Ester`s book

Ester's book
ODIN TE­
A­
TRET
NOR­
DISK TE­
A­
TER­
LA­
BO­
RA­
TO­
RIUM
særkærparken 144 · POST­
BOKS 1283
DK-7500 HOL­
STE­
BRO · DENMARK
TEL. +45 9742 4777 · FAX +45 9741 0482
[email protected] · www.odinteatret.dk
Holstebro · April 2007
odin teatret
Ester's book
Dedicated to my mother
With: Iben Nagel Rasmussen and Uta Motz
Text and direction: Iben Nagel Rasmussen
Musical Arrangement: Uta Motz and Anna Stigsgaard
Film: Halfdan Rasmussen and Jan Rüsz
Photo: Jan Rüsz, Torben Huss and Morten Stricker
Film Montage: Torgeir Wethal
Scenic Arrangement: Knud Erik Knudsen
Graphics: Rina Skeel
Translations: Julia Varley and Anne Savage
Artistic Advisor: Eugenio Barba
In 2003 when my mother Ester had moved to a rest home at the age of 85, already
suffering from senile dementia, I decided to complete the performance, which for
some time had existed as an idea and draft – a story of her life.
In a comfortable but unfamiliar room at a rest home, mother
and daughter sit and talk. With a stubbornness bordering on the tragicomical,
the same words and terms are infinitely repeated. The dialogue reawakens
past experiences, unrealised dreams and plans for the future, which only
exist in her fantasy.
The physical activity is minimal. A diary from the end of the Second World
War, a photo album and private film clips from half a century ago, reveal
different layers of Ester’s life. Music and songs from a distant youth
accompanies pictures and texts, bringing closer historical changes which
shook and marked her generation.
The story of my mother is also a reflection on becoming old in present day
Denmark, about loneliness and separation. Nobody is born old.
It has been my wish to give voice to some of the fragments of my mother’s life,
which otherwise would have been buried with her.
I am Ester’s Book.
Odin Teatret: Patricia Alves, Eugenio Barba, Luciana Bazzo, Kai Bredholt, Roberta Carreri,
Jan Ferslev, Adrian Jensen, Donald Kitt, Søren Kjems, Tage Larsen, Else Marie Laukvik,
Augusto Omolú, Sigrid Post, Fausto Pro, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Francesca Romana Rietti,
Anne Savage, Pushparajah Sinnathamby, Rina Skeel, Ulrik Skeel, Nando Taviani, Trine Schjær
Thomsen, Julia Varley, Torgeir Wethal, Frans Winther og Mogens Øgendahl.
Thanks to Klezmerduo and Claudio Coloberti.
Co-production: Fondazione Pontedera Teatro/Fondazione Fabbrica Europa
and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium.
Iben Nagel Rasmussen
The hidden paths of Ester's book
"We did it on purpose," my mother wrote in what she called Book of the Seed. What
they had done on purpose nine months before the end of the war was me. Book of
the Seed is a long letter written to the child she was carrying, a kind of diary in
which thoughts circle around the forthcoming motherhood, her expectations, and
how hope and joy stood in sharp contrast to the war that was literally taking place
outside her front door.
Photographs and newspaper cuttings of hers bring the wartime close in all
its horror with daily executions of members of the resistance. There are pictures
from the big general strike in Copenhagen and accounts from the 5th of May 1945,
when the Germans finally surrendered in Denmark.
My mother - Ester - was an author. As an adult I asked her if she wanted
to publish Book of the Seed. She did not. Was she afraid that it was not interesting
enough as literature, or that she would be marked down as a typical woman writer
who deals with small things? But Book of the Seed is a unique document of a
pregnant woman who sits in her two-roomed flat on the 5th floor, and with an even
handwriting tells the seed in her womb about her everyday life, her dreams for the
future and her fear of dying a much too early death.
