argverðlaunaður skáldsagnahöfundur skrifar sitt fyrsta leikrit. Leiklist, dans, tónlist og myndlist er stefnt saman til að skapa margslungna leikhúsupplifun.
“Ef þú hefðir verið öðruvísi, þá hefði svo margt verið öðruvísi.”
Svartur hundur prestsins er fyrsta leikrit Auðar Övu Ólafsdóttur sem hefur undanfarið skapað sér nafn sem einn athyglisverðasti skáldsagnahöfundur okkar. Síðasta skáldsaga hennar Afleggjarinn hefur hlotið fjölda verðlauna og viðurkenninga, farið sigurför um Frakkland og Kanada og öðlast miklar vinsældir.
Í leikritinu kynnumst við ættmóður sem býður syni sínum, tveimur dætrum og tengdasyni í vöffluboð til að greina frá ákvörðun sem kemur öllum í opna skjöldu. En þetta vöffluboð er ekkert venjulegt kaffisamsæti. Dæturnar þurfa að takast á við gerbreyttar aðstæður í samskiptum við móður sína en lenda auk þess í átökum við bróður sinn sem kominn er langt að og hefur ákveðið að gerast boðberi sannleika sem allir vilja forðast. Hér er svo sannarlega boðið upp í óvenjulegan dans!
Í þessu ögrandi sviðsverki stefnir hópur listamanna saman ólíkum listgreinum. Í gegnum leiklist, dans, tónlist og myndlist er unnið á skemmtilegan og frumlegan hátt með persónusköpun og tungumál, og leikið með samspil orða og athafna, leikhúss og veruleika. Undir niðri lúra ýmsar áleitnar spurningar, til dæmis um skyldur okkar