Someone gave birth to you once. So if you think “an article about birth, it doesn’t concern me” – well, it does. You have just been the victim of a historical fallacy, which now needs to be corrected. *** How do you actually treat what flows out of the body during an abortion? What do you do when you think your own newborn baby is…unpretty? Cathrine Frost (45) has been wondering about these things. She is not alone. After creating the performance “Good luck, Cathrine Frost”, she has heard it an extremely large number of times: I felt like that again! But forget all the boasting, sold-out halls and thousands of fans in Norway. Now Cathrine Frost is far from home and terrified. Again. Edinburgh. 1 day until the premiere. One of the thousands of posters that characterize Scotland’s capital in August is Cathrines. CENSORSHIP: The Fringe is a liberal festival, but that nipple was too much for the public space in Edinburgh. Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik We are at the world’s largest festival for the performing arts, the Fringe. The day before her international premiere, she sits in a pub in the old town (“I had to have a shandy (beer and soda, ed. note) to calm my nerves”). One thing is bare tits on stage. A seasoned actor lives well with it. It is much worse to hand out flyers and promote yourself on the streets, Cathrine Frost thinks. – It’s like showing off your pee and just: Interested? THEY SAID YES!: Two sisters from Malta promise to come to a performance later this week. Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik / news The performance she brings to Scotland is based on her own life. It addresses the eternal themes of pregnancy, childbirth and loneliness. The reactions in the hall range from laughter to crying, to the occasional fainting. She shares details well into the…er, let’s call it the intimate sphere. – Should I have a ceremony over what bled out or flush it down the toilet? she says about her miscarriage. The seriousness lies there. Seriously, why don’t we know more about these things? “I went straight up to my ex-wife and thanked her for the wonderful thing she did 20 and 22 years ago when she gave birth to our children,” wrote a well-grown man who saw the play in Norway. Nevertheless. This summer, her confidence has disappeared. Now the text feels stupid, like a cliché, “everyone has probably heard that stuff here before”, thinks Cathrine. GO OUT AND STEAL GUESTS: Promotion is hard work. The last time she checked, six tickets had been sold. Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik / news Thousands of shows are played in Edinburgh during the Fringe. A couple of (censored) Norwegian chicks can easily drown in the crowd. Very common, very painful She has been to the Fringe before, but only to watch others. Cathrine worked for many years as an actress at Det Andre Teatret in Oslo and around. The group of friends largely consisted of male comedians, the boyfriend too, he is on TV and his name is Olli Wermskog. – I have always tried to be a cool girl, one of the guys, says Cathrine. SPONTANEOUS AND FREE TYPE: She has mostly performed improvisational theatre. There are pieces where you find everything here and there. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungset / news She loved freedom and travel. But with biological precision, there was a great urge to have children, a little in the 30s. She wanted to move on from the uncertain acting profession and started nursing. A couple of years later, Cathrine became pregnant. The feeling of happiness was overwhelming. The miscarriage occurred on the first day in practice as a nurse. – Afterwards I was so upset that I couldn’t stand, says Cathrine. Later she learned that up to one in three pregnancies end in miscarriage. Many around her had experienced the same. They just hadn’t talked about it. After quite a lot of struggle, she finally became pregnant again. (In the play, an audience member must go up on stage and play Olli Wermskog’s completely exhausted penis). This time the pregnancy went well. But the birth kept going wrong. Cathrine says it like this in the performance: – When my son was born, I died. New identity sought She did not die in the clinical sense. But the person Cathrine was before never came back after the dramatic hours. At the hospital there was an emergency caesarean section. The obstetrician had to stuff his arm into Cathrine up to the elbow. He kept the child’s umbilical cord free, while the bed was rushed to the operating theatre. She was given anesthesia and was operated on. The doctor and the surgeon held hands inside Cathrine’s womb. Then the little boy was lifted out. THE MORNING OF LIFE: Here is Cathrine with her son after the caesarean section and the awakening. Photo: Olli Wermskog The son survived. She survived. The time afterwards was a shock. Should life now just stroll on as if the body and emotions were not in total chaos? Who was she woke up as? The strength in the body was gone, the brain was replaced with the glass mane. Cool kitty in no way turned into cool mom. And now what is a cool mom? “People do this all the time – and I haven’t heard anything about it?!” Cathrine Frost thought as she stumbled around the house with a screaming baby and saw dust she had never noticed before. She felt lonely with the grind (my son is not cute, I’d rather be out on the town, I don’t feel the motherly love I should, etc.). In the first years after Cathrine became a mother, she became a bit lonely as a conversational partner at parties. She wanted to be funny about these things, but noticed that her friends were shying away. – I got so mad when people yawned in the face from maternity talk! Then theater director Mats Eldøen came up with a proposal. Can it be necessary to be so angry? Enough talk. Put on a show, was the message. – It was solid, that birth story, he says. THE CHIEF: Mats Eldøen helped create the play, and even though Cathrine “at least shouldn’t have a man directing”, it was him. