REVIEWS

Form and content go hand in hand and inside the square portal you can see a room almost hovering from the ground with strobe lights and black velvet curtains - a misty landscape by Twin Peaks - a shadowy sister, a black disco of mournful movements. A disco of nothing. These dance sequences are probably the most beautiful I have seen, and the doubleness and the alienated are still in play, that the dream lies there and points both outwards and inwards, to everything that could have been and to everything that continues to be.

Victoria Kielland(Scenekunst.no)
October 11. 2019
Link to original (Norwegian)

Laland Mohn stands in front of the stage and tells reliably, charmingly and not without a certain cheerfulness, about her first encounter with theater work as a youth and how she has only continued and continued with theater. She is a kind of medium, a highly humanized communication platform, she is a real social medium. The presence this leads to makes The Big Dream significant, and Verk Productions has once again shown that they are one of our important creators of contemporary theater.

Elin Lindberg (Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift)
October 10. 2019
Link to original (Norwegian)

With a will towards Art - Verk's manifest With humour and deep earnesty, Verk investigates the conditions of the arts with their own art. (...) The manifesto-texts Verk make use of explain the position of modernism: people are detached from their traditions and their history - everything has to be created anew. Verk's history is tied to the modernistic theatre makers before them. In Manifest United they assemble loose ends from many pioneers they are inspired by and create a diverse - sometimes juxtaposing - unpredictable, appealing and vivid manifest - long live the theatre!

Elin Lindberg
06. April 2018
Link to original (Norwegian)

Link to English translation

Verk produksjoner are balancing on the edge of a knife between genius and collapse, and this balancing act places me at the front of my seat, tensed neck, it pulls me in and out of the events happening on stage. I am looking for content, searching for form, I attempt to attribute meaning; intellectual, contemplative and dramaturgical, to the performance, but Verk produksjoner is not a solvable puzzle. They will not give me seven winning numbers in the lottery. There is a surplus somewhere in there, which can never be placed, and perhaps this is where we can look for the genius.

Julie Rongved Amundsen
06. April 2018
Link to original (Norwegian)

Link to English translation

Verk Produksjoner have made an interesting and varied choice of different artists' manifestos from early 1900s to the 1990s. Visual arts, architecture, film and theatre is represented by names such as Gilbert and George, Antonin Artaud, Lebbeus Woods and Andy Warhol. An excerpt from "Dogme 95" opens the evening, a manifesto well known through films such as "The Celebration" and "Idiotene" by Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier. The opening is perhaps the best part of this performance, where the actors in the beginning attempt to maneuver a large white screen through three of the scenography doors, accompanied by canned laughter. It is a simple and striking imagery of what manifestos wants to do; to place art in space (the world, that is), and express the relationship between art and the world as clearly as possible. And as we can see from the Pat & Mat-inspired clumsiness with the screen, this is not as easy as it may seem. They are even laughed at. When the excerpt from "Dogme 95" clearly advocates a democratic art for everyone to express, and a rebellion against the bourgeois and commercial taste, it becomes apparent that the manifesto genre, with its concise and uncompromising form, so to the point, and with such certainty, is a necessity when art, and the artist's role in the world, so easily can be undermined or ridiculed.

Inger Marie Kjølstadmyr
06. April 2018
Link to original (Norwegian)

Link to English translation

“At its best, Wishful Beginnings opens for an associative experience, where the relatively simple texts become an entry into one’s own thoughts about humanity and where we are heading. The exaggerated theatricality twists our common references, challenges us to make new connections, and to see ourselves in a new perspective. (...) Wishful Beginnings is an ambitious performance, daring to ask the bigger questions, and that succeeds in elevating everyday texts onto a highly artistic level.

