Knots – Itínera

KNOTS - Rules to be happily unhappy

synopsis

According to the “United Nation Commission on Human Rights” there are around 100 million people that live in the street in the world. Unhappiness is painfully necessary. But what is the unhappiness? Can we be sure of the happiness or unhappiness of somebody else?

In the performance “KNOTS – rules to be happily unhappy”, we compare our lives with Nina’s, an Italian woman that spent more than half of her life living in the streets looking at the eyes of the people that distractedly walked past her. Along the path of Nina we will know memories of a cheerful childhood, and her torments that tie her to her past through those that in psychology are called “knots”.

The performance is the space of a memory, of a moment that has changed the direction of a life, transported to a new bed every night. It is being free, alive and present in every dark corner of the city as a transparent ghost. Through the deep knowledge of herself and an insane irony, Nina will reach the mediation among these two opposite feelings. She will reach a happily, unhappily life…

ELSE MARIE LAUKVIK, THE DIRECTOR

Born in 1944, in Oslo, she was one of the five young people who agreed to work with the then unknown Eugenio Barba in Oslo in 1964. Else Marie followed the group to Holstebro, Denmark. Her experiences as an actor are published in “The Actor’s Way”, At the same time as she was performing with Odin Teatret, Else Marie worked as director for Teatret Marquez in Aarhus, Denmark, from 1981 to 1991, and from 1993 to 2004. As an actress Else Marie has also collaborated with Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo (Italy) in 1996. She worked as a freelance director with Munin Teatret (Denmark) in 1997, Teatro Actores Alidos (Italy) in 1999, Rogo Teatro (Italy) in 2002, Associazione Culturale Teatro dell’Albero (Italy) in 2003. Else Marie Laukvik toured to Australia and New Zealand in 2004 as director of the performance Ingeborg Stuckenberg, Teatret Marquez, giving lectures at universities about Odin Teatret’s history. Else Marie worked as director with the musical trio Kabaret Wagon, making “En tu pequeña vida” in 2005, and “The Monkey Orchestra”, a performance for children, in 2006. In 2007, she directed the cabaret performance “Hungry Tigers” with the new theater duo Mia & Max. Else Marie Laukvik has created “My Stage Children”, a performance which presents all her stage characters through film fragments. In 2013 it started the collaboration with Itinera, a Colombian company with the performance “metaMORPHEOsis”.

GALLERY

TRAILER

Words of the Director

“The performance doesn’t speak about something in particular, it presents questions to which every spectator can give its own personal answers. Sat all alone on the beach, listening to the song of the sea that the waves created in centuries of movement, Nina waits the return of the past, and she doesn’t ask herself if she is happy or not. It doesn’t matter. The whales make a long trip from the south up to the north of our planet and at a certain point they meet each other and sing, inspired by all that happened in their travelling. Not only the whales feel the need of communicate their lives, we do it too. Happy or not, we can only judge with the relativity of the time. The road, the direction or the crossing it always follows default currents but sometimes “knots” can create deviations. The crossing in the creation of this performance it was beautiful. The waves were strong but not too violent and this sea in which we plunged, presented us with many delicate surprises. Sometimes we were confused and happily unhappy, other times proud and unhappily happy.”

ELSE MARIE LAUKVIK