What a glorious day

The jury's
conclusion

Theatre Of Cruelty has worked with several of Ibsen’s dramas over a period of time. They have worked with the play Peer Gynt and staged Ibsen’s Fjeldfuglen for the very first time in 2009. Through “What a glorious day!” they expand and intensify their relationship to Ibsen. Theatre Of Cruelty puts Ibsen and Ibsen's dramas into a new aesthetic framework through the visual world of Bendik Riis. Central to the project is the hope of freedom, a theme which also runs throughout Ibsen’s dramas. The jury regards that Theatre of Cruelty with the project "What a glorious day!" makes Ibsen current in an original way, and that the theatre with this project will further develop the individual and social criticism they have begun in both “Peer Gynt” and “Fjeldfuglen”.

About the project

With the stage performance “What a glorious day!”, Grusomhetes Teater (Theatre of Cruelty) wishes to create a theatrical metaphor of uneasiness/unrest/anxiety with an underlying nerve expressing that hope exists in the possibility of change. Through combining both the visual and lyrical world of the Norwegian artist Bendik Riis, with extracts of Ibsens dramas, they want to express an perspective of astonishment in looking at the world that seems lost in society today.

The longed for energies of modern society are to be manifested on stage. When man looses sight of life, it dies. And modern man moves around in society as living dead, not even aware of this state of mind.
The project “What a glorious day!” sets out to be an epos of hope – a hope that there are possibilities of taking ones lives back.

Theatre Of Cruelty was founded by actor Lars Øyno in 1992. The Norwegian company is dedicated to a radical exploration of theatre as a concrete space and expression. The company has mounted seventeen productions so far.
Theatre Of Cruelty is rare in Norwegian theatre in that they neither subscribes to psychological realism favoured by the institutional theatres, nor the different post-modern strategies that pervade the independent scene. The name of the company indicates the ideological background for Øyno’s anatomical approach to the theatrical matter; however, the writings of Antonin Artaud have for Øyno and the company been an incentive for their own, heretical search for the authentic theatre. Theatre Of Cruelty’s work looks into the anatomy of self-destructiveness in contemporary Western society.