LIVIA'S ROOM

A room in Livia's property outside Rome speaks to us: "The paintings had become my skin. Daisies, poppies, roses, laurels, violets, larks and blue throats. Strawberry trees, cypresses, umbrella pines – all in a blue-green garden with leaves trembling in the cool breeze. Oh, how I miss it all.”​

​

The room is the main character in the performance, and lays the foundation for a story about the position of women then and now. With the desire to reread history, and look at the portrayal of powerful women from new perspectives, Livia and the women around her are put under the microscope.

​

A number of people are presented in Rome in the time around the year zero, all of whom were strongly connected to Emperor Augustus, through kinship or marriage. "Livia's Room" mixes fact and fiction, past and present, space for action and breathing.

It's about exposing oneself to history, which is created through the questions we ask and the expectations we have. Gradually, the audience is moved from being distanced observers, and finally they end up inside the story in dialogue with the historical figures.​

​

The inspiration for this play is a roman underground room with frescoes on all walls: a large selection of trees, bushes, flowers and birds in a forest landscape with blue-turquoise colours. This garden room was a part of the Villa di Livia just outside Rome, probably a cool retreat during the hot summer months for Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus.

​

Teigen creates atmosphere and situation through text, sound, textile and body, and wants to invite sensual experiences as well as expansion of time. The public will be taken in and out of the room that will embrace past, present, sense and sensibility, room for breathing and action.

​

Textile artist Ingrid Aarset's beautiful perforated textiles form the room - and eight performers - singers, musicians, dancers, actors - move in and through the textiles - with newly composed music by Icelandic Thuridur Jonsdóttir.

​

RESEARH AND WRITING PROSESS

​

Professor Emeritus in Classical Archeology Rasmus Brandt:

"Teigen does not see the past as a series of neutrally observed and described events, but as a series of constantly repeated living actions played out in new contexts. In that way, our understanding of the past is expanded, but also our understanding of ourselves as historical beings."

PhD Magdalena Öhrman, Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Wales:

"A big thank you for allowing me to be part of the fantastic Livia's room days in Rome. It was a wonderful experience to be able to work together with your team, to gain insight into how you work together and to be part of the work-in-progress show. As a researcher with a job paid for by public funds, I often ask myself if my work is really relevant and in some way meaningful for the world around me - of course I think it's exciting, but beyond that? Being able to participate in Rome was a wonderfully affirming experience.

It was extraordinary to be met with such curiosity by the whole team, but above all to so clearly see and experience that is the embodiment of all the thoughts and reflections that the frescoes in Livia's room give rise to (regardless of whether one approaches them as an academic or a tourist, an artist or woman, or all at once) make them and their long history much more alive, much more significant, than even the most brilliant and 'public' academic could ever achieve on his own.

Your work, both during the performance and during the conference, really gave me all my different perspectives and experiences of the frescoes (as a student with tired feet for the first time in Rome, as a researcher on women's work, as a frozen northerner and traveler who enjoys the smells and sounds of the Mediterranean ) to be distilled in one magical moment."

Written after attending the conference in Rome.