THIEF - AFTER - Clip 0 (zero)

At the webpage of zero visibility corp. the following, among other things, is written about THIEF - AFTER - Clip 0 (zero). The text is written by Siren Leirvåg, lecturer in theatre studies at The University of Oslo:

"We meet two women, in a landscape that is both external and internal. The room is formed by a large drape on the rear wall, a massive wooden door, a screen, Persian carpets, a bed with a green mattress, and stone-like shapes scattered over the floor like bare rocks along the coast. Barbed wire lining the front of the stage and last but not least there are an awful lot of stuffed crows!

The women's situation unfolds through a duet where they are sometimes portrayed as two sides of one personality rather than two separate characters. The differences between them are perhaps related to concrete actions; like when Line lies on the bed with large red workman's gloves; singing, whilst Pia sorts out their last belongings. They otherwise represent a unity in this room or landscape they find themselves in. They somehow form and are formed by nature around them.

In this partly unsettled confrontation between (wo)man and nature, certain questions arise: Who is a threat to whom? Who steals from whom? Is the atmosphere of destiny a warning sign that we are at the beginning or the end of existence as we know it? Without proclaiming this an environmental performance, the drama does create the feeling that something bigger and more important than the psychological is in play here. It is possible that this even intensifies the notion of the two women as one.

Designer Kristin Torp has created a room that is both open and closed, both interior and exterior. In It was November the characters were locked in a room, sealed by a massive wooden door, which in THIEF - AFTER - Clip 0 (zero) constitutes an element in an open landscape. An interesting point here is that despite the openness of the room or the landscape, it seems the characters have few ways out. They are restricted or trapped by their own situation or fate. The tragedy lies in the notion of the hopelessness (?) of the situation as self-inflicted. The crows represent in this interpretation the guardians of nature. They create an atmosphere of unrest and even fear, which can immediately be associated with the film The Birds (1963) by Alfred Hitchcock. At the same time the crows are manipulated into the inter-play between the humans, like when Line 'attacks' Pia with one of them or when Pia dresses two of them in doll's clothes.

Perhaps we can allow ourselves yet another film association from the 1960s: Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - the two sisters who nurture each other to the point of destruction or obliteration.

The lighting, designed by Kyrre Heldal Karlsen, plays a crucial part in the general atmosphere of the performance. Again we find a double concept: On the one hand there is action and movement shown through the play on light and shadow on the doors, the birds and the dancers. On the other hand it is all blurred or erased by the use of smoke or fog. This underlines the fear that what we see as real or true can disappear at any moment.

The sound patterns also play an important part in Ina Christel Johannessen's work. This time she has used original or music specially composed by the duo elegi/svarte greiner. The music, like the set design, creates a dynamic between the abstract and the concrete. We hear poetic horizontal music and the concrete sounds of steps and rockslide.

Once again Ina Christel Johannessen and her co-artists challenge the audience with their performance and dance expression. Our traditional notion of opposites: open-closed, wide-narrow, concrete-abstract, life-death is deconstructed in a play where we, the spectators, are invited into a landscape of possible meanings and negotiated interpretations. The landscape can also be described as a liminal condition (from the American anthropologist Victor Turner), an in-between, a here-and-now, and there-and-then or beyond a specific time and place - a point 0 (zero).

In THIEF - AFTER - Clip 0 (zero) we are in a state of becoming (from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze), in the process of being. Well, that gives a reason for a little bit of optimism, doesn't it?"

Supported by: Arts Council Norway

Source:

zero visibility corp., zerovisibility.no, 14.09.2012, http://www.zerovisibility.no/performancesschedule/thief/47-thief/88-about-thief