ArtLab # 5 Vestregata (2014)
On stage : Pernille With Sandøy, Rebekka Nystabakk, Trude Øines, Pernille Dahl Johnsen, Ellen Zahl Jonassen, Kristine Myhre Tunheim, Anethe Alfsvåg
Instructor : Kristin Bjørn
Playwright : Tale Næss
ArtLab#5 Vestregata is a collaboration between Ferske Scener, Hålogaland Teater, Dramatikkens Hus and Johnsen & Johnsen productions.
By Maja Bohne Johnsen
In ArtLab#5 Vestregata, the audience will encounter a theatre text in progress about Tromsø's recent history.
The year is 1960. Eight articulate women tell about their lives together in a municipal housing complex where everyone knows everything about everyone else. At the center of the story are Johanne and her daughter Synnøve. Johanne struggles to cope with her life. Synnøve has to take the brunt. Around her stand more or less capable women, wondering if the little girl should have been in an orphanage. Or should Johanne leave everything in God's hands? How about finding a real man?
With darkness lurking just beneath the surface, this is a humorous and life-affirming tale. Vestregata describes a part of Tromsø's history that we know too little about.
The story begins the year the Tromsø Bridge opens and a new era is upon us. People live in German barracks due to a housing shortage, women do whatever they can to get their hands on their husbands' wallets when they've been at sea so they don't drink them up, and it goes without saying that good schoolgirls in working-class families have to go straight to work, while their brothers have to go to high school.
The audience will experience a staged reading of a text where the full stop is not set. A lot can happen, and the meeting with the audience will be central to the further work on the text.