Ole Hval
12. April 2016
Link to original

Link to English translation

When everything is connected to everything else, it is not so easy to know who is speaking, where somethings starts and ends, or what is more or less important. The question is whether it always is important to know that. Perhaps the need for these clear divisions are connected to our Western culture ́s division between body and mind, between you and me, culture and nature, man and technology. In the performance Beat The Drum, reflections upon these issues are happening concurrently and on many different planes. Such a situation could have become too much; quite overwhelming, incredibly confusing, or right out terrifying. Yes, we are on unsafe ground, but neither of these feelings occur when Verk are the organisers of the gathering. On the contrary; the atmosphere is filled with friendliness, quietude, openness and generosity, combined with a definite and decisive performance structure, and perhaps it is exactly the stringent disposition that contributes to the feeling of safety. (...) Throughout the performance we share the joy of mediating energy and emotions through music. Especially through long stretches of great drum-solos. We are invited in, into the rhythm, into a society, the traditional ritual function of the drums is taken into use for all it ́s worth. At the very end the invitation is emphasised as we are offered drinks, and we get a choice of beer or soft drinks. We are not only sharing music and stories together, having a glass together is a well known community builder. With this final act, the performance is framed by again activating the audience ́s bodies, this time through our pallet.

Grete Melby
05. November 2015
Link to original (Norwegian)

Link to English translation

Verk honors all its performers and contributors equally. Still, there is a sense that Scenographer and artist Signe Becker has left the biggest mark on the performance. It is through her filter we see the rest, but it is also the filter itself that leaves the most vivid impressions. From a visual perspective the same colors and shapes are reused and repeated throughout the performance in various ways. The white element of the room is disrupted by colourful details and the performers paint themselves in the same color scheme during the performance. One sequence in particular where the music, light and Becker's live-painting converge in a manner resulting in a great drama has etched itself in my recollection.

Anette Therese Pettersen
14. November 2014
Link to original (Norwegian)

It is a fragile performance, also because the stories of youth hood it tells of, appear so innocent. Not least when it comes to its virginal faith in artistic excess. This is checked by the director and the performers wonderful mixture of humour and reverence. Even so, the Crux lies with Signe Becker, who is on stage creating the scenography in realtime, such as live-painting. In this way the performance mirrors within itself the need to attach a personal value to that which is fleeting, like a rite.

Therese Bjørneboe, Aftenposten
13.november 2014

Darkness falls upon us with a crash of thunder sending chills down your spine, thundering and rumbling for several minutes. In addition you hear metal-like groaning all over. Suddenly it gets pitch-dark and damned loud. If you press screw your eyes up, you might see something. In the darkness of the backstage, something huge, a massive movement – or not? You feel as though you want to approach the stage to check – and the mere thought itself makes your hair stand on end.

Benedikt Wyss, Unruhe im Uberrang
30. November 2013
Link to original (German)

Here is nobody, and least of all God
Verk keeps the underlying unease in the text by Lagerkvist, but also promotes its humour. The artists break up the massive on our behalf and feed us with small bits of odd stories. With intense narrative voices and lifted eyebrows they show us how impossible the question posed by Lagerkvist is. The simple form suits the text and hopefully opens some new eyes to this recognised, but only to a little degree read, Nobel Literature Prize winner.

Anna Helene Valberg, scenekunst.no
19. November 2010
Link to original (Norwegian)
Link to English translation (pdf)

Dead souls in the rarity cabinet
For the first time The Eternal Smile is adapted for theatre. And that may have been the biggest surprise of the evening. During the performance associations lead to Strindberg, Dylan Thomas, Beckett and Fosse. In the staging by Verk it still is most natural to think about the most theatrical, high temperature side of Pirandello’s theatre. Which, of course, is due to the striking parallel between the dead souls of Lagerkvist and the six characters of Pirandello’s who are searching for a writer. Verk Produksjoner AKA Verk Productions has perfected its own style, but all the theatre references give a sense of repetition. Yet the same it is an extraordinary charming performance.

Therese Bjørneboe, Aftenposten
19. October 2010
See pdf of original (Norwegian)
Link to English translation (pdf)

REVIEWS

The Big Dream (2019)

Manifest United (2018)

Wishful Beginnings (2016)

Beat The Drum (2015)

Paradise Now

Stalker

Build Me a Mountain!

The Eternal Smile

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