The week started with an autumnal cold shower for the Nationaltheatret. In an interview with the newspaper DN, Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum said that he does not want to spend more than around three and a half billion kroner to refurbish the theatre. That is between half and a third of what Statsbygg proposed in June.
– “We cannot choose Rolls-Royce when a Volvo can do,” said Vedum to DN. What do you really have against Volvo, shop steward and actor Thorbjørn Harr?
– If he thinks that the National Theater is a Rolls-Royce, Vedum is warmly welcome backstage. He will soon see that we are working in a completely dilapidated theater building. If you absolutely have to compare with a car, you have to imagine a 125-year-old vehicle. Such an old car would obviously need a solid upgrade. But really, I can’t bear to deal with Vedum’s Volvo. Or other cars.
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The question people have to make up their mind is rather whether you really want to spend three and a half billion on an offer that is less than half as good?
— Thorbjørn Harr
– Are you being defiant?
– No. More waiting. We have lived with this building issue for almost twenty years. Especially in the last couple of years, there has been a lot of back and forth. So we are used to arguments. Most of all, I am positive and hopeful that we will be able to find a solution where, for the next 125 years, we will also have a national theater that is a magnificent building in the center and a place for innovative art.
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– What do you really want? Renovation of the old, or a new theatre?
– The matter is a bit complicated: We have had three scenes at the Nationaltheatret. The main stage, the amphitheater and the painting stage. The state owns the National Theatre, and has appointed Statsbygg to investigate good alternatives. Statsbygg says that when you enter a 125-year-old building and add everything that is required today to achieve a universal design – think lifts, ventilation systems, ramps and the like – then all this takes up so much space that it no longer is space for the amphitheater and painting stage in the Nationaltheatret. Therefore, new stages must be built in addition, either at Tullinløkka or somewhere outside ring 3 in Oslo. Statsbygg has created three alternatives for how this can be done.
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– Two theater buildings, that is. Sure it’s not a Rolls-Royce?
– The proposal for Vedum, the so-called Volvo, will mean that we halve operations. He only wants to refurbish the Nationaltheater building from 1899. Then we go from three stages to just one stage. So the question people have to make up their minds about is whether you really want to spend three and a half billion on an offer that is less than half as good? Isn’t it better to invest in a solution that actually provides just as good theater as today? Right now we are delivering fantastic performances, and the audience is flocking to them. 250,000 people visited the National Theater last year. People want theater!
– But they don’t want noise and pigs in the city, said Vedum?
– It is an even more ridiculous argument than the one with the cars. Vedum itself sits in the Government Quarter. Talk about a construction project that changes Oslo! If we get five or six years of tarpaulin around the National Theatre, it will not destroy people’s relationship with their city.
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– Can’t you just play theater somewhere else?
– Yes! Of course we can! If one had found a place that is actually suitable. Statsbygg has been looking for it for 20 years. But what we have to decide now is what will happen to the National Theater in the long term. We have to decide that it will be something nice to come back to after it has been refurbished. A theater that solves the social mission of the Nationaltheatret. If we know that in the end we will have one main scene and two smaller scenes, we can come up with a whole lot of solutions temporarily. But it is therefore not the most important thing what happens in those years while you are renovating. The most important thing is what the renovation ends up being. It must not become some kind of theater museum.
– Are you sure this isn’t just Oslo talk? There are theaters in other places that are also old and worn, people in other cities point out.
– Those who complain about the so-called Oslo riot can possibly be happy that Oslo Nye Teater is in danger of being closed down completely. Of course, there is nothing wrong with investing in culture and theater in places other than Oslo. But the National Theater must be a theater for the whole country. It must be a spearhead in cultural life. As a national team in sports. We also need some beacons in the cultural field, some places where you get state support to develop high quality. Then the private actors also flourish, because they depend on actors, directors and others who have been allowed to develop at the state institutions. What’s more: Every evening at least a quarter of the audience in the hall at the Nationaltheatret comes from places outside Oslo. We are already a theater for the whole country.
– But do we need a theater in 2024? Isn’t that very old fashioned?
– Precisely because it is old-fashioned, it is important! The theater is one of the very last analogue meeting places we humans have. It is a place where we can experience what it means to be human. Where we sit in the same room and are together. It is clear that it is possible to close down the theatre. It is possible to put it down all culture in Norway. But I don’t think people really want that. Not the center party voters either. I think people want the National Theater to continue. Not as a museum because money was once spent on art, but as a cultural center with high activity, which delivers excellent quality for a large audience.
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Renovation of the National Theatre: This is the issue
Almost everyone agrees that the National Theater must be rehabilitated, because it is 125 years old and about to fall apart. In addition, it lacks a universal design.
Therefore, Statsbygg has put forward three proposals for how renovation can be carried out, with and without a new building at Tullinløkka in addition to refurbishing the old one in Studenterlunden.
Statsbygg’s proposal costs between seven and ten billion. It is two to three times more than Finance Minister Vedum wants to spend. He also thinks that the Statsbygg proposals will lead to far too long digging and construction and mess in the center of Oslo.
Throughout the week, the discussion about the future of the National Theater has wavered back and forth. – Artistic crisis, said theater director Kristian Seltun. – We have not decided, said Culture Minister Lubna Jaffery. While newspaper commentators outside Oslo reminded that there are dilapidated cultural buildings outside the capital as well.
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