The material - the theme - had been lying there for a long time. Would I be
able to create a performance about my own mother? Draw her voice and pieces of
her story out of the darkness they seemed to be buried in? The question was not so
much about whether or why, but rather how I should proceed.
Tony D’Urso
2
Tacit Knowledge was the theme of an international symposium held at Odin Teatret
in Holstebro in 1999. I had been asked to make an intervention: what does it mean
to teach, to pass on one's experience as an actor, or to carry within oneself - perhaps
in an unconscious way - an influence from the past?
With Sandra Pasini, a pupil of mine, I demonstrated how the training
is passed on from teacher to pupil without words, through imitation or very few
guidelines and principles, in the same way as I had been taught at Odin Teatret.
We showed the development of the training, during which, Sandra autonomously
invents exercises with different kinds of energy. We presented the body-to-body
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contact between teacher and pupil that I had experienced during the first years in
the theatre and used for the vocal training with resonators. I showed sequences
from my own training and mentioned how experiences from our childhood can
remain as tacit knowledge within us. For example, I remembered how during my
school days it had become fashionable to play with the hoola-hoop rings in the
playground. I had not touched a hoola-hoop ring since then, but I did not need
more than half an hour of practice before my body could remember all the variations: how we used to let the hoola-hoop ring circle round the waist, pass it on to
the neck, then to an arm and back again, the whole way, in faster circles down to
the knees.
Perhaps there were other hidden, tacit traces in my memory which had influenced
my way of training and marked me as an actor?
There was a special rhythm which appeared time and time again in my
training, but also in the non rhythmical use of the drum, which I had practised
in Odin Teatret’s parades and street performances: stops, pauses, suspense. It
occurred to me that I recognised the sound and rhythm of my mother's typewriter.
The sound which accompanied my brother's and my slumbering and dreams as
children. I experienced those pauses not as empty holes, but on the contrary, as
pauses charged with activity - with thoughts - and just as intense as the sound of
the keys beating against paper and platen.
I had asked my mother to take part in the work demonstration. She then
lived in what we call the Pavilion behind Odin Teatret. As an end to my contribution she read the first page of the Book of the Seed. And what had remained hidden, behind the sounds and the concentrated pauses I had listened to as a child,
suddenly emerged. A small microphone was attached to my mother's shirt while
she - faultlessly - read from the book. When she wanted to take off her glasses after
the reading, they got caught in the cable and fell to the floor. She burst out "I am
not an actor, I am just an old clown," and the audience broke out into laughter.
In 2001 when Teatro Potlach prepared their big project The Invisible Cities in
Holstebro, I was asked to participate. The Invisible Cities consists of hundreds of
scenes or living tableaux which happen in different places in a town: a 'polar bear'
fishes from a raft, ballet children train in a garage, modern dance is presented in an
open square. I had been given the task of sitting on the load of a military truck.
Why I was sitting there, and what I did, was up to me. I imagined a war
refugee, an old woman who had been picked up by the soldiers. Or was she sitting
in an abandoned vehicle? On the covered load of the army truck I prepared a 'sitting room': a lamp, a chair, a box full of bits and pieces and some photographs. One
was the framed picture of my mother as a young woman. The refugee read - from
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the Book of the Seed. It struck me that what the refugee loses apart from home and
family is identity, roots.
When people passed the military truck or stopped to look at my sitting
room, I stopped reading. “Look! There is more to me than what you see. "Refugee" is just a word. I carry a past; I used to have a home, a family”. To help them
visualise my unspoken words, I gave each spectator an A4 page. On one side was
my mother's picture and on the other the first page of the Book of the Seed.
Was I on my way?
In 1949 my parents went for an extremely delayed honeymoon trip to Paris. They
had saved up a small amount. Ester had started learning French, and Paris was the
city of cities. They were supposed to have their trip of a lifetime together.
