program 2021
Thursday
November 25th
EULOGY – LIVE
Postponed because of COVID-19
I want to have a heart to heart conversation with my mother before it’s too late, but I have never been able to make that happen in real life. Until I asked her to help me with a school project. She's very supportive of my education. So now we will meet on stage and try to figure out what we can and can’t talk about. We don’t want to talk about cancer or death but maybe it’s a good time to plan the funeral.
Artists: Sigríður Eir, Sif Vígþórsdóttir, Brett Smith and Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir
Thanks: Everybody that helped me, you know who you are.
Sigríður Eir Zophoníasardóttir or Sigga is a performance artist educated from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts. Sigga is a country girl as she was raised in Hallormsstaður, one of Iceland's very few forests. Her career as a performance artist started with living room performances and concerts for her family where the actors were few, underpaid and often unwillingly participating. Sigga is an emotional being. Her practise is based in processing of personal experience and the subconscious, her own inner life and intuition, where she tries to find the distinction between wisdom and hysteria, the private and public, micro and macro. She zooms in on her personal stories, and sometimes overshares, to make sense of the bigger context of things, hoping that it is of any relevance to others. She is also one of two members of A Band Called Eva, a queer, feminist and slow performance duo and band, who have been performing in the theatre and music scene in Iceland since 2013. They make songs about things that don´t have songs but we need to sing about like collarbones, menstruation blood and female masturbation.
Sigríður Eir, Sif Vígþórsdóttir, Brett Smith and Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir
Friday
November 26th
WOMEN WHO CHOOSE NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN
Tjarnarbíó
6:00 PM
Íris Stefanía Skúladóttir
How many children do you want to have? When are you having children? What? You don’t want to have children? That will change when you get older, believe me. You know you don’t have all the time in the world. You will change your mind when you have your first child. You won’t regret it. No one regrets it. What? Are you tired? But you have no children. Just imagine if you had three children. Then you would be tired. But kids are so lovely. They give life meaning. You will not regret having children.
BUT I DON’T WANT TO HAVE CHILDREN!
Iris’s research based performance dives into the world of women you choose not to have children and their experiences living as women in a world that idealizes motherhood. The performance is based on Iris’s interviews with women who all choose a childfree lifestyle.
Creator: Íris Stefanía Skúladóttir
Thanks to all the women who shared their stories.
Iris is a performance artist and curator who has worked with women's bodies and lives in her work. She emphasizes pleasure, taboo, shame and longing. The right of women to do what they want with their bodies and their lives has been the starting point in Iris's work. Among other things, she has collected and published women's masturbation stories and held story circles where stories related to the subject are told. She has made a radio play about older women and their right to be sexual beings and she is currently working on a show about women who choose not to have children, that will premiere at Lókal 2021. The show, a story circle about the topic, is called But I don’t want to have children. Iris will also have an off venue event about orgasmic births.
Saturday
November 27th
BOTANICAL EXPANSION TOUR
Tjarnarbíó
12–4:30 PM
Mannyrkjustöðin
Is it hard to be a human?
Then take a break and come on a plant-oriented trip to Reykjanes with Mannyrkjustöðin. We tour our guests through a seemingly barren landscape looking for plants, expanding our senses and connecting with the environment. Participants might find a new perspective, a plant-oriented worldview that comes in handy when dealing with global warming, midlife crisis and everyday stress.
Pick up: Tjarnarbíó, Tjarnargata 12.
Timeframe: 12–4:30 PM.
The trip will be approximately 4–5 hours and is child friendly.
If children are under 12 years old, it is required to bring car seat.
You will get: water, lunch and coffee.
Costume servers: Hrefna Lind Lárusdóttir og Búi Bjarmar Aðalsteinsson
Costumes: Geirþrúður Einarsdóttir
Video: Sigurður Unnar Birgisson
About Mannyrkjustöðin (Human expansion station)Our goal is to establish a connection with nature and promote selfcare. Plants are excellent teachers and we have much to learn from them. That’s why we say “Everyone has an inner plant” used as a metaphor that can help us in dealing with feelings, relationships etc.
