Knif
Knif was a performance by and with Stina Kajaso. Kajaso was responsible for text and direction and was the sole performer onstage. In the program of Avant Garden the production was described as "a live broadcast from the absurd hell of Stina Kajaso". Knif was the first solo performance from Kajaso, who both before and after has worked with Lisa C. B. Lie under the name Sons of Liberty.
The title, Knif, is a nonsensical word resembling the word kniv, the Norwegian word for knife.
Information
(Objekt ID 8868)| Object type | Production |
| Premiere | April 10, 2008 |
| Produced by | |
| Based on | Knif by Stina Kajaso |
| Audience | Youth, Adults |
| Keywords | Performance, Theatre, Theatre of the absurd, Tragicomedy/Seriocomedy, Post-dramatic theatre |
| Running period | April 10, 2008 |
| Duration | 70 minutes |
Requirements to venue
| Blackout | No |
In Knif by and with Stina Kajaso we meet Cookie and Mjölk (literally: Milk) sitting in the shower at Bates Motel, listening to porn and baking mud cakes while the time moves slowly by.
In the program from Black Box Teater the performance was presented in the following manner:
"Knif is lo-fi entertainment mixing elements from Psycho and TV for children from the 1970es, porn musical and crusaders, Ulrike Meinhof and online chats, noise and Phil Collins. In other words, solid doses of hate and gore, but at least as much humour.
The expression is simple, intimate and without compromise. Here is no dramaturgic build-up or point of return. The performance is more like an implosion beginning over and over again, in which all the emotions come at the same time.
However, no one is to be pitied, for in the world of Kajaso we all suffer from an incurable, mortal disease, while we search for simple and painless ways to save the world. There is no comfort. And everybody dies in the end."
About the stage design critic Elisabeth Leinslie in Dagsavisen wrote "A catwalk shaped as a cross and a portal to salvation shaped as an ass make the main parts of the stage design. Further the room is filled with play figures, biscuits and phallic symbols - objects, colours and lights are bursting."
The project was supported by Arts Council Norway.
Sources: The autumn program 2008, Avant Garden.
Black Box Teater the spring of 2008 (program), Black Box Teater Oslo [Oslo]
Leinslie, Elisabeth (11.04.2008). Review titled To blinkskudd* (Two shots spot on). Dagsavisen, dagsavisen.no, 12.11.2010, http://www.dagsavisen.no/kultur/article343350.ece
*Not yet translated into English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Stina Kajaso | – Script |
| Stina Kajaso | – Direction |
| Anja-Lisa Rudka | – Stage design |
| Stina Kajaso | – Performer |
| Anja-Lisa Rudka | – Props |
| Åsa Edgren | – Producer |
| Stina Kajaso | – Producer |
| Cathrine Bjørndalen | – Consultant (Regi) |
| August 31, 2008 – Teaterhuset Avant Garden | Show |
| August 30, 2008 – Teaterhuset Avant Garden | Show |
| April 13, 2008 – Lille scene (Marstrandgata), Black box teater | Show |
| April 12, 2008 – Lille scene (Marstrandgata), Black box teater | Show |
| April 11, 2008 – Lille scene (Marstrandgata), Black box teater | Show |
| April 10, 2008 – Lille scene (Marstrandgata), Black box teater | Worldwide premiere |
"In this chaotic landscape Kajaso rules, dressed in an orange dress made of latex, stockings in electric pink and with a quick comment on her tongue. With a very finely tuned nose for textual as well as physical comedy, she takes us into a universe where pop cultural references hail, as do observations of life and its parallel dimensions. She is simply priceless."
Leinslie, Elisabeth (11.04.2008). To blinkskudd* (Two shots spot on). Dagsavisen, dagsavisen.no, 12.11.2010, http://www.dagsavisen.no/kultur/article343350.ece
*Not yet translated into English. The title within parentheses is the Norwegian title's literal meaning.