I am ringing the doorbell of an empty brick house in Porsgrunn. Fredrik Brattberg (44) lives here. He still has a fairly unknown name in Norway, but abroad he is one of our most critically acclaimed playwrights. His play has been translated into 20 languages, and is performed on stages all over the world. In Germany, the Czech Republic and France, he is shown in the biggest theatres, and branded a genius in the national newspapers. Les Echoes refers to the shoe game as “a family drama of pure magic”. When people praise Brattberg’s shoe game, it is often the form that is in focus. Because where most plays tell a coherent story from start to finish, Fredrik likes to repeat the same scene again and again and again… The door opens. – Are you afraid of dogs? asks Fredrik. He holds a barking brown dachshund in his right hand. – No, it’s going well, I say. – Gulla is very kind, that is. She only barks when she meets new people, explains the dog owner. DRAMATIST: After Jon Fosse and Arne Lygre, Fredrik Brattberg is the most played Norwegian playwright abroad. His play has been staged in China, Indonesia, Australia, the USA and Iceland, among others. Photo: Sindre Thoresen Lønnes / news Fredrik invites me into the living room. He is about to give me a little tour of the house when I suddenly realize: – Shit! I forgot my glasses in the car. Come right back. An international theater star I ring the doorbell of a white brick house in Porsgrunn. – Just come in, the door is open! I open the door, enter the house. It smells like dog and coffee. Fredrik stuck his head out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand. – Coffee? he asks. – Yes, thank you, I answer. DRAMATIST: After Jon Fosse and Arne Lygre, Fredrik Brattberg is the most played Norwegian playwright abroad. His play has been staged in Denmark, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands and Ireland, among others. Photo: Sindre Thoresen Lønnes / news Lately, he has kept mostly quiet at home, to complete his next script. But otherwise he often travels around the world to get various setups. Before Christmas he came home from Turkey and Romania, where he had seen six different performances of his plays. – There can be so much in a text, so it is very instructive to see different interpretations of the same piece. It is one of the most beautiful things about being a playwright. These days, “The Returns”, one of his most famous plays, is performed at Israel’s National Theater in Tel Aviv. The play is about two parents who lose their son. They are in deep grief, but then suddenly the doorbell rings, and their son is not dead after all. Then he disappears again, and the parents think he is dead again, but then he comes back again. And so it continues. Gradually, the parents can no longer take the grief inside, and they become more and more indifferent to their son’s death. THE GONE/HOME HOME ZONE: According to director Raz Weiner, the audience is often left sitting in the hall to talk about what they have seen. “It has been almost impossible to get them out!” he said to the journal Scenekunst. – In Israel, the play is seen as a kind of criticism of how Jews mourn. Young Jews today still have to mourn the Holocaust. They inherit their parents’ sorrows. But in my piece, this sadness disappears. The repetitive form is consistent with all of Fredrik’s plays. In Norway, Katta’s figure theater recently toured with “Jesus’ resurrection and death”. The play is about Jesus who dies, rises again, dies, rises again, dies … (yes, you get the point). JESUS: The beginning of Fredrik’s piece is quite similar to the Bible’s account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. But then he is captured again, and sentenced to death once more, and so the story continues. Photo: Martin Eldøy / Katta’s figure theater Fredrik’s non-traditional method is hardly accidental. He has a rather different background to most of his colleagues. – The plan was never to become a playwright, says Fredrik. He starts looking for some sheets of music from the bookshelf when I suddenly think: – Shit! I want to hear more about this, that is. But I forgot the audio recorder in the car. Come right back. The composer I ring the doorbell of a white brick house in Porsgrunn. No one opens. I carefully take the door handle, it is unlocked. I go in. In the hallway, I hear classical music from the living room. Fredrik sits behind the piano with his eyes closed and plays Mozart’s piano sonata no. 6. On the floor lies the dog Gulla and ular to the music. – When I bought a dog, I didn’t know that she would sing every time I play the piano. It’s full gauling, says Fredrik, slightly disappointed. He became interested in classical music at the end of primary school. Then he got his first CD player, and thus also a free CD with the purchase of waltzes by the composer Johann Strauss. – It was so fresh! I was totally blown away by the music. It was at that time that I had the childish dream of becoming a composer and writing my own music. At secondary school, Fredrik started taking piano lessons, then followed the music line at secondary level, before he traveled out into the big world to try his hand as a composer. He eventually ended up in the tiny mountain town of Banff in Canada, when he was hired to write an opera together with the Canadian playwright Lance Woolaver. During work on the opera, a new and revolutionary thought began to sprout in Fredrik’s head. As a composer, he was used to repeating the same musical motif over and over again. Could he “compose” a play in the same way? – If, for example, you take a lyrical piece by Grieg, you first get melody A, then comes melody B, then exactly the same melody A comes again. In a novel you will never find that chapters 1 and 3 are exactly the same, but in a piece of music or theater it makes sense. – Why does it make sense? – Do you have paper and pencil? Then I can explain better. – I have a notebook