I Am the Wind: Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse is a guest poet at this year’s festival. Recent winner of the 2010 International Ibsen Award, he is considered one of the greatest contemporary playwrights in the world. He also writes poetry, novels, short stories and children’s books. Fosse’s style is barren and the silences in his theatre are comparable to the white spaces in his poetry. Fosse comments: ‘In good literature you always notice an unmistakable writing-voice. It cannot be reduced to content, or to form, but at least it is connected to the actual entity of form and content that is writing, that we call literature. For me, art became connected to just this voice, almost inhuman in its pitiable speech. And paradoxically, this is a voice which is there, and which doesn’t say anything. It is a mute voice. A voice that speaks through silence. It’s a question of a voice that in a way comes from what is not spoken; a voice that comes from a sign and lets itself be noticed through and in between what others are saying, for instance the narrative voice and the characters in a novel, or the characters in a play.’

Jon Fosse’s play Eg er vinden (I am the wind) will be performed by Ole Johan Skjelbred and Fridtjov Såheim from the National Theatre Company of Oslo (directed by Eirik Stubø). In this play, Fosse returns to a central motif in his work: two friends that go their separate ways. The performance is in Norwegian with Dutch and English subtitles. 

  •  Tuesday 15 June, 20.00 hrs, Main auditorium

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