Plays 1

Plays 1

Jon Fosse The Nobel Prize

Original title: Teaterstykke 1
Publisher: Samlaget, 1999
Genre: Play
Pages: 747 pages

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The entirety of Jon Fosse prolific career as a playwright has been collected by his Norwegian publisher Samlaget in five volumes, Plays 1-5. Plays 1 is an excellent introduction to Jon Fosse’s unique linguistic style. He writing is at once poetic and naturalistic, emphasising the love and pain of ordinary people seeking to live their lives.

Someone is Going to Come (written in 1992)
And We’ll Never Be Parted (written in 1993)
The Name (written in 1994)
The Child (written in 1995)
Mother and Child (written in 1996)
The Son (written in 1996)
Nightsongs (written in 1997)

In Someone is Going to Come the two of them want to be together, just the two of them, so they leave the city and buy a remote house by the sea. But is it possible to do what they want to do? In their desire to be alone together they flee the world of people but are pursued by the anxiety that someone is going to come. Someone is Going to Come is Fosse’s first play. Written in 1996, the world premiere at The Norwegian Theatre (April 1996) signifed a new era in contemporary theatre.

In And We’ll Never Be Parted, Jon Fosse exploits theatre’s unique potential for ambiguity: as a woman anxiously waits for her husband, are we watching reality, fantasy, memory, or even a ghost story? It opens with a woman who laughs and laughs before she launches into a monologue determined to bring about change.

The Name (winner of the Ibsen Prize in Norway) tells the story of an estranged family forced to live under one roof. A pregnant girl and the father of the child have nowhere to live and are forced to move into her parents’ house. Her parents have met the father-to-be, and don’t yet know about the pregnancy. The Name is a play about the difficulties we have understanding one another and the longing the be cared for by a significant other. By placing seemingly simple characters in critical moments, Fosse’s communicates the common, yet crucial aspects about the modern human condition.

In The Child a man and a woman find each other in a bus stop on a rainy night. They hold each other close. They rent an old house out of town. The woman becomes pregnant. But the child is too small to survive. At the end, their lives have gone full circle:once more there is just the two of them.

Mother and Child is the intense journey of two individuals trying to connect. Like strangers on a first date, mother and son stalk each other, confronted with a shared history they cannot ignore. The characters are two people who are related to each other but have nothing in common. The mother is floundering in the tribulations of memory, the child is wondering whether it would have been better not to be born.

The Son concerns an ageing and isolated couple, who sit and look out of the window and discuss the lack of activity. Th their great surprise, they see their long-absent son arriving with their meddlesome neighbour. The tension between mother, father and son is interrupted by the neighbour’s unwelcome interference.

In Nightsongs we meet a young couple and heir new-born child. He writes words that no one will publish, becoming more and more isolated from each refusal. She finds the life they lead unbearable. One night she goes out and returns with a new friend. The Royal Court production of Nightsongs was reviewed as " Waiting for Godot without the gags"

I don’t know what it is
that always makes something happen
But it must be something
Because something always happens
I don’t want anything to happen
and then something
happens all the same
(Extract from Nightsongs, Translated by Gregory Motton)

Foreign rights

Rights for plays performed at theatres worldwide, contact Berit Gullberg in Colombine Teaterförlag, Sweden.
For plays published abroad, contact Winje Agency

“Fosse has influenced our way of thinking just as Samuel Beckett once did.”

Randolf Walderhaug, (Director).

Jon Fosse

Portrett jf kred agnete brun
Photo: Agnete Brun

Jon Fosse awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023
Jon Fosse, born in 1959, is widely considered one of the most important writers of our time. For almost forty years he has written novels, plays, poems, stories, essays, and children’s books. His award-winning work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and his plays have been staged over a thousand times all over the world.

Jon Fosse grew up in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he lives today in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse’s longest work of prose to date is Septology (2019–21), which he started during a break from playwrighting and after converting to Catholicism in 2013. Fosse has called his method of writing Septology ”slow prose”: a style of shifting levels, scenes, and reflections, the exact opposite of fast-paced drama. Its seven parts have been published in three volumes: The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name. It is a suggestive, magnificent narrative about the nature of art and God, about alcoholism, friendship, love, and the passage of time. Septology is translated into over 20 languages and is critically acclaimed worldwide.

For Septology, Jon Fosse has received numerous awards, including the Brage Prize and the Critics’ Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the international Booker Prize and the American National Book Award.

Furthermore, the hiatus in playwriting is over; Fosse is once again writing for the theater. Since 2020, three new plays have premiered. Jon Fosse’s most recent prose work, the novel Kvitleik (A Shining) was released in spring 2023 — a luminous narrative exploring the boundary between life and death.

In 2023, Fosse is also celebrating a literary milestone, marking 40 years since his debut with the novel Raudt, svart (Red, black).

Fosse is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.

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Other titles by Jon Fosse

Someone Is Going to Come

Jon Fosse

1996
Plays 1 - 5

Jon Fosse

20016
Collected Essays

Jon Fosse

2011
I Am the Wind

Jon Fosse

2008
Plays 5

Jon Fosse

2016
Nightsongs

Jon Fosse

1998
Dream of Autumn

Jon Fosse

1999
Plays 3

Jon Fosse

2005
Plays 2

Jon Fosse

2001
Death Variations

Jon Fosse

2002
Living Rock

Jon Fosse

2015
The Girl in the Sofa

Jon Fosse

2003
Songs

Jon Fosse

2009
In a Dark Forest

Jon Fosse

2023
Rambuku / Shadows

Jon Fosse

2007
Sleep / Warmth

Jon Fosse

2006
The Bottle Collector

Jon Fosse

1991
Stone to Stone

Jon Fosse

2013
The Dog Manuscripts

Jon Fosse

2018, (1995, 1996, 1997)
Red, Black

Jon Fosse

1983
These Eyes

Jon Fosse

2009
The Name

Jon Fosse

1995
Shorter Prose

Jon Fosse

2011
Plays 4

Jon Fosse

2009
Morning and Evening

Jon Fosse

2000
Boathouse

Jon Fosse

1989
Trilogy

Jon Fosse

2014
A Shining

Jon Fosse

2023
Melancholy I - II

Jon Fosse

1995, 1996
Girl in Yellow Raincoat

Jon Fosse

2010
Shorter Plays

Jon Fosse

2011
Collected Poems

Jon Fosse

2001
Closed Guitar

Jon Fosse

1985
Strong Wind

Jon Fosse

2021