hangen til...* (The urge for...)

The production Hangen til...* (The Urge for) by Elin Danielsen Productions examines the changes that can happen to people who has to adapt to the society’s wish for quick changes and efficiency, and what can happen to people who are unable to keep up the pace. What happens when a new industrial revolution makes its entrance in small communities along the coast, threatened by depopulation?

Springing out from "the old North" the production Hangen til...* (The Urge for) takes a closer look at the general validity of well-known Northern Norwegian clichés, drawing the lines to our time by combining different musical and scenic expressions. The audience follows four characters through an unsafe inner landscape in which clashes between child/adult, playing/seriousness and past/future rule. The oppositions lead to action paralysis; the great visions aren’t realised for fear of failing. Planning and visioning something sometime in the future eventually become a way to seek refuge. Such the responsibility for life is giving to something outside the living person. But what happens when nobody comes to get you, and there is nobody waiting for you? What do you do when the inner voice you like the least is the one trying to take control of you?

Morten Wintervold has written the text and also acts as a text improvisator during the performance, commenting the moment and what happens in the world right now.

"An important principle has been recycling as much as possible at every level, and all the members of the ensemble have had a consciousness come to recycling. The production is our comment to the society of abundance. This is reflected in the costumes and not least the minimalist stage design, only consisting of a refrigerator from the 1960es, in addition to live, graphic use of text and video ", director and performer Elin Danielsen says.

Among the artists in the ensemble are Bjørn Torske and Morten Wintervold, who contribute respectively live music and text to the production.

Bjørn Torske has been referred to as one of the most exciting electronic music performers in Norway. He is originally from Tromsø, now living in Bergen, where he is part of the innovative electronic music community. Bjørn Torske works with noise and can find sound material in the mountains or woods as well as in the urban environment and the human-made. In Hangen til... much of the sound has been improvised with a basis in available props in the stage room, and not least through improvised exercises with the performers.

Morten Wintervold has eventually become a poet many people have opened their eyes to, including nationally. He has been referred to as "an angry young poet..." and "...raw and rough..." (Knut Ødegård, Aftenposten), after his two published poetry collections. Wintervold is described as a successor to the rebels of the 1960es and 1970es, such as Arild Nyquist and Helge Rykkja. With his urge to break out of prisons of words and to rip the perception of reality, a lot is expected from the future writing of Wintervold’s.

Sources: Elin Danielsen Productions, e-post 26.12.2010

TromsøBy, 6.1.2011, http://tromsoby.no/node/3550

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