However it was not the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or the Seine that conquered my father's heart, but an 9 1/2 mm cine camera in a shop window. From the
very first day he stood with enamoured eyes and stared at the window, and when
on the second and third day he was still stuck there, my mother said: "Alright, go
and buy it then".
And he did, with the result that the return journey was brought forward,
and my mother never got to practise her French.
My father turned out to be quite a good photographer with a good sense
for composition, rhythm, light and dramatic angles. He was enthusiastic about
Eisenstein.
His films still exist today. If I used fragments of them to bring alive the
image of those times, Ester could be experienced as a young woman, the streets
almost without traffic, and farming when horses were still used to pull the plough
and the harvest binder as it was called back then.
But what could tie together the film clips? How could Book of the Seed be
part of the story about my mother? And what would I be doing?
Lina della Rocca from Teatro Ridotto in Bologna (Italy) had heard me talk about
the performance which still existed only in very vague sketches. I had made myself
guilty of a deadly sin: to talk about a performance without anything concrete to
offer.
During a stay at Odin Teatret, Lina met the photographer Jan Rüsz (who I
had asked to film my mother in the garden behind the theatre where she lived) and
also witnessed how Torgeir Wethal had started editing sequences of my father's
9 1/2 mm films. "Why don't you present it as a work-in-progress at Teatro Ridotto
in Bologna?" she suggested. I have no idea what made me say yes.
Time was short. What should I do? I could present the film clips: the old
black and white films shot by my father and the new one in colour of my mother as
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an old woman. I could read from Book of the Seed. I could talk about those times,
about the family, about small things.
But me as an actor? Oh yes! Scenes from Odin's performances, already
existing characters: Trickster from the performance Talabot with its red thread,
Trickster with the sand child, fragments that had already been used in innumerable
contexts. I added the scene where Medea kills her children from the performance
Mythos. This is how the first loose sketch was presented in Bologna in 2003.
The way of proceeding was too reminiscent of Itsi Bitsi, I thought later.
That performance was also built on autobiography, personal texts, memories and
fragments with characters that already existed. I was becoming tired of myself as
an actor who infinitely repeated the same scenes.
What would be new?
Is Ester's Book a performance? Or is it a narration? Is the nakedness and negation
of acting its strength, or is it the result of an old actor's infinite tiredness with herself and her profession? Does it matter, as long as the story wants and can be told
and someone wishes to listen?
Iben Nagel Rasmussen
Ryde, June 2005
Julia Varley asked me to show the material from Bologna in a session of the 4th
Transit Festival – a festival exclusively for female participants, which took place
at Odin Teatret in 2004. Again I said yes without knowing what to present. A dialogue was missing, more text. Meanwhile my mother had moved to a rest home,
with severe dementia.
There was something both touching, comical and tragic in our conversations from that period, when she insisted on moving back home to my house, even
if she could only stay in a trailer in the garden. I wrote the dialogue from that situation, I decided on which pieces of text I would use from the Book of the Seed and
wrote down childhood memories. The first text montage was ready.
The thought of making a solo performance never occurred to me. I - and the material I had collected - needed a partner on stage who could add something new to the
story. I asked Anna Stigsgaard, an assistant on Odin Teatret's performance Andersen's Dream, to accompany the film clips with her violin, following the rhythm, as
in the days of the silent movies.
The collaboration with Anna was decisive for the work in progress that
was presented to the participants at Transit. Her musical background, age (she
could have been my daughter) and general life experience, was so very different
from mine. She brought to the performance a well needed freshness. Gone was
the thought of using old scenes and characters; gone was the thought of vehement
physical expression.
We had invited Eugenio Barba to see and perhaps help with the montage
before it was shown. He came for a few days. He suggested some changes and
brought ideas which, as so often before, with simple means made the scenes more
rigorous and thorough.
That is how it was shown - in all its simplicity.
6
Morten Stricker
7
Ester: There is a lot of mud.
Uta:
Yes – but in the spring they will plant grass and flowers.
