In Absentia

At the website of BIT Teatergarasjen the following is written about In Absentia:

"In Absentia recreates the theatre venue as a place for spiritual contemplation, a sphere of symbolic emptiness. In the fifth century the Christian church introduced live tableaus into the sacred rituals, later described as mystery plays. They were meant to represent the experience of the soul during the initiation, man's or woman's mental development towards the stage in which he or she were capable of finding a crack in the physical world's veil and to gaze into the world beyond.

Through such processes, for instance the initiation ritual of the Rosicrucianists, one may be enabled to discover one's true self and achieve spiritual awakening. The dramatisation of the search for enlightenment, the awakening of the spiritual, inner self, can be dated back to Ancient Egypt, with its Osiris mysteries, or even earlier, to the Indus culture and the gigantic epic Mahabharata, supposedly told by the God Ganesh to an Indian sage as much as 3000 years prior to our calendar.

As a reaction to industrialisation and modernity, a number of versions over the mystery plays were made, creating a spiritualistic movement towards the end of the 19th century. Rudolf Steiner, the father of anthroposophy, made his version of a mystery drama (1910-1913) towards the end of his life, as an artistic presentation of his ideas."

Supported by: Arts Council Norway and The Fund for Performing Artists.

SOURCES:

BIT Teatergarasjen, bit-teatergarasjen.no, 26.09.2014,  http://bit-teatergarasjen.no/sesongprogram/ane-lan-no-it-in-absentia/

Import from the Scenekunst.no list of openings 26.09.2014