Three Nuts For WHAT!?? (Directing)
We have this very specific Christmas tradition in Norway which is to watch a Czech/German co-production of the Cinderella-story, a movie called Three Nuts for Cinderella. It is roughly but very charmingly dubbed to Norwegian by ONE man alone; Knut Risan. The myth tells that he was just supposed to lay the translation groundwork for other actors who would then do the real dubbing of voices later but NRK (the Norwegian National Broadcasting Channel, which was in fact the only TV-channel in Norway at that point) was so pleased they decided to send it as it was. In the movie Cinderella has lost her father and lives with her step mother and step sister as a servant, she has a good connection with the animals at the farm especially her horse Jurasek, the hunting dog and her owl Rozarka. She is also good friends with the other servants at the farm and one of them brings her back three nuts that falls on his nose one day - these nuts are essential to the story as they, whenever cracked, reveals costumes hidden inside that make her able to play roles that make her meet the prince she is interested in. Amongst other things she disguises as a hunter and shows the prince and his peers that she is a far greater hunter than them.
Because of it’s popularity we decided to make this story into a play and show it at det Andre Teatret, but with a twist: In december 2016 me and some other players from Det Andre Teatret went to Atlanta as part of a tour of The States and I got to be a part of Dad’s Garage’s play Invasion Christmas Carol: The deal is that they rehearse the entire Christmas Carol as a regular play from start to end - but when the play is ready to meet an audience different characters from other worlds (usually one per night) will enter the story on stage and become a part of it, it can be Iron Man, it can be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or it can be Santa Claus (I was invading as Ingrid Bergman in 2016), all the while the actors who have rehearsed will try to both say yes to the intruder - and try to finish the play as done in rehearsals.
It was quite a handfull to direct a full length play with the openness to allow the plot to take completely new directions, usually I direct improvised shows on my heel but then I do it live, here I would have to leave the actors to themselves from the premiere night and onwards - it was a team effort that resulted in a very enjoyable result in the end!
Photo: Kjetil Aavik.