Ester: Hmm- flowers – grass
Ester's book
Iben enters sits down at a table with a typewriter. Types....
Stops and looks at the audience.
Iben:
Where does my mother come from?
Where does your mother come from?
Iben: (Ester’s voice) This is my typewriter – an Erika.
My father gave it to me.
He paid it in five instalments, fifty crowns each time.
A lot of money then - in 1937.
Oh yes – I wrote on it for years: novels, short stories,
plays for the radio.
Ester tears a piece of paper out of the calendar.
Ester: Smoke is fascinating. Don’t you think so?
Lights the paper as a cigarette.
Ester tears a piece of paper from the calendar.
Ester:Day two.
Do you think there might be a little room in your house, with place for me?
Or I could live in a trailer in your garden. I won’t bother you.
Uta:Yes, mummy. But now you are here, and I am travelling a lot with the
theatre you know. There won’t be anybody near you.
Ester: Well – there isn’t anybody here either.
Uta:
Yes there is. And the nurses are very kind.
Ester: But there is nobody who knows me.
Uta:
Mummy – I told you, most of those you knew are dead.
Ester: I could have a dog.
Uta:
How are you going to take care of a dog?
Ester: A watchdog. Just in front of the trailer.
Uta:
It’s very cold in a trailer in the winter.
Ester: One could put up a heater.
Uta: It’s going to be cold anyway and what about your sleeping-pills, who is
going to bring you your sleeping pills? You know you can’t fall asleep
without them.
Ester: Tell me – don’t you think there might be a small room in your house
where I could stay... or I could move into a trailer – I’m not going to
bother anybody.
Uta: Yes mummy – we’ll find a solution this summer – this summer when it’s
a little warmer.
Ester: Day one.
First film. Picture of writers meeting.
Uta comes in as Iben.
Ester: What kind of place is this?
Uta:
(as Iben) It’s a rest home mummy.
Ester: Old-age home you mean. So this is where I’m going to sit until I die!
Uta:
But mummy, this is a whole little apartment, it looks really cosy.
Ester: Hmm - death row.
Uta:Look mummy - you’ve got new curtains in golden colours and a completely new armchair. We’ve put your table in front of the window, so
that you can look at the trees. Aren’t they beautiful in the autumn light?
8
Ester:I first met Halfdan in the Young Artist’s Club. We got married on the 9th
of April 1943, exactly the date of the German invasion 3 years earlier.
Film stops on picture of air-raid shelter at “Rådhuspladsen” (the Town Hall
square) in Copenhagen.
Ester:These are crazy times for making children, definitely, but also times,
which appeal to the optimism in the human being. The more you see
of death and misery and madness, the more you want to affirm life,
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health, normality. We love life and crave for it with hungry anxiety. We
don’t know if some day a bullet will hit us in the throat, if, perhaps, it is
already on its way through many people’s hands to finally end our lives.
We have become optimistic sun-worshippers, exactly because the sky is
almost always low and heavy with clouds.
Picture of Ester as being pregnant.
Ester:We have done it on purpose, because we wanted to, because we felt
an urge to, and now that we’ve succeeded, after a couple of misses, it
still seems unbelievable! There is something perfectly comical and surprising to the conscience that I carry in my womb the beginnings of a
human being, a child who will one day grow up, become independent
and say “my folks” of Halfdan and I.
Song – Iben and Uta:
Darkness everywhere. The fear of dying
One night became a caress. Became a little seed.
Uta:
Mummy?
Ester: Yes?
Uta:
Read something for me.
Ester: What do you want me to read?
Uta:Book of the Seed. Read something from
Book of the Seed.
Ester:Book of the seed. My old diary to you.
Well, well then – let’s see.
20th of February 1945, the fourth year of the war.
The world – by the way – is quite confused.
