World premiere of Fosse’s new play

Next year’s production of Jon Fosse’s new play HAV (OCEAN) is a collaboration between the Bergen International Festival, Hordaland Theatre, The Norwegian Theatre and Bondeungdomslaget in Oslo, and on stage we will find some of the best actors in Norway. Names of the participants will be published in the festival programme, released in February 2014.

– I am very excited that the play will be staged as a co-production between three institutions emphasizing Norway’s second written language, nynorsk, together with the Bergen International Festival. I’m also happy that Kai Johnson, who has produced a large number of my plays, is again staging something I’ve written, says Jon Fosse.

HAV will be premiered on 22 May in Gimle Culture Hall, and will also be played in Oslo in the autumn of 2014.

In HAV Fosse returns to some important orientation points in his writing. The story is – possibly – taking place on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Familiar and unfamiliar people meet here – some are known to each other, others meet as strangers. Transitional periods of their lives are re-lived, and as they observe themselves both from outside and inside their seeming losses turn into gains. The result is a world filled with symbols and double meanings, yet at the same time remaining playful, as these “little people” shed a bright light on their lives.

Jon Fosse from Strandebarm is recognized as one of the most influential Norwegian writers of today. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, and his plays have been staged more than a thousand times around the globe. Fosse made his playwright debut in 1994 with the play And We Shall Never Part on commission from the theatre Den Nationale Scene in Bergen, and the Bergen International Festival has premiered a number of his plays.