Text/Drama

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Linda cleans at the airport. Simone is getting her sex changed. Eleonora is attending a make-up conference and her daughter Memory must carry her beauty boxes. Elly, Molly, Lily and Sally is doing time for murder, and Sally is pregnant. Finally Mira, Eva, Lea and Sara sell their house, even if  it smells terrible. Sara thinks she is Evas daughter and Mira wishes she had a diary. Ma and Lucy are lovers and make a film. Spot and Endo is going to play sisters in the film which is based on a true story. Simone told Ma the story about her grandmother who got pregnant in prison. What is the truth?

The play has 4 parts: AIRPORT, PRISON; FOR SALE and FILM – In each part there are four women, and they are all connected…

Written and directed on commission for The Ibsen Theatre in Skien, 2007.

 

I AM HERE

(part 6 from THE ARCHAEOLOGISTS by Lene Therese Teigen)

UNN

Early morning, the light is transparent, the sun a white ball behind a veil of cloud.

The sounds – almost inaudible, but there all the same, the mutter of voices far away.

 

ANDREAS

Or from the sea –

 

BJØRN

… and birds fleeing towards the mountain –

 

UNN

The very plants make you think of tiny islands, ripples on the sea, blue-grey, shimmering rock formations like mussels.

 

CLARA

People in movement; strangely slow at a distance.

Someone asks: Am I dreaming, or is it just time passing quickly?

 

BJØRN

Am I dreaming, or is it just time passing quickly?

 

UNN

A blue bead is touched lightly and it moves again: grips the surface, lets itself move, and rolls away as if it’s never done anything else –

 

CLARA

Towards a little brook, almost dry, almost no water in it this year.

UNN

And I suddenly feel there are tears in me that haven’t moved for a very long time, that there are distances here in this moment that I now understand the full extent of.

 

BJØRN

The birds spread their wings and are lifted towards the sky –

 

ANDREAS

I see a boat, far away. Dark, with bent figures forcing their oars through the frothing water. It churns down crazy wave troughs and is swirled up again –

BJØRN

Snow drives obliquely to the ground, the stones sticking through are sharp;

She walks – no longer seeing the backs in front of her –

 

UNN

Seeing nothing anymore – just walls of snow, walls of stone

 

CLARA

The wind is strong, calls in front of her, or behind – she isn’t sure, should she walk quickly or slowly, hide or not hide?                                               

It’s getting dark, getting dark –

 

ANDREAS

And the ice climbs in her like a white shadow. Her footsteps maintain a certain length

 

UNN

as she crosses the mountains –

 

ANDREAS

…as if she is sure that wings may be found –

 

UNN

… as if there is still time and no doubt –

 

ANDREAS

But when the night mixes with fog and the calls go quiet, she knows nothing –

 

BJØRN

She stops:

 

ANDREAS

Her own voice whispers only shards of a name

 

BJØRN

She feels the darkness seeping, sliding down the mountain, moist, dark, that too.

 

CLARA

And nothing has an end or beginning any more.

 

BJØRN

The skin splits,

 

ANDREAS

gems fall from their settings, nails loosen, disappear,

 

UNN

The glowing cheeks pale, the body shakes, the voice just a tiny whimper –

 

CLARA

Her red cape has become a grubby pelt.

ANDREAS

And it’s over –

UNN

And it’s over –

BJØRN

It is over –

CLARA

It is over –

UNN

Was to die, she knew, will no longer breathe here in this sea of fog

Here she swelled warm against his tongue,

The dark hands –

 

ANDREAS

And from behind the one, for a moment she glimpsed the others,

The men she had given her time to –

 

UNN

– those she had parted from and he she had said no to when her father suggested his name –

 

ANDREAS

the thread she had spun,

the water she had drunk,

 

CLARA

ocean sounds, water on hull, wind through grass –

 

UNN

and in a fragment of a second she felt the baby’s cheek on her breast;

the open mouth, the sweet warm breath

 

BJØRN

All this with no more than distant sorrow  –

 

UNN

The blue bead already rolling more slowly

To settle in place, here below the mountain ridge

 

CLARA

Never again will the warmth of her hands

get it to glitter a dull purple

 

UNN

It’s getting light, light

Deep voices cut through the mist, through time

No-one will find me, she thought, once a thousand years ago

 

ANDREAS

Now they stand here by her bones

Feeling the steam rise, the ocean roar

 

BJØRN

– and one bird rises towards the sky – endlessly open and colourless

 

UNN

I am here, she thinks,

this is how it will be

ANDREAS

I am here

CLARA

I am here

 

BJØRN

I am here

 

CLARA

I am here

 

UNN

I am here –

 

written and directed by Lene Therese Teigen, House of Stories coproduced the production with Oslo Nye Teater in 2005. Supported by The Norwegian Arts Council.

Produced in Oslo 2001, in Stockholm City Theatre 2002, in Helsinki City Theatre 2003, at The Peoples Theatre in Gothenburg in 2004 and with the Theatre for You at theatre Haiu-za in Roppongi/Tokyo in 2008.

a novel by Erland Kiøsterud. Teigen made it into a radio drama for NRK RADIO DRAMA DEPARTMENT in 1993. Translated and produced in Iceland and Poland.

A novel, Aschehoug Publishing House 1993

With Guro Ekornholmen, Halldis Olafsdottir, Grete Nordrå, Marianne Ustvedt, Simon Andersen, Halldis Rønning, Pål Rønning and Ada Hesjevoll.