When we return to the city, there will probably
be neither light nor gas. There is hardly any
coal left in the kingdom of Denmark. The trains
drive according to the ”contingency plan”, light
and gas are more than heavily rationed, no
potatoes, and altogether not much of anything,
except uncertainty and shooting.
The world was out there. Night. And someone screamed.
Sperm and egg united. Little seed on its way.
Little seed. A being. Blindly you received
Dreams of many hours. Blood of our blood.
Quiet as a whisper you are growing bigger
First a little seed in your mother’s womb
Then you shall let go of mother’s umbilical chord
Little seed – a girl? Little seed – a boy?
Will your eyes be brown or blue?
– The sky they shall look at is the same.
If the whole world chokes in tight corsets
You shall carry freedom in your breath
If you’re forced to slavery, you should rather die.
No force can chain life –little seed.
10
11
1st of March 1945
Here is a little flower: a snowdrop, so one can see
spring is about to come. It might be a bit withered
before you are able to appreciate snowdrops, little seed.
But I thought it should be in the book as a symbol
of optimism.
So let’s see if – for once – such optimism
should be rewarded.
Uta and Iben sing:
They bind our mouths and hands
But you cannot bind the spirit
And no one is a prisoner
When thought is free.
Ester: Berlin has fallen. 5th of May 1945.
So – finally it’s finished with the master race.
The joy was endless, and through the streets members of the resistance
movement whizzed in all kinds of strange cars, armed with steel helmets
and armbands, searching for informers who are going to be arrested and
taken to court. There will be the death penalty for those mean rascals
who, for the sake of money and comfort, have informed on other people
to the German Nazis and sent them to the concentration camps, with
their torture, hunger, and inhuman treatment.
Peace, little seed, do you understand what this one little word means:
No need to fear surprise raids, no more need to keep your mouth shut
about what you think and feel, no need any more to fear the destiny of
friends and comrades when they have been taken by the Gestapo and
brought South. Oh yes, my seed, peace is a good little word, and he who
tries to tell you that war has a value, that it’s something great and heroic,
or romantic and exiting, he lies to you like no one else.
Freeze on picture of man playing accordion in the street with bonfires.
We carry an inner fortress
Which will get stronger
As long as we fight
For what we hold dear
Ester:23rd of March 1945
Halfdan went off to the city early this morning, to participate in a meeting of the writers’ association.
I’ve just learned that it’s been really nasty in town today, with a lot of
shooting and nobody knows who was shooting at whom.
Yesterday there was an air raid by the Allies and both the Shell-house,
the Engineers-house, the Technological Institute and other buildings
were hit and destroyed.
When Halfdan has been to town and the evening has come, and I know
the train has come in, I’m never quite calm before I hear his signal from
the garden: ”Kuk-kuk! Kuk-kuk”. And everything becomes cosy and
familiar again.
Iben:My mother belonged to a generation of women who had been trapped
in their woman-role. During the occupation, Danish men and women
had fought together against the Nazi’s in small, clandestine groups.
”And yet”, my mother said, ”what did we do afterwards? Once again
we started serving tea to the men who were discussing the destiny of the
world, darning their pants, making food, and bringing up the children.
We were only free after 8 o’clock at night.”
At night, finally, my mother could sit down to write, and after we, her
children, had left home, I saw my mother become bitter and hard. After
so many years of patience and gentleness, all of the suppressed anger
suddenly came out. For too long she had been prevented from realizing
what she herself wanted. When I saw my mother like that I no longer
recognized her and I was afraid. When I find this same tendency in myself, I say no. Even if it hurts, even if it hurts others. I would rather live
the pain now. I don’t want it to accumulate in a corner, waiting for me
at the end of my life.
Images from the streets of Copenhagen. Last days of the war.
Ester tears a piece of paper from the calendar.
Ester: Day three.
Tell me, do you live near by?
12
13
Uta:
Yes, just near by.
Ester: How good you found your ”place”.
Uta: Yes, what a fortune.