Hrefna Lind Lárusdóttir is a performance artists that works across discipline, performance, visual art, music and design. Hrefna’s work is about creating a space where the surreal meets the mundane, where she feels like there is a potential for a juxtaposition and a gap for further conversation about how we perceive the ordinary things in life. Hrefna is a co-founder of the Post Performance Blues Band, The Plant becoming project, where people can grow their inner plant and curates and teaches artwork in prisons within the project Breaking barriers. Hrefna studied contemporary performance at Naropa University and Art academy of Iceland.
Búi Bjarmar Aðalsteinsson is a designer who has been researching the connection of design with other forms of art and examined how ideas about design can be used in a new context. Recently, he has been exploring the boundaries of performance and design, where the qualities of the magnificent moment are brought into everyday life. The scenery, props, costumes and progressions weave into the urban landscape and participants get to explore the adventures that surround us. Búi graduated from psychology at the University of Iceland, product design from the Iceland Academy of the Arts and social design and art from the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Búi is also a co-founder and service representative of Plant Becoming Project.Stage artist Ragnar Ísleifur Bragason was born in Reykjavik in 1977. For the past years he has been involved in dance- and theater performances with 16lovers and Kriðpleir as well as other groups. He has written his own play and taught at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and the LungAschool in Seyðisfjörður. He graduated from the Theory and Practice department at The Iceland Academy of the Arts.
THE FESTIVAL OF IMPERMANENCE
Holtsgata 1
2 PM
Ragnheiður Harpa Leifsdóttir
The work is an artistic study in which we explore at how nursing of spirit and body is integrated, where the threads of art and healing come together. A nurse, a poet and musicians come together to celebrate and explore the work of healing.
Author: Ragnheiður Harpa Leifsdóttir
Dramaturgy: Eva Rún Snorradóttir
Performers: Donna Hermannsdóttir, Guðrún Yrsa Ómarsdóttir, Ragnheiður Harpa Leifsdóttir, Helen Inga S. von Ernst.
2 p.m. At Holtsgata 1, the artist’s home.
Supported by Reykjavík Cultural funds.
Sunday
November 28th
JUST PRETEND THIS IS REAL
(Work in Progress/Process)
Gröndalshús
4 – 6:30 PM
JHM
By JHM:A human-specific performance where we explore man and the monster within them. How can man progress in our modern times without facing consequences and taking responsibility for his actions? There are two sides to every coin …
Performers: Tryggvi Gunnarsson and Sigurður Arent Jónsson
Artistic leader: Hannes Óli Ágústsson
Dramaturg: Karl Ágúst Þorbergsson
Scenography and Costume design: Sara Hjördís Blöndal.
When: Sunday 28. November, 16.00-18.30
6 performances every half an hour: 16:00, 16:30, 17:00, 17:30 ,18:00 and 18:30
Only 6 audiences per performance.
When ordering tickets, please note which time would suit best.
Where: Gröndalshús
CALL CENTER
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Birnir Jón Sigurðsson og Margrét Bjarnadóttir
The Call Center is open from sunday 28. november til monday the 6. desember.
You can call any time to experience three short performances. The performances are works in progress.
Call Center number: 4971301
The artists took part in a short Lókal residence in 2020, and the pieces are works in progress
Artists: Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Birnir Jón Sigurðsson and Margrét Bjarnadóttir.
Birnir is an artist working with text and visual mediums. His topics involve, amongst others, nature, climate change and communication in the smart age. He is a member of devised theatre groups CGFC and Love & karaoke.
Margrét Bjarnadóttir is a multidisciplinary artist, working in the fields of dance, performance, visual arts and writing. Recent works include the guitar ballet, No Tomorrow, in collaboration with Ragnar Kjartansson and the Iceland Dance Company as well as choreographing Björk’s staged concerts, Utopia and Cornucopia.
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir is an artist and poet. Her subjects often revolve around language and sound as she weaves performances and music into her works. Her latest book, Forevernoon, is forthcoming in English translation.
Wednesday
December 1st
They have no pictures on the walls
Tjarnarbíó
12 PM
Lukas Bury and Weronika Balcerak
They have no pictures on the walls is an artistic research project that aims at in-depth research of the Polish immigrant community in Iceland. Developing an extensive anthropological overview of that demographic, finally creating a mutual plane for discussion and interaction betwixt Icelandic and immigrant populations through a non-fiction publication, which will be launched in the Reykjavík City Library in Gerðuberg in 2022, and an art exhibition at Gallery RÝMD in December 2021.
