Rehearsal Report – Difference and Repetition (Translation to english Chat GPT)
Friday, February 27 – Saila, Solveig, Fredrik (notes)
The last thing said on Friday:
The actors are guides (à la Peking Opera) who open up the inherent power of theatre. We don’t need to bring the stories in from outside—they are inherent in theatre itself. “Beautifully said,” Solveig said, “but easier said than done,” I think.
The idea was to keep it simple.
To show the simple shifts.
Between reality and fiction.
Maybe talk about it.
Is it possible? We did it. It’s possible.
Theatre thrives on metaphor.
Things stand for things rather than being the thing itself.
Is it a demonstration of the moment when metaphor arises?
I thought about that.
I thought the actors could walk around the space.
Map it. Tell us about it.
Here is a large light screen illuminating the room.
Here is a threshold.
If you cross this threshold, something changes.
A light. A sound. A different way of walking.
How do you create a performance?
What is the purpose of theatre?
We talk a lot about Reality – Fiction. About the twist. When this twist happens. In the space. That’s really what the performance is about:
This sliding.
How little or how much is required for it to occur.
The performance is a materialization of theatre’s codes.
How do we materialize theatre’s codes?
A writer is someone who creates a language.
We create a language.
The language of theatre.
Can we create a world with tape?
It’s a play with metaphors.
The Black Box is a threshold in itself.
It’s a zero point.
The actors insert signs:
Theatre – Performance – Actor – Performer – Choreography – Dance – Visual image – Costumes – Clothes – Sound – Scenography – Light – Props – Threshold – Transitions – Portal – Symbol – Reality – Fiction – Pause – Rhythm – Psychology – Subtext – Dionysus – Mnemosyne – Stories – more…
All the objects of the Work are displayed in the space. Or we place all these objects out. At the beginning of the performance.
They are the Verk’s primordial props.
They can be combined in countless ways.
One actor can put on the goat mask, while the other presents the axe.
One actor can lift the axe,
while the other is about to say something into the fur-covered microphone stand.
Combinations of images. They open new spaces. It’s a play of different combinations.
Give the audience time.
Wait for a long time.
To activate the audience, you must deactivate the actor.
It is impossible that nothing happens.
As long as there are people, something happens.
We talked about stories. That we need stories. We love stories. What is a story? What does it do to us? Can we investigate that? We love the Commedia dell’arte story. It maps a space. It provides limitations that in turn create possibilities. Whispering corridor. Then I can go in there and whisper. That is the threshold. The audience loves it—entering the game/fiction. That’s what we do. Are stories the image from which the light emerges?
26 February KHiO, present: Saila, Fredrik and Solveig (reporting)
The last few days have been full of laughter. We have laughed at the texts we’ve produced. We’ve interviewed each other — first writing questions, then asking them, trying to answer as honestly and precisely as possible. I think I laugh to defend my own lack of knowledge. It becomes so clear that I cannot put precise words to what theatre is, what time is, what an actor is, what fiction is, what presence is. I am always searching for the spirit — not a religious spirit with great power, I just call it spirit for lack of a better word. I want to go beyond and into it — “the other.” The unnameable.
We’ve been on the floor, trying to speak the words we’ve created, to perform them, to place them in the room. In different ways. We stand, we sit, we try to say the words in an exaggerated manner — how shall I put it? With exaggerated gestures, exaggerated vocal tone. We give the words a colour, tint them with even more empty-head attitude.
Some of the texts are beautiful. Some of them are striking. It’s fun to do this work, and it’s fun that it moves so fast. We have an incredibly efficient factory running. Talk a bit, write questions, ask and answer them, run the audio file through the machine so it gets transcribed, print it out, read through it, make quick edits, print again, up on stage, cross out what doesn’t work. Or try it another way.
Choreography — we’ve used the same one we did in Solaris. It’s nice to work with something we already know. Something that lives in the body. I also think it would be exciting to create a completely new choreography. To fill things up.
