Asylet ved verdens ende

by Kollektiv Norden

A place, a space, a nothingness, an asylum. A lifeline, a captivity. The difference has been erased. We meet a woman from another time, and a man who is among the living dead. A lost child. An artist without art. A choir of the dead, of lived lives, noise, and longing.

The asylum at the end of the world is both a dream and a reality. It is about people who disappear and those left behind who are reaching for each other. Flowers bursting through walls. The dead spilling out of lamps like moths, just as we all swarm for one last night before disappearing. It is the final stop. A struggle between word and body, loss and redemption – and a forbidden love that, in its impossibility, also gives rise to hope. Where do you find light when night envelops the earth?

The text is written by five authors with vastly different artistic practices and experiences. For a year and a half, they have worked with the desire to write a work where reality does not belong to one person, but to many. A place where language meets counter-language. Where texts based on collisions, ruptures, and polyphony feel just as natural as texts based on recognition and shared experience.

The work is directed by Annika Silkeberg and will have its world premiere at Cornerteateret during the Bergen International Festival. On stage are performers from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, in a production that portrays a life on the brink, but never loses sight of the possibility for change.

Photo: Sebastian Dalseide, DNS/Fredrik Arsæus Nauckhoff

Contributors

• ​Kollektiv Norden: Tale Næss (headwriter), Jonas Eika, Fatemeh Ekhtesari, Timimie Gassko Märak, Henning Bergsvåg text

• Tale Næss, Jonas Eika, Annika Silkeberg, Henning Bergsvåg translation

• ​Annika Silkeberg director

• Idun Vik dramaturgy

• Jens Sethzman set design, lighting design

• Fredrik Arsæus Nauckhoff music, video design
  Actors:

• Nosizwe Baqwa Nina

• Malik Grosos Jojo

• Bahareh Razekh Liw

• Stine Robin Eskildsen Christina

• Bjørn Willberg Andersen Aksel/Tiresias
  

The text is published in its entirety in the anthology La ordene trekke inn i kroppen published by Cornerstone publishing house in connection with Bergen Dramatikkfestival 2024, and was nominated for the Prisma Literature award in the Experiment work of the year category.

A coproduction between

Bergen International Festival, Cornerstone Scenekunst and Den Nationale Scene