in the car. A little moment, just. Come right back. The playwright Eg enters the door of a white brick house in Porsgrunn. Gulla meets me in the hallway. She takes me into the library; here Fredrik is sitting in the armchair, as he often does when hatching new ideas, with the Macbook in his lap, and classical music playing over the loudspeaker system. IN SKRIVESTOVA: On the top shelf is the Ibsen Prize, which Fredrik won for “The Returns” in 2012. He has also won the Czech playwright award Ferdinand Vaněk Award in 2017, and was nominated for the French playwright award Le Prix Godot in 2016 and the Hedda Prize in 2020. Photo : Sindre Thoresen Lønnes / news I give him a pencil and notebook, then he starts to draw and explain. – A piece of music is first interpreted by the musician who reads the sheet music. When something is repeated, a room for interpretation is created, because even if the notes are the same, the musician will never play it exactly the same. The same applies to a shoe player in a play. When music or theater is performed, it will probably be interpreted by the audience. In a novel, it is common to say that the meaning is hidden between the lines, but according to Fredrik, the meaning in his texts lies between the repetitions. – We see how the characters behave in the first round, then we see how they behave in the second round. If we had only seen the second, we would not have understood anything, but because we compare it with the first, it makes sense. COMPOSITION: For each new line, the piece starts from the beginning again. In the play “Sørsida” the first scene (A) is repeated a total of five times. In Fredrik’s play “Sørsida”, we meet one child, two parents and two grandparents who are holidaying in a summer house by the sea. One day the father wants to take his daughter to the south of the island to swim, something that causes discomfort among the rest of the family. The discomfort becomes stronger and clearer each time the day is repeated. – In the text, the first and second scenes are exactly the same, but on stage it will never be the same, because both the actors and the audience know that this is the second time, and then it will be a different experience. During round number two, we unconsciously start looking for small changes. Was there something about the tone of voice there that was different? More heartfelt? More hesitant? And that hug between the two characters? Wasn’t he a bit longer in the first round? SØRSIDA: Fredrik believes that the theater should strive to be as abstract as possible, and approach the music by giving the audience experiences that they cannot put into words. Photo: Magnus Skrede / Den Nationale Scene When “Sørsida” was staged on “Den Nationale Scene” in 2019, Dagbladet’s critic thought that the play moved “in the borderland between dream play and intimate family drama”. Fredrik’s play is often described as absurd or surreal. But according to him himself, this is a misunderstanding. Because what is actually real? Is life a streamlined story, with a clear development from start to finish – or do we mostly buzz around in a long series of repetitions? – No, now I almost have to start cooking dinner, says Fredrik. The kids will be home soon. Maybe you could take a trip to the shop and buy flatbread? – Yes, yes, of course. I’m driving with the same, I’ll be right back! An intimate family drama I am standing outside a white brick house in Porsgrunn. The sun has gone down, and I feel my stomach rumbling. Through the kitchen window I see Fredrik standing and stirring a large pot. I ring the bell and go in the door. In the hallway I meet Gulla, she doesn’t bark, and Fredrik’s two children: Sigve (8) and Ylva (11). – I hope you like stew, says Fredrik on his way out of the kitchen with the pot between his hands. We sat around the table and began to eat while talking about how the day had been. Sigve says that he wants a fog machine as a birthday present. The father answers evasively. Many of Fredrik’s lyrics are about everyday situations like this. – I have to care about what I write. And in the end, it is the life I live here, in the streets with my children, that matters, says Fredrik. According to Fredrik, the day is the ultimate rehearsal. In his newest piece, “Break of Day”, we get to see what happens when the day is broken up. We meet a family that does everyday things again and again; they get up, brush their teeth, have breakfast, go to work and school, shop for food, cook dinner, do homework, watch TV, go to bed. But then the day starts to slip in different directions. After a while, the father sits and watches TV, while the daughter sleeps, and the mother brushes her teeth before going to work. The piece evokes an unpleasant feeling, because without the joint rehearsals, the family disintegrates. – They become completely crazy about each other. The family goes from being a common wheel to becoming three different circles. In music, we would say that they are multi-voiced, explains Fredrik. “Break of Day” has already been translated into English, German, French, Turkish, Romanian and Czech. The world premiere will be at the Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau, Germany in 2024. In the meantime, Fredrik will write new shoe plays and buzz around the family’s daily rehearsals. For me, it is time to go home. I say goodbye to Fredrik and the family and get into the car, on the way out of the driveway I suddenly realize: – Shit! I forgot my mobile phone in the living room. ♦♦♦ I’m ringing the doorbell of an old brick house in Porsgrunn … Get in touch! Do you have any thoughts about this case, or tips for other stories we should look at? Send me an email! You can find the rest of news Kultur’s long readings here. Read more about Norwegian drama here:
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Fredrik Brattberg is praised all over the world for repeating the same scene again and again – Culture