Fredrik told a story from Jon Fosse’s Septology. I need to read that book. It was very beautiful to receive a story. That’s really all I want. To receive stories and to tell stories. I think that would be enough.
It’s difficult to make theatre out of what we’re doing now — does it actually become theatre, or does it become more of a lecture? Where is the core, the drama? What is this performance, Difference and Repetition, actually meant to tell?
I notice that even though I really enjoy working with self-produced text, I still feel a longing for a good story, or something that is truly written. Maybe that’s why I was so happy hearing Fredrik tell that story. Because then suddenly something happened. I was somewhere else. I was carried across.
25.2.26 – Wednesday Present: Fredrik, Solveig and Saila, who is writing today’s report.
We began today’s work on Stage 6. “There’s something nice about changing rooms,” Fredrik said, and I can agree with that. It is good to actually experience the large space where we will present the final version of Difference and Repetition.
We continued where we left off yesterday, with Peggy Phelan’s idea: “Art of writing towards disappearance rather than towards preservation.” What does she really mean by “writing towards disappearance”?
How does one write about art? We have no answers, but I thought of Tommy Olsson, who writes art criticism. His way of writing is to begin from a strongly personal position. I always find it exciting to read his reviews precisely because he dares to write about what the art he has experienced sets in motion in him, rather than necessarily what the art means or whether it is important in society. It could be interesting to speak with Olsson and some other art critics about why and how their involvement appears in the writing process. When it becomes personal — whether it concerns art or an encounter with another human being — that is when it begins to interest me.
We spoke about an investigation of the kinds of challenges an actor encounters in their work, à la The Five Obstructionsin Lars von Trier’s film, where Jørgen Leth is given various constraints he must relate to. This can be seen as the limitations or resistance we meet in our own practice.
What concrete situations can we set up for the actor? That is a question we asked ourselves, and one we have not yet answered.
Different questions can function as transitions into an action, an improvisation, or further into a new question. For example: What is authenticity? What is real?
We delved into words such as equivalence, metaphor, metonymy, and allegory.
It was good to reflect on these concepts that we perhaps take for granted, and that I at least often forget the meaning of. They can be seen as building blocks for creating the new realities we are in the process of exploring and constructing.
Attempt 1:
Solveig and I each took a text we know by heart and sat on chairs on stage. We gave each other tasks, for example: “Say the same text again, but imagine that you have a thousand people watching you, and that you must reach all of them.” We agreed that it was a failed attempt. If we use a text from one of the performances we have done, it is better to perform it as we did at the time, and instead explain how we arrived at that version of the delivery.
Attempt 2:
We read through the transcribed text between Solveig and me and switched roles. We think the text works, but it needs to be cleaned up. We had fits of laughter reading it.
Attempt 3:
New questions and a situation in which we interview each other. We recorded the improvisation, which will be transcribed afterwards. Questions about time, what is fiction and what is reality, and other questions.
Monday 24 February, KHiO, Loft 2. Present: Solveig, Saila, Fredrik(Referent)
We talked about how the process notes have the same quality as what Peggy Phelan writes about in relation to performances that disappear from memory once they are over. Performances resist the circular economy and instead celebrate the idea that a few people, in a specific time and place, can have an experience of value without leaving any visible trace afterward. If one is to write about a performance, one must write toward its disappearance rather than write in order to preserve it. The after-effect of disappearance is that the subject emerges. That’s beautifully put.
We talked about Rauschenberg, de Kooning, and Vibeke Tandberg, who erase the image—frenetically, erasing and erasing until only a few small marks remain, the contours of an erased line. This sieve that filters out the sand so that the invisible gold can appear.
I sense there is something here. In this project. And in truth, it has been a project for a long time. What was wonderful about Stalker was all the coffee cups, the cinemas, the sense of time, and the digressions that had nothing whatsoever to do with Stalker, yet somehow did. This space.
