Plays 3

Jon Fosse has been called ‘the Beckett of the 21st century’ (Le Monde). Just as Beckett’s plays — and those of all great playwrights — grew out of their time, and influenced the current styles of drama, and were part of what brought their times forward, so do Fosse’s plays now.

The Guitar Man (written in 1994)
The Dead Dogs (written in the end of the 90’s, world premiere in 2004)
Sa ka la
Beautiful (written in 1999)
Death Variations (written in 2000)
The Girl on the Sofa (published by Oberon Books in 2002)
Lilla (written in 2002)
Suzannah (written in 2004)

The Guitar Man is a poignant monologue in which a busker sings songs to an audience that is always passing him by, and always on the move, always passing him by. As we see the world around him through his eyes, we learn about him and his life.

In The Dead Dogs the lives of a young man living alone with his mother and his beloved dog, are shockingly disrupted when the dog runs off, an event that changes the directions of their future.

In Beautiful, the past disrupts the present when a man and his family go back to his childhood valley. The man meets an old friend who used to play in a band with him, and they renew their friendship. Their earlier rivalry is revived. The woman starts to court the friend – the other Man. THeir daughter falls in love with a local boy. Underneath the surface of summer idyll is a mood of growing tensions and of things falling apart.

Death Variations explores different aspects of the theme of death; death of love, the death of a relationship, death of happiness, and finally the death of a young person. This powerful, thought.-provoking, life – affirming play transcends all borders in its exploration of the issue of youth suicide, in its exploration of the mind and spirit of young people, looking at what might happen when their minds confuse the real and the imaginary.

The Girl On the Sofa is a play about sexuality, infidelity, and betrayal. We meet an adult painter unable to create more art. A woman slowly and almost reluctantly forces herself to confront early memories of her life by playing out the events that defined moments of her past. The play explores how figures and feelings from our early life give form to our identity and relations in the present.

In Lilla four young boys in a band dream of a break-through, which seem within reach, until one day a visitor turns up. The play invokes the difficulties we have in expressing our innermost emotions. How does this affect our lives? Does our inability to communicate our feelings create destruction and violence?

Suzannah is a play inspired by the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and his wife. In this play, we see the whole life of Suzannah Ibsen unfolding, while she waits for her playwriting husband to come home. BAsed on the historical information we have of the lives of the Ibsens, Fosse’s drama fills in the gaps of historical facts with possible scenarios.