Vildanden som total og radikal fiksjon

Abstract

Denne masteroppgaven inneholder en analyse av forestillingen Vildanden som ble satt opp under Festspillene i Bergen i 2009 av Vegard Vinge og Ida Müller. Oppgaven analyserer forestillingen og dens virkemidler med utgangspunkt i Willmar Sauter sine teorier om Theatrical Event. Jeg benytter meg av de fire perspektivene «theatrical playing», «playing culture», «contextual theatricality» og «cultural context». Gjennom disse perspektivene ser jeg på mediedebatten rundt forestillingen, festspillene som kontekst og forestillingen som et brudd med Ibsen-tradisjonen.

In this master thesis I analyze Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller's staging of Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck. The Theatrical work of directors Vinge and Müller was the focus of great debate at the 2009 Bergen International Festival [Festspillene], where the duo premiered their highly stylized interpretation of The Wild Duck. The central talking point of the scandal was the production running time and the elements used in the play. Vinge and Müller's production is a durational reconstruction of Ibsen's play. They take stylish and structural cues from splatter films, opera, melodrama, puppet theatre, performance art and fairytales. Each night the show exceeded its advertised length by several hours and, as a result, the festival's director Per Boye Hansen cut short each evening performance. While Vinge and Müller maintain that they never agreed to the posted running time, Hansen defended his interruptions as necessary to respect the theater employees as well as the local residents. The first part of my analysis makes use of Willmar Sauter's perspective known as "Theatrical Event". According to Sauter's model we can analyze a performance in four different ways: Playing Culture, Theatrical Playing, Contextual Theatricality and Cultural Context. First I divide the play into 66 separate scenes, and then I describe each scene. In the Theatrical Playing analysis I look at the means and direction Vinge and Müller use in "The Wild Duck". In Playing Culture I apply Hans Georg Gadamer's theory of play-ing. I argue that Vinge and Müller take playing seriously the entire 13 hours they played "The Wild Duck" in Bergen. In Contextual Theatricality I look closer at the music festival Festspillene in Bergen, the media coverage and the debate it sparked. Here I also review the theatric criticism of the play, particularly with reference to the Norwegian Ibsen- tradition. Sauter's perspective Cultural Context makes it possible to explore how a network of political, economical and public spheres affects theatrical activity. In the last chapter I examine some general aspects of the theatrical event, based on elements of the analysis presented in the previous chapters. Vinge and Müllers interpretation of The Wild Duck is an important contribution to the understanding of Sauter's concept of theatrical event.