We went on to discuss whether we should ask others what they remember from our performances. Instead of Stalker, they could speak about a Verk performance. About time, about smells, about the atmosphere in 2007 when they saw Iphigenia. That is one possible path, a trail we could follow. It’s about creating traces outward, small paths. There is something strange about these processes—how one ends up pursuing certain tracks. You never quite know which track will capture you, which will show the way. Perhaps it has to do with light—that you sense clearings a little further down the path. One cannot walk too long in the dark.
We gathered the texts and situations around what we experience as “thresholds” in Solaris and The Big Dream. I think we are all very fond of thresholds. I can feel it in the room—there is something fantastic there, a light, in transitions, portals into the indescribable. What can a PhD do with a flowing, fat, juicy threshold? Ha!
I know we wandered around with the printer and managed to print out a number of threshold texts. I also printed a text I had written that approaches the actor and the theatre in a more etymological way. We tried it out. There was something simple and beautiful about it. We think it could be a good fundamental situation. We like fundamental situations. A place to rest, where the actor can breathe—the place where one breathes. Together with the audience. It doesn’t have to be a unique place; it is something recognizable, like the desktop on a computer. Recognizable, partly manageable—and the moment you start clicking into folders, an infinite number of folders and documents open up and can quickly become overwhelming. Then it is comforting to return to the desktop and see that it is still quite safe and fine after all. It’s not a perfect image, but I think of it as a kind of interface. The fundamental situation is the interface—for both actors and audience—a space that is good to inhabit before diving into more unknown terrain.
In any case, a fundamental situation emerged. We liked it. We stayed in it for a long time. Things slowly began to grow forth. Something other than just the text I had written about the actor. We wrote down questions. Questions about the actor. They were good—simple and at the same time complex. The actor tried, as best she could, to answer them. One moment in particular made an impression: the idea that as an actor, you must do things for real and not pretend. Can you stumble and fall for real on stage?
She tried.
It is impossible.
She tried again. Several times. We laughed.
We sound recorded the entire session.
Monday 23 February, KHiO, Loft 2.
Present: Saila, Fredrik, Camilla (until 11:30), Solveig. Jakob arrived after lunch. We then moved down to Stage 6, where we will actually present the work in April (work-in-progress showing) and in August (PhD evaluation).
The title is bold. It borrows directly from Deleuze. It is almost pretentious to call the performance Difference and Repetition. And why is it in English? Would it be better in Norwegian? Forskjell og repetisjon. Verk has almost always had English titles. Are we cooler than we are? After all, we do have international ambitions. This performance has an international potential (haha — remember where that comes from??). There is something there.
It is written in Saila’s notebook. She works a lot with Braidotti in her work at KHiO. This performance revolves around dissecting theatre and the actor’s work. We want to open up how we work. The ensemble. The entire room. Light, sound, space, actors. Simple. To show how — but it is damn difficult. Difficult to articulate. Maybe we circle around what cannot quite be said. Or encountered. It feels almost blasphemous. Almost naively simple. What are you doing? I don’t know.
We can frame it conceptually. Show and tell. But why should we tell? And to whom? What audience do we imagine? Perhaps more directed toward people already interested in art. There is freedom in not having to reach a broad audience. Performing it here (KHiO) gives a different starting point. It allows for a kind of nerdiness. That could be interesting.
Jérôme Bel — showing practice, context, the body as history.
Isadora Duncan — the way she constructed dance. A 70-year-old dancer. Beautiful. Organic. She came from ballet but wanted to renew dance. Not artificial. Early 1900s. “The story of.”
Sophie Calle. Unmarked (Peggy Phelan): 13 images stolen from an exhibition in Boston. Empty frames. The audience was asked to describe what they remembered. Transcriptions of memory. Reconstructions. Activation of the audience’s memory. Is what they remember more interesting than the image itself? Or what remains of an artwork once it is gone?
