I was in Trondheim, Norway for two nights last week to perform The Curators’ Piece (A trial against art) as the opening work of the Bastard Festival (I think something may be getting lost in translation by whomever thought up this title). I landed 6 hours before the performance (happening in a modified black-metal nightclub), and we were a curator down (Gundega Laivina was injured in Riga, but will return for NYC) which meant it was all men on stage. Not a fair representation of the peer group but nothing we could do. It was perhaps also unfortunate that we all decided to wear grey suits. It seemed to go pretty well, which I can only gauge by the number of people who wanted to talk about it with me afterward. It is and should be a trigger and starting point for a conversation; a wedge perhaps.
The next day it was up into the hills for a morning hike, some berry picking/eating and then down for three shows and a meeting or four. The works by Janek Turkowski (Margarete) and then Pieter de Buysser / Hans op de Beeck (Book Burning), both monologues, were charming and compelling in completely different ways. The final piece by the rising star duo of Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki was a dance(?) / theatre(?) piece that I struggle to describe. While there was movement, the stars of the evening were black silk curtains suspended from balloons and then yet more balloons being moved by ‘performers’ unseen. It’s called Nothing’s for Something. Find it and see it.
