Vagant, 10.02.2025

(Translation from Danish to English)

Hints and Shadow Play

By Suzanne Christensen

Verdensteatret Refuses to Point and Tell

In the performance Flat Sun, the audience is left mystified.

It is hardly the intention that I should know where this evening’s journey with Verdensteatret at Studio Bergen will take me. I feel slightly disoriented even before entering, as the harbor area outside the theater at Nøstet has been transformed into a construction site with a gigantic hole in the ground.

For Verdensteatret, the evening may feel like a kind of homecoming after eleven years without performances in the city. The group was established in Bergen by Lisbeth Bodd (1958–2014) and Asle Nilsen, and had its first performance at Teatertreff 86, the predecessor to BIT Teatergarasjen. It all feels a bit like a class reunion from 1986. Meanwhile, electronic noise maestro Esben Sommer Eide does not exactly set a cozy tone. He stands deeply concentrated on the right side of the stage behind his workbench, surrounded by bizarre, insect-like instruments. There is a sense of uncertainty here, and we cannot be sure that the sound and light levels will remain within a comfortable spectrum.

Wildly Growing Vegetation

The audience is introduced via screens to a motionless jungle landscape. The camera’s eye is “dead,” as if someone had simply thrown it into the grass. Unorganized buzzing and splashing sounds surround us. Slowly, man-made structures emerge in the landscape. Wildly growing vegetation transitions into nature imitations cast in plaster.

I recognize the setting at a point where my experience perhaps should have remained more undefined. The film shows Las Pozas, the strange, surreal architectural creation of British eccentric Edward James, located deep in the Mexican jungle, far outside Mexico City—a place I have tried to reach myself. Let it be said: the journey cannot be made in a day. This moment of demystification leads me astray from a more immediate way of observing.

This is not tourist photography but subtle recordings. It is no secret that this performance, like the previous one, AZ, is based on footage from a group trip to Mexico. The performance’s informational material is sparse, but we are given a text suggesting a ritual involving the agave plant and the strange stalk that shoots up from it as a sign of its impending death. Mexican jungle, mysterious rituals, magical flora—you know the deal. This is familiar terrain for various psychedelic explorers.

On stage, abstract music is created using experimental instruments and microphone-connected objects. A rich and dynamic visual surface is constructed, with projections onto a backdrop and various moving screens mounted in frames. On stage, there are neutral workers moving objects as well as performers with more active roles, dressed in different ways—for instance, with a shiny metal box on their head or masks that make their faces resemble darkened suns.

Images projected onto the screens can gain yet another layer through an actor interacting from behind a screen. The effect is intriguing, with both human and non-human actors (creature-like sculptures) contributing to the visual composition.

If there is a story here, every effort is made to keep it from becoming too clear. As a spectator, I get the sense that this is meant to be an abstract experience. We are meant to remain in an unstable atmosphere, working only with hints and shadow play.

On the rear screen, we see feet walking in what appears to be a rocky desert, but the ground wobbles, and water seeps up from below. A strange, white object—possibly imbued with magical powers—begins to play a role both on stage and in the filmed sequences. It resembles a 3D-printed internal organ, a kind of lung, played like a tuba but also used as a mask, a container. A grail? A dinosaur bone? A shimmering conch shell?

A Rejection of All Hierarchies

In William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies (1954), the white conch shell symbolizes authority and order. When it is shattered, violence and chaos erupt. In the projected footage, we see the artist group dressed in monochrome gray suits, sitting in a semicircle in an urban parkland, observing a kind of absurd dance or exploration centered around the white vessel.

Verdensteatret seems to have abandoned all hierarchical, governing principles. It is about balancing in a space between art, disorganized sounds, and random effects. The troupe creates its own alternative reality—they are flatsunners.

A series of random, computer-generated words drift across the screen at the end. Are they as meaningless as the meaning we are searching for in it all?

After the applause, Asle Nilsen invites us on stage to examine the environment more closely. I almost hear him say: “Non-human actors are now ready for a meet-and-greet!”

Some of them I find particularly fascinating. A charming pair stands vibrating in their own world. Small fans cause the tremors, their heads are a kind of crumpled paper balloon, and their bodies look as if they once belonged to an elegant wheeled garden table.

Verdensteatret creates compelling imagery but consistently remains in a zone of ambiguity. A bit more on that damned agave plant wouldn’t have hurt.