Solaris: the masterpiece removed from our performance — the resonances are all that remain. A kind of documentation of resonances. Documentation of the encounter with the film, the book, and ourselves. Book – film – performance. Geoff Dyer, Stalker: the artifact. We mix in our own thoughts.
It is about displacement. A turning that dissolves time, that opens up — a grenade, the vertical. What is real? Multiple perspectives without turning into hocus-pocus meta-chatter. What is the original here?
Saila. Everything Verk has done up until now.
Saila’s journey. The actor today. The beginning. The journey. Memory narrative. Verbal and physical. Images and memories. Rehearsing on the floor — but the body can no longer do the same. Thirty years older. The axis of time. Aging? No. Time. Life. Death.
The body 40 years ago.
Should we tell Saila’s life story? Or let it seep through?
The structure of the Isadora Duncan performance (Jérôme Bel):
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Biography
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The movement – étude
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What it means – text
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Music on – text removed
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Études assembled
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Audience invited to participate, to do the same
Camilla: Time and ideologies. The ideals embedded in all practice. What one once believed in — what has shifted. Ideals come and go. Ingmar Lindh. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Geopolitical changes.
When Saila and Fredrik started, the world was different. It can be compared to what is happening now. Colonial movements — the journeys went in one direction. To the East. Peter Brook. Travel out, learn, bring it home. A privileged position. Everyone went to India. Today we look at that differently. Crediting. Awareness. Exploitation. Who do we learn from? Who do we steal from? We stand in a context. We are not alone. Who is Verk? How is our material created?
Possible starting point: Solveig tries to understand Saila’s acting practice. Saila’s references, experience, knowledge, doing. The seven most important things. Solveig follows Saila. The wordless knowledge. Solveig has been apprenticed. The performance begins in 2006. Iphigenia. First time Solveig worked with Verk. Academy of Performing Arts. Per aspera ad astra. — Saila does not want to lose hope. Through the dirt toward the stars.
The world situation
The world has changed in 30 years. Toward a multipolar world.
US hegemony fading. Europe more alone. We have outsourced production — we can consume, but not produce. Saila feels art was richer before. More was invested in culture. Kaja-funding. Anders Fogh Rasmussen cut cultural support in 97–98.
Large structural changes — but what about theatre? What about Verk’s insistence? What do we insist on? Fredrik sees a continuous insistence on investigating what theatre is. Since 2006. Something beside the text. Something before the text. A shift when we began working with our own stories. Theatre generates the stories.
Transformation. Thinking for oneself. Grenade dramaturgy. Creating meaning we do not control. Creating situations. Art can open thinking. But it requires space. Waiting. Repetition. Attempts. Composition. Not everything has to be slow even if it can be effective — some things can go really fast! It lies in the composition.
Fredrik wrote a text about the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is published on the website. We read it aloud. Dense text. Very beautiful, I think. The monolith exists in all Verk’s performances, in one form or another. It will exist here as well.
Is theatre itself a monolith?
In Verk:
Opening Night — the void.
Big Dream — the black box.
Solaris — the screen.
Not as symbol — but as a thing. The space must be defined. In Stalker, they throw the nut ahead of them. In that action, the space fills with something else. They must walk carefully.
The transports. The transitions. The railcar scene.
Perhaps the performance is only questions and transitions? Fredrik believes a performance needs 3–4 transitions. That’s it.
We have already worked with acting and theatrical situation:
Big Dream — the beginning and the task of walking.
Opening Night — the Commedia dell’arte system.
Solaris — imaginary objects.
This time: the monolith. The unsayable. Dangerous terrain. A charged present that disappears. What remains are memories. How do we write about that? How do we document it? It is personal.
Tomorrow we will read a text Fredrik wrote that he did not manage to read today. We may also hang sheets of paper on the wall with scenes we remember. I remember several with Saila: The Deer. The dance in Paradise. The Clown (the artist) in Manifest. And many, many more. These could become starting points for show and tell.