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungset / news After many frustrated rants, Cathrine suddenly had a deadline, a director (Mats), fifteen thousand kroner in the budget and five dates to play. – I wanted to convey the things I should have known long before. Things I wish we all just knew, she says. Even those bodies that do not give birth need to know more. The aim was to talk about birth/feelings so that men do not close their ears, but are touched. – I would like to smash things on stage, recalls Cathrine. – But we found out that if I got so angry that Mats, the man, stopped listening, I had to tell in a different way. They argued a lot along the way. She wanted to crush, she also wanted to be naked. Finally, “Good luck” was finished. Full of blood, glitter and baby talk. The premiere night came in November 2022. Then something happened that none of them had predicted. Pilgrimage to Frost It was as if everyone who saw it the first night insisted that their friends and family also have to see it. Word spread like wildfire. Five evenings with “Lykke til” quickly turned into several. The hall has been sold out every single time. Podcaster Martin Lepperød was among those who boasted about the piece. Cathrine registered larger groups of young men in the period afterwards. The women also came. – Young girls get stars in their eyes and lean forward when a grown woman talks like that about her body, says Cathrine Frost. 16,500 people have seen “Good luck, Cathrine Frost” so far. The performance has been bought by both the Nationaltheatret and the Riksteatret, it will go on tour throughout Norway next year. THE WORLD AT MY FEET: The international ambitions accelerated after the agreement with the Fringe festival was finalized this spring. Photo: Ole Petter Hodnungset / news Cathrine has become very tall. She is actually changing the mindset of Western civilization! She wants to make a TV series, film, play in New York… But. Can she be just as funny, personable and giving – on English? Edinburgh. 1 hour to the performance. There is one hour until the international premiere of “Good luck, Cathrine Frost”. The main character has been sleeping incoherently. She dreamed of plane crashes and things being destroyed. She has put on the pink shirt she starts with on stage, restlessly wandering up and down the stairs. KVALM: Was this a good idea, then, it’s almost possible to hear Cathrine Frost thinking. Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik / news “Backstage” is a bench with a curtain in front, she slips in there. – Oooh. Why am I doing this here? Cathrine shouts to herself behind the curtain. One of the reasons: When you are found in English, it is possible to be seen by so many more people. Perhaps you have seen the TV series “Baby Reindeer”, this year’s Netflix success? It started as a play here at the Fringe. BIG BREAKS FROM THE FRINGE: The award-winning TV series ‘Fleabag’ and this year’s hit ‘Baby Reindeer’ are both based on plays performed at the Fringe. Photo: Prime video/Netflix The last few days have been about promo, logistics and purchasing. Among other things, a large number of plasterboards. She got her wish. Cathrine will definitely smash something on stage. Skjerpings, Sokrates During the first winter with the baby, Cathrine was inside a lot and often awake at night. She needed time to process the trauma of the birth and realize who she had become. She looked for books, films and art by people who shared similar experiences. She looked all the way back to the cradle of civilization, with the ancient Greek philosophers. No luck. – They have philosophized so much about death! But not the beginning of life, she says. Here you may be the reader thinking: Oh, she had postpartum depression? But no. – I wasn’t depressed, I was just very annoyed! says Catherine. Creating a new life is perhaps the most existential thing a human being can experience. So why aren’t there more stories about it? Why have so few of the discussions of the great thinkers been about birth? Hello, Socrates? THE ANATOMY OF THE CARRIER: Another thing that is little discussed by Greek/other philosophers is the slightly rocking gait you get from carrying a baby around. Photo: Olli Wermskog His lack of curiosity (and the following error throughout the story) finally made her very angry. – Socrates looked at the birth of humans as some farm animal did. He and the gang have laid the foundations for much of Western thought. So that attitude has influenced us for two thousand years, she says. – That mind is my driving force. And that’s why Cathrine has to beat. She undresses to practice Socrates’ favorite sport pancreas (a kind of naked karate). She (and the audience!) smashes plaster to change history. The time is ripe. Edinburgh. Showtime. Behind the scenes it is uncomfortable to be Cathrine. – Damn it, now this is happening here! We hear applause and cheers, the previous performance is over. Cathrine sighs heavily. – Now I’m getting a bit competitive, how many did THEY have in the room, then? (It undeniably sounds like more than six.) Team Frost brings glitter and plaster onto the stage. She stands there for a while, in front of the empty hall. Five minutes before the start of the show, she is gone. When people come up the stairs into the hall, she is still there. She squats on the edge of the stage and takes each one by the hand, gentle, calm and warm like the nurse she is. There will be seventeen handshakes. TWO SCOTTISH MEN: One of them plays Cathrine’s womb, the other soon becomes the arm of the obstetrician who penetrates there. Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik / news Everyone sits close to the stage. A young woman with a light blue hair bow quietly wipes away tears in the sequence where Cathrine explains exactly what happens during the three different types of abortion. No longer alone Out in the daylight afterwards, Cathrine Frost’s face is blank with relief. – I had to have a proper conversation with myself right before there. I actually know why I do this, she says. The plaster is torn off, the English version is born. Now there is beer in the sun. ONE DOWN…: Only the rest left. A toast with sound/light master Henrik Stoltz Vernegg and producer Ane Helseth (tv). Photo: Ragnhild Laukholm Sandvik / news – I created the performance out of loneliness. Every time I play it, I feel a sense of community, says Cathrine Frost. Suddenly she spots her with the blue hair bow a little further away in the crowd. Cathrine runs after. It will be a good hug. Epilogue. Cathrine reports to me two weeks later. More people are coming to the shows now, 30-40 a day. Two reviewers have given four out of five stars. Several audience members write laudatory comments online. As Viggo Venn, the Norwegian clown who won Britain’s Got Talent: “A fantastic show! I absolutely loved it. Must see if you were ever given birth to 😃”. No one from Netflix has called, so far. But: “I also had an emergency caesarean section. My mother died last year. Now I know a little more about what it was like to be her,” an older man told her after a performance. He also needed Cathrine Frost. If you liked this case, you might enjoy these:
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“Good luck, Cathrine Frost” will now be international – Culture
