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THEATER
“Under the open sky”
By Steve Tesich
Director: Erik Ulfsby
With: Peiman Azizpour, Amell Basic, Paal Christian Eggen
The Norwegian Theatre
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A “water printer” at the front of the stage impresses in “Under open sky”, an apocalyptic and satirical drama about the value of art when it comes to life. As it does now, perhaps more than ever. Here, seen from the perspective of two, in their own way, cracked souls who find themselves on a country road, chasing the mob in an open landscape of war. No one knows exactly where and when. The time is the civil war, the place is the civil war, as it was said in playwright Steve Tesich’s instructions for the play when it was published in 1992 under the title “On The Open Road”, written as a grim prediction of a United States that will one day fall apart.
Tesich’s piece could hardly be more relevant than today, after the storming of the Capitol during Donald Trump’s carpet fall at the last Way of the Cross, and the uncertainty the country and the world now face as Trump’s America is once again heading into an unknown landscape.
We meet Al (Peiman Azizpour) and Angel (Amell Basic) while the latter is standing on a barrel with a noose around his neck. Al goes on a wagon loaded with valuable works of art that he “rescues” from museums and galleries in bombed out and deserted cities. He makes a deal with Angel. If Al saves his life, Angel must be muscle power and pull the cart. Al is the cultured and well-read, Angel a former boxer who has killed before, who has fought all his life for existence without family and education. Not that he is ignorant. In a fable which is not least about the value of art in a multifarious world, he proves to have both a steely memory and a willingness to learn.
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Erik Ulfsby’s farewell performance
The fact that Erik Ulfsby chooses this particular play as his artistic farewell at the theater he has led since 2011 should not be emphasized more than necessary, but it is certainly not accidental. Incoming theater director Kjersti Horn knows that we will add new impulses and other visions to the Norwegian Theatre, and in light of this, “Under open sky” can be seen not as a farewell, but as a preliminary thank you to classical art, be it the painted, the written or the thought, or the one that arises with the drama and performing arts.
“Under open sky” is also a metavision of the theater on Tesich’s part, also stated, with the theater as an almost religious projection. Under Ulfsby’s direction, a vision of the classic contract between stage and audience, between illusion and reality, here emphasized with a rain table at the front of the stage which is used impressively and divides the play into the various acts.
It is probably the first time we have seen that a “water printer technician” is credited (Eirik Ingebricson) on a stage, but the water printer itself, which literally writes words and sentences in water using a digital waterfall, is often used at events and fairs . Here it becomes a scenographic effect and an integrated artistic tool in the narrative, in interaction with Torkel Skjærven’s dramatic lighting design. On the “rain board” are written illustrative key words for the rest of the text, subtle touches of humour, juicy expressions such as “Holy Shit” and “OMG” and short messages to the audience.
Is it mostly a gimmick or does it add something more? That question is probably as impossible to answer as Angel’s sigh: “What’s the point of progress if we’re going to die anyway?”
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Land of the free
“Under open sky” is both a political fable and an allegory of art as a constant value even when the world is otherwise raging. Art should be free, but is nevertheless perhaps the strongest indicator of freedom or the functioning of democracy when it is unfree. In a key scene while they’re on their way to “The Land of the Free,” Al tells Angel that when he’s a free man, he can choose his own favorite author, favorite philosopher, favorite era of history, restaurant, religion. What Al calls “A complete cultural identity”.
In another scene, there is talk of whether it is the portraitee’s or the portraitist’s vision that emerges in a portrait. Al explains
: “At his best, man is chaos with a conscience. At worst, it’s just chaos. Art is not that. Art is freedom. When we have lost our way in the dark night, art defines the darkness we are in, he lifts us up to a height where we can see the way. Back and forth. So we can separate the coherent or stippled line in our lives”.
There is also light and darkness in the art on stage, including a real Odd Nerdrum and a Franz Widerberg, which conceptual artist and scenographer Lars Ramberg has borrowed from Oslo municipality’s collections. And how many words does the word “Freedom” contain?
Lars Ramberg has worked with Ulfsby several times in the past, and he has not least worked with words and letters and the symbolism in them. Like on Økern in Oslo where he has written “TILLIT” with luminous windows on the high-rise block, or in Berlin where he became world famous for the luminous “ZWEIFEL” letters (“Doubt”) on top of the then ready for demolition, former East German national assembly building Palast there Republic. His neon installation on the ceiling on the first floor of Deichmann in Bjørvika is also symbolic.
Six letters for Steve Tesich
The six huge “lead heavy” letters that make up the main decoration on the stage are monumental and give a lot of weight to both the visuals and the theme, but the play itself is also weighty, also thematically. In the word “freedom” we find both “free” and “judgment”, but also “murder” and of course the word “word” itself, and there are many of them in this play.
Steve Tesich was born in Yugoslavia in the former Soviet Union in 1942, and came as an immigrant to the United States at the age of 14, where he was to become a figure in American film. He won the Oscar for the screenplay for “Breaking Away”, and was the one who brought John Irving’s “Garp’s world” to the film. “On The Open Road”, or “Under open sky”, he wrote in 1992, about two figures in a landscape ravaged by civil war.
During Al and Angel’s discussions about art, politics, human dignity, death and religion, the bitter satire is lurking. Ulfsby gets it out in a condensed version of the drama, not least thanks to a sparkling and physical interplay between Peiman Azizpour and Amell Basic.
On the way to the “land of freedom”, Al and Angel are captured by one of the many factions that are in power at any given time. Now they both stand before the gallows, but again someone wants to bargain, and freedom has a price. They are tasked with killing a person who must die if there is to be peace in the world, otherwise he will just keep playing the same tune over and over forever.
It is, as the saying goes, as if new playwrights must constantly compete with a resurrected Shakespeare. They go to a monastery, where a monk leads them to their designated victim, their path to freedom: Jesus Christ.
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Ambitious commentary on art
They refuse, and the monk delivers a monologue that takes Western Christianity by the horns, a monologue that in Ragnar Hovland’s translation and Det Norske Teatret’s dramatization is given even more weight as Al and Angel’s original lines seem to have been deleted along the way. It could have benefited from being ironed out even more.
Erik Ulfsby has hardly been more ambitious than in this production, and he succeeds in a great deal. But the underlying comic, literally gallows humor in Tesich, loses some of its redemptive power through the interpretation of the monologue seen in the context of the closing crucifixion sequences. It has nowhere near the blind optimism and humor that Tesich’s drama originally had, judging by the original script.
Here it ends as in a kind of museum theater or gallery event in an undefined present or future. Or you can see it see it as a meta-commentary from the director’s side on the imminent challenges of the performing arts and perhaps Det Norske Teatret, and on the value of art in itself. Oslo municipality has lent some of its central works for this performance, but the art itself in general is currently in low demand with the lender.