Ester: I thought, if I could move into your place – or just put a trailer in the
garden.
Uta: But mummy – who is going to take care of you, I am gone half of the
year.
Ester: I could have a dog.
Uta: What about your pills then? Who is going to bring you your pills?
Ester: Oh, it will be all right.
Don’t you think there will be a small room in your house? I’m not going
to bother you.
Uta: Yes, mummy – yes. This summer, when the weather gets a little warmer.
Ester tears a piece of paper from the calendar.
Ester: Day four.
You know I’ve got this old dream of making a journey by foot from the
top of Denmark to the border of Germany and then – like - cross over.
I’ll bring my typewriter.
Uta: But mummy – do you think you can walk that far? It’s a really long
trip.
Ester: Yes, maybe – I won’t do it right now – let’s wait and see. By the way: I
thought that if you had room in your house...
Second film begins.
Iben:Vesterbro, the workers quarter in Copenhagen. Virum on the outskirts of
the town. Ølstykke in the countryside. She didn't remember these places
anymore.
Violin accompanies the film sequence.
IBEN:The darkness was alive. In the late hours of night my brother and I could
hear them speak quietly together, or they wrote. The sound of the typewriter – the beating of the keys against paper and platen was our lullaby.
Together with the pauses – dense of thoughts between words and sentences they became a calming rhythm: the confidential voice of the night.
Only rarely did they go out together, but one evening they went out to a
carnival party at the Young Artists Club. Grandma was babysitter.
14
We were in our beds when they came to show themselves in their homemade costumes: Mummy as a night bird with rustling silk-skirt and black
wings. Dad as will-o’-the-wisp with light in his high, pointed hat. They
were formidable. At night they came back through the garden path in
conversation with grandma. The big geranium, they said, had come out,
and stood shining in the darkness with dewdrops upon the red petals.
That is such a precise picture of my mother at that time, a strong, blooming flower against a black background. No, she didn’t remember. She
has also forgotten the little thatched cottage in Ølstykke.
”We live on the obesity of the earth” she proclaimed, while working in the
cold kitchen, wearing a ski hat with earflaps. (She had a tendency for ear
inflammation.) Kaspar, the Siamese cat she had given dad for his birthday,
loved to sit on her shoulder or on the hat, while she stood bent over the big
kitchen stove, stirred in pots and pans, and moved the iron rings over the
fire. She baked bread, she pickled, made preserves, put jam into big pots
and jars, and lined them up on endless shelves. Ølstykke – the countryside – for us children – was Africa. Big insects flew around in the night,
enormous birds were flapping noisily above, when we went for milk at the
nearest farm. There were SNAKES, plums, nuts – and carrots. They didn’t
grow, as we thought, on trees, but dad pulled them from the ground.
And then – huge mushrooms, puffballs that one day uncle George collected in the field. ”Look kids,” he cried out, ”I found a lot of cow eggs”.
We ran down the dusty road, shouting: ”Mummy, mummy – George
found COW-EGGS”. But Saunte became THE house – our place. The
only place she remembered and called home, even though she left it with
the divorce, more than 30 years earlier.
Film 2 ends. Ester tears a piece of paper from the calendar.
Ester: Day five.
My bank book has gone. I think somebody took it.
Uta: No – I can’t believe it. Maybe one of the women put it in the bank box.
I’m sure that’s where it is.
Ester:I would like to know how much money I have. We could go together and
buy a place where all of us could live.
Uta: Well, yes – but I don’t think I want to move right now mummy. We have
a house you know.
Ester:But the books. Don’t you want some of them? Troels Lund – it’s a wonderful collection. Don’t you want it? And the bureau … look it’s completely empty.
15
Uta: Yes, thank you – but not now. You will need the books and the bureau
yourself.
Ester: But I can’t bring so much when I am going back.
Uta: Going back?
Ester: Yes, to Sealand – what’s the name now?
Uta: Saunte.
