Mette Edvardsen & Matteo Fargion: Penelope Sleeps (2019)
Black Box teater
14/9, 20.00
250 – 100 NOK
Throughout Homer’s Odyssey, the hero’s wife Penelope keeps home while her husband is returning from the Trojan war. Her long wait, refusing other men’s advances, and mastering time by weaving threads, is one inspiration behind Penelope Sleeps, an opera in essay form by Mette Edvardsen and Matteo Fargion. By ‘essay’, the artists mean to present a performance in which opera is a starting point, without using any of its traditional grand gestures and narratives.
Penelope Sleeps is less a retelling of an important part of the Odyssey, more about the abstract relationship between voice and music, space and scale. Edvardsen’s interest in language, and choreography and music as language, leads her to explore Penelope’s inner voice and internal space, a mythical doorway to a place beyond narrative and destiny.
Mette Edvardsen – text
Matteo Fargion – music
Performed by Mette Edvardsen, Matteo Fargion and Angela Hicks
Bruno Pocheron – light and technical support:
Anne-Catherine Kunz – costumes
Cillian O’Neill – subtitling and production support
Production: Mette Edvardsen/Athome, Manyone & Eva Wilsens
Co-production: Kaaitheater & Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), BUDA (Kortrijk), Black Box teater (Oslo), Teaterhuset Avant Garden (Trondheim), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), centre chorégraphique national de Caen in Normandie (France), apap-Performing Europe 2020 - a project co-founded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Residency support: Black Box teater (Oslo), MDT (Stockholm), Kaaitheater (Brussels)
supported by: Kulturrådet, Norwegian Artistic Research Program – Oslo National Academy of the Arts
Produced by Black Box teater
(Photo: Bea Borgers)
