2017/2018

“ALMENRAUSCH” – AUDIO-VISUAL HEARING

by Tore Vagn Lid

"It’s high time that that the history of the resistance movement is written anew, liberated from the Cold War’s straitjacket - and concealment. (...) The point is that the complete story is not written yet – because too many historians have accepted too long that sensitive topics defined by politicians should not be illuminated with an open mind. It is not the historians who define the need for renewal, but a theatre director: Tore Vagn Lid’s prize-winning work Operasjon Almenrausch is a strong proof that a new understanding is on its way.

He highlights the Furubotn people’s concealed or intercepted resistance fight from 1940 and onwards. This has also been pointed out by cultural editor Jan H. Landro in Bergens Tidende in his comments: He refers to the play as “the story of The Great Betrayal against some of our foremost resistance people”. He concretizes the betrayal as “the betrayal of the Norwegian State and the Norwegian Communist Party against some of the real heroes of the resistance fight.” He ventures to say that Vagn Lid’s work “erects a monument of shame … indirectly over a couple of generations of unheroic historians”, and he adds: “ It’s strong but obviously justified”.

Torgrim Titlestad, Historian

Almenrausch -Audio-visual Hearing #3

Mousonturm, Frankfurt LAB 2 - May 8th 2018 19:00

Mousonturm, Frankfurt LAB 2 -May 9th 2018 19:00

In the centre of this audio-visual hearing lies a supplanted side of the official Norwegian as well as international war narrative; the so called “krigskommunistene" (“the war communists”) and their resistance fight against German as well as Norwegian fascism.

As the warm war turned into a cold war in the 50ties, the narrative of the war concerning the Norwegian resistance also became more and more unidirectional and standardized. The early celebration of the war partisans in 1945 turned into a Norwegian form of McCarthyism. The official version of Norwegian war history was supported by a bipartisan Norwegian political environment -that at least could gather around one common enemy; the communists in general, and especially the Norwegian communists. The result was that crucial aspects of the Norwegian war narrative became silenced, locked down and supplanted.

“Aktion Almenrausch” was the alias for the biggest German offensive against the Norwegian resistance movement during WW2 – The storming of the communist’s formation at Buahaugen in the mountains of Øystre Slidre in June 1944. An offensive excluded from the official Norwegian war history, underplayed and disallowed by Historians as well the political Norway. With base in a comprehensive archive research, reconstructed on secretly taped interviews form the 70ties and 80ties – and by a close reading of Gestapos “Meldungen aus Norwegen”; Tore Vagn Lids musical experiment tries to implement the hearing that was never organized in the life time of these silenced partisans and in the time when the liberation heroes became the post war “enemies of the state”.

Tore Vagn Lid's «Almenrausch» has been developed in several versions for stage and also as Radio drama. The work received “Heddaprisen” (the Hedda Award) as “the play of the year 2009” and was also nominated for the "Ibsenprisen" (the Ibsen Award) for best drama the same year. The Radio version “Almenrausch - en radio høring” (NRK Radioteatret, 2011) received “Blå fugl” (the Blue Bird) award for best radio drama of the year and was also winner of the Nordic Radio Drama Award (2012) and was nominated as the Norwegian contribution to Prix Europa.

In «Almenrausch – Visual Hearing #3» (2018) Lid and Tt-B work on the concept of “visuell høring” (visual hearing). In this experiment the social dimensions of the hearing – meaning the situation of being present together at the hearing as listener - or “co-listener” – stands in the centre of the music dramaturgical experiment.

Vagn Lid states in an essay on the Almenrausch- hearing:

“With the concept of “viseull høring” (visual hearing) it is opened up for a mutual metabolism, where the form of radio-drama – once designed to reach out to the individual in its “private sphere”- is refunctioned by the theatre as a common listening ground. (Sam)høring or (Co)hearing might be the name of this utopian experiment”

TEXT, IDEA AND AUDIO-VISUAL CONCEPT:

Tore Vagn Lid

LIGHT DESIGN:

Norunn Standal

SOUND TECHNICHIAN:

Mathias Grønsdal

LED-LIGHTS INSTALLATION:

Øystein Nesheim

STAGE / FACILITATION

Matilda Søderling

Tor Christian Bleikli

Produced by Artistic Research Programme and Transiteatret-Bergen in collaboration with NRK Radioteateret.

MATERIAL:

“Almenrausch – En radiohøring om den skulte krigshistorien” av Tore Vagn Lid.

THE RADIOAPLAY

Full title:

«Almenrausch» - en radiohøring om den skjulte krigshistorien.
By: Tore Vagn Lid

Produced by NRK Radioteatret by Mette Sapiraa and Steinar Berthelsen

Sound Design: Arne Barca

Director: Tore Vagn Lid

Cast

Lasse Lindtner, Tor Christian F. Bleikli, Nils Johnson, Ågot Sendstad, Per Frisch, Håvard Bakke, Axel Aubert, Sigmund Sæverud, Ole Johan Skjelbred, Espen Fremming, Knut Hoem, Tore Vagn Lid

Original Voices Samuel Titlestad, Peder Furubotn, Einar Gerhardsen, Geir Helljesen, Lenin, Dimitrov, Mussolini, Hit-

ler, Quisling.