Ester: Yes, Saunte.
Ester tears a piece of paper from the calendar.
Ester: Day six.
Don’t you make too much of it. The pictures – the photographs. Don’t
drive any more nails into the wall. You know I’ll soon be off to Sealand.
Uta: But mummy – you don’t know anybody in Sealand.
Ester: I don’t know anybody here.
Uta: You know me.
Ester: Yes – I do.
My bank book has gone. It’s not in my bag. Maybe they took it?
Uta: No, I don’t think so. I’ll take care of it.
Ester: Do you feel well here?
Uta: Yes, mummy – yes I do.
Ester: I’m so glad you found your ”place”.
Uta sings:
Life is a short second
a second both good and bad
if you have beliefs or hopes
you'll be disappointed.
I have left you now
although I think of you still,
therefore I tell you
if you forget,
I'll remember, word for word.
Life's clock-hands turn
people meet, and then they part.
First a sweet and lovely game,
then each goes his own way.
Everything broke apart,
but that dosen't matter.
At least I am still allowed to keep
the memories.
Those you can never take from me.
Ester tears a piece of paper from the calendar.
Ester: Day seven, eight, nine, ten, days, days, days.
My head – I think I’m going crazy. I can’t figure out where I belong.
Uta: That’s because you don’t belong mummy – you’re an old gypsy. You’ve
lived in so many places, – even in Tom’s trailer.
Ester: Tom? My son? When I now return – disappear – then just take the
bureau, it’s completely empty.
.... And the books. Don’t forget the books.
Third film.
Iben sings:
I call you my beloved
And look – my hands are passing
As shadows over your white breast
And through your dark hair
I’m lying at life’s bright knee.
I’m searching for your mouth.
Below me light breaks through
From the flower bed of your eyes
Kneeling in the deep grass of night
I live this moment.
I call you my beloved
And chain you to a seed
Tonight the cold roams blindly
Tomorrow the thaw will begin
And the seed shall grow
And the tree shall die.
Do you remember the joy we found?
Do you remember the thoughts we shared?
I have counted each day, each hour,
so if you forget, I'll remember everything.
16
17
Eugenio Barba
Ester's gift
Dear Iben,
After your mother moved to Odin Teatret to live in our “pavilion” in 1988, we met
from time to time in the corridor. She registered my state of mind at first glance and
by the way she greeted me I became aware of my mood. In her last years she did
not recognise me anymore, especially if it had been a long time since we last saw
each other. Sometimes even my own mother does not recognise me.
Old age removes us from one another. However, within the pain of
unavoidable separation, a spark of light appears: we look at our mothers as they
were before they became our mothers, without us, those young girls we never
knew. After years filled with attention to our lives, they are now alone. And we also
feel left alone in spite of our age.
From this unfairness of nature you have made a subdued performance full
of joy. Without sentimentality and without cynicism. I am grateful to you, and for
this reason I have accepted, for the first time, not to be your director.
I called it ”performance”. You and I know that it is something else. But it is right
not to mention this. There are experiences which cannot be exchanged.
It was good that Ester moved into the pavilion behind the theatre. You
are her gift. Through the little that you and she have told me, I understood that it
was her who spurred you to contact Odin Teatret, many years ago, when you were
little more than an adolescent full of nausea for life. Your mother had no particular
passion for theatre, she loved literature. But she caught a glimpse of interest in you,
when you had seen our first performance Ornitofilene, and it was her wish that you
take up the challenge. At times you have been a difficult actor. I can only imagine,
since I have no daughters of my own, what a difficult and worrying daughter you
must have been.
In her final years, Ester had become very thin. As if life had peeled the
flesh from her bones. Today I ask myself how it could be that the two of us never
thought of thanking her – together. I can very well imagine the scene: a toast, three
glasses, and the arrow of her infallible irony.
Tony D’Urso
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Holstebro, 1st March 2006
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Torben Huss
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