In both cases we found in the interaction a clarity and a naturalism demanding generosity and a feeling of security in the cast. This collective is a condition for the theatre.

The special artistic achievement award goes to the full ensembles of the productions The Lady from the Sea and Perplex at Rogaland Theatre."

The full ensembles of the productions The Lady from the Sea and Perplex at Rogaland Theatre:

"The jury is free to decide if to give out a Hedda Award in the special artistic achievement category. This year the jury wishes to do so. The award doesn't go to a director, stage designer or playwright. Nor is it given to a single actor. Based on two productions at one and the same theatre the award goes to the full cast for their ensemble play.

The jury wants to honour the interaction between actors; the collective process lifting the individual's strong performance to theatre experiences of particular quality and value. One of the productions is a classic, the other a modern play. In both cases we found in the interaction a clarity and a naturalism demanding generosity and a feeling of security in the cast. This collective is a condition for the theatre.

The special artistic achievement award goes to the full ensembles of the productions The Lady from the Sea and Perplex at Rogaland Theatre."