Theatre Får302 — the Smallest Intimate Stage of Copenhagen
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*Charlotte Elizabeth Munksgaard and Birgitte Prins Talk About Theatre Får302
— Abridged transcript of the interview by Tan Shuo on 15 December 2017
We’ve always been very “selfish”, making the plays and doing the art that we think necessary. It is about what we feel in our hearts – not the feeling of the audience. Nor do we think about selling tickets. We have been very true to what we feel. The other day we asked Tine (an actress) what is Theatre Får302. She said, “you put on existential subjects”, i.e., profound questions to life, for example, how do you survive? Why are you here? What do you want from life? What is important to you?
We made a very nice play lately, which was called Flowers, Feathers, Fishes and Snow (Sne, blomster, fjer & fisk, 2016). It was about finding a refugee place – not being a real refugee, but to find a “refugee-like” place. As you know, we live in the West and we are very lucky. We don’t have to fight to get something to eat, but our head is still mixed with depressions as well as all kinds of impact you get from life. This play is about how you can find a place of quietness to escape from your surroundings. So, we like working on such kind of subjects, or searching for a written play that we think is important and believe it is same important to our audience.
In our theatre, it is special that actors decide the subjects and whom to work with — such as director, and together we develop the artistic stuff.
It has something to do with the three of us (i.e., Charlotte Elizabeth Munksgaard, Birgitte Prince and the late actor Pauli Ryberg) that we continue trying the cutting-edge stuff and keep hanging on that.
We were an ensemble of three, but Pauli Ryberg died on 10th September 2017. It is so sad because we were together “three different energies”, but now we don’t have him.
We are a small theatre, but we don’t think of small ideas. The space is small, but our thoughts and ideas can be huge without limit. It is a good guideline for us.
If there are many characters in a play, we will just play all the characters by ourselves. We cannot afford more people on the stage than four. That’s usually the limit. We don’t have enough money, and sometimes just simply by putting on a pair of glasses, we turn into another character.
It is so important to keep curiosity and keep asking the questions about life, about yourself, like going through the layers. What you always see is the surface on people, on situations, on all the results, but when you turn to look at yourself, you try to understand what lies beneath. It is like digging for the truth to find out what is the history – like an archeologist.
We want to go against the cliché. For example, anger can be expressed in so many ways. It can be a common expression or it may be not. We try to play the idea of anger, and go beyond it and even beyond the idea of theater.
The key for us is that we want to share feelings – to share the nakedness of human being and try to take all the covers off.
In school my teacher always told me it (acting) is not about how I felt, but how the person I was playing with – ‘how did she feel’ and ‘what did I make her do’. So, that was what we looked for. That was the reason why Theatre Får302 was born – the real life on stage. We wanted to search for the real life on stage and we are still searching for it now.
We are so close to audiences and we cannot pretend to be another place. Audiences can see everything, so you can’t hide. We really like to share with audiences. Decades ago when we started our theatre ensemble, it was very normal to have “the fourth wall”. But we like to tell “I can see you”. Audiences are here and if suddenly I hear the sound from the street or someone’s coughing, I can take it. Audiences never know what they will see at our place. We do not keep ourselves distant from them. They are here, so for what we pretend that they are not here.
Therefore audiences can relate to what happens and forget themselves – like watching movies — the best thing is to forget actors’ acting and just believe what is happening. That is the goal we want to achieve.
We want to be genuine and expose ourselves because I believe very deeply that the more layers you take off, the more universal it will become, as we are one big human being, and because we make art, not entertainment. Also, it is important to love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.
We have always presented something strange since the 1990s and we are known for absurd theatre taste with black humor – very black humor, not sweet laugh. We do not offer results such as “this is how you should live”, but raise questions and investigate things.
We are more and more interested in body on stage – how to express by our body instead of by words. We are going to the performance direction a little bit, rather than following written plays. Hence we can use our intuition and our heart more, questioning and showing different angles of the human conditions, and at the same time trying to avoid the cliché by going beneath it. Audiences can also relate to the questions, and what is very important, they don’t have to feel alone; don’t have to hide. Today we have to hide so many feelings. When you ask “how are you?” then you answer “I am fine”, but what is behind “I am fine”?
What I also like theatre is that we can rehearse together. I earn much more money in film and television (than in theatre), but for film, you have so little rehearsal time – unless you are the main role, otherwise you just come and serve what you have done – Improvise or do what the director demands. What I like theatre is that we can rehearse together. There is so much togetherness – finding something and developing together.
And we don’t want to attack audiences but want them to reflect on life. We want to meet audience on the same level, instead of being “I want to tell you about life” or “I am so happy you are here”. We don’t want to provoke audiences but want them to be together and brace them, because we think we cannot reach people without being with them naturally. And a sense of humor is very important, which makes people relax and laugh at themselves, at us, and at life in general.
It is also important to have audiences “see” themselves and feel “it is my life”. And we respect the audience very much. They are human beings like us, who try to survive life.
Theatre Får302 is so intimate, which makes us different from other theatres. We can be so close to audiences. We do not attack them, so they dare to come.
Questioning life and exploring the existential conditions are our bases that never go away from. We try to take subjects from other angles, not just say “you are guilty, you are not guilty”.
We have fired two leaders of the theatre because we don’t want a leader to take over the decision of the artists. We are still an actors’ theatre. Very often actors are seen as soldiers in a way, who follow others’ decisions, but we (as actors) also want to make decisions. We really want that everybody, including director, participates on the same level and develops together. This is what makes our theatre special.
© TANTANYY
For Audiences, Artists, and Theatres
Related Articles:
Birgitte Hesselaa Talks About the Breakthrough in Modern Danish Drama
Theatre Får302 — the Smallest Intimate Stage of Copenhagen (part 1)
Theatre Får302 — the Smallest Intimate Stage of Copenhagen (part 2)
Theatre Får302 — the Smallest Intimate Stage of Copenhagen (part 3)
The series of articles is fulfilled with support from Danish Arts Foundation and Theatre Får302.