Lukas Bury, based in Reykjavik is a visual artist with a Polish and German background, interested in historical understanding and the narrative power of images.
Through the making of paintings, accompanied by writing – both, external as a generator of discourse, but also embedded into the surface of the canvas, he analyses cultural contexts, historical narratives and modern-day virtual iconoclasm. With the incorporation of peculiar perspectives, his motifs tackle pertinent political issues and depict the inner strife of a second-generation immigrant, who became a global citizen after being born into a Western-European country.
Lukas studied in the MA program at the Listaháskóli Íslands, the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan.
Weronika Balcerak (b. 1996) based in Reykjavik is a visual artist from Poland working with textile, video and prints. Her work reflects on the controversies embedded within the culture of her place of origin. Weronika studies in the BA program at the Iceland University of the Arts.
12 PM Lecture at lunchtime. Tjarnarbíó.
Thursday
December 2nd
to Sunday
December 5th
A THOUSAND WAYS
Tóma Rýmið, Skeljanesi
12 – 8 PM
600 HIGHWAYMEN
A Thousand Ways is a three-part performance in which you are the actor and you are the audience. Your words, actions, gestures, silence, thoughts, and willingness are the tools. You need no training. You are the expert.
Obie Award-winning theatre-makers, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, known for exhilarating performances that challenge the very definition of theater, have created a quietly radical response to this new world with A Thousand Ways. Taking place over several months, each distinct instalment presents a new chance at making contact with a stranger. It is a chance at being heard, a brave moment to show up.
This is an invitation. Will you attend?
You and another person, seated at a table, separated by a pane of glass, a stack of cards between you. A new type of theater emerges.
In a time when our already-strained co-existences and interactions are further fractured and flattened by virtual gatherings, A Thousand Ways: Part Two is your chance to reconsider what you think you know about a person– including yourself. This elucidating experience is the second instalment in a triptych that explores the lines between strangeness and kinship, distance and proximity. Everything we need is already here, just you and me.
Written & created by Abigail Browde & Michael Silverstone
Executive Producer: Thomas O. Kriegsmann / ArKtype
Line Producer: Sami Pyne
Dramaturg & Project Design: Andrew Kircher
This production was commissioned by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, Stanford Live at Stanford University, Festival Theaterformen, and The Public Theater, and was originally commissioned and co-conceived by Temple Contemporary at Temple University, USA. Original support for the production was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia.
Monday
December 6th
ARE YOU THERE?
Hallgrímskirkja church basement
5 – 7 PM
Ásrún Magnúsdóttir and Halla Þórlaug Óskarsdóttir
Best friends since six years of age, they have been there for each other but they have also not been there. This work is a reckoning of the teenage years, a research on coming of age through friendship. About two hidden worlds from their past; the church youth club and MSN messenger. They welcome the audience to participate in a Youth Club session in Hallgrímskirkja church basement.
This piece is a work in progress, and has been for the past three years, starting as a part of Umbúðalaust project in Reykjavík City Theatre (Borgarleikhúsið), originally meant to be performed there.
Life (and pandemic) has happened quite spectacularly since then, affecting the work and delaying the process. Since friendship and relationships are ever-evolving, Ásrún and Halla have welcomed this processing-period, with humility, but are grateful for now having the chance to perform the current version of this work in process, before an audience.
Ásrún Magnúsdóttir was born in Reykjavík in the late eighties. Her work aims to stretch the dominant modes of dance and choreography and has been received well at home and abroad, as made apparent by her numerous festival appearances, awards and nominations. Currently, she is interested in working with people that have not given dance or dancing much thought and trying to make invisible choreographies visible. She is interested in amplifying voices that she feels might be heard better; giving the stage to other people to speak up, be seen and listened to.
Her works has toured in Europe where she has also given workshops for professionals and amateurs alike.
Halla Þórlaug Óskarsdóttir is a writer and a culture journalist. She's worked in different media, such as newspapers and radio, where she's hosted different cultural radio shows. Her poetry-novella Quiet game, published in 2020, received the Maístjarnan awards for the best book of poetry published in Iceland that year. Her previous work with writing for theatre involves She's my Dad, a one man's show collaboration with Trigger Warning theatre group, and Sleeping masks, a radio theatre piece, broadcasted in 2016.
We welcome you to a meeting with your inner teenager, in the safe-space of a church's basement.