Bloody dramatic rooms

Bloody dramatic rooms by and with Inger Astri Kobbevik Stephens asked questions such as: How do youth of today present dramatic events from the plays of Ibsen? Is it a paradox to place the roles of Ibsen in our time, and our rooms for action, when their behaviour and rebellions are results of their time’s material and social rooms? What happens when Ibsen’s dramatic strategies are staged and updated by youth in our contemporary time and our social order?

"The lost son returns after many years without sign of life." (Peer Gynt). "The parents found the girl dead; nobody knew if it was murder or suicide" (The Wild Duck).

These were some of the dramatic events given to lower secondary school pupils by five schools. They were to create the room/place/setting for the event, including roles and dialogue. The stagings, in model boxes sized 1:25 was filmed. Bloody Dramatic Rooms used the video material as visual basis and theme.

During the Ibsen Festival the video material from the youth stagings was performed in the shape of a model box installation in the Vestibule of The National Theatre August 28-September 14.

Bloody Dramatic Rooms by Inger Astri Kobbevik Stephens was an attempt of presence and interaction in a diffusion open room between theatre science and performance, and it was part of Centre for Ibsen Studies research project "Ibsen in Performance".

Source: The Open Theatre (Det Åpne Teater), detapneteater.no, 12.10.2010, http://www.detapneteater.no/pub/daat/forestillinger/?aid=793&cid=17&sac=all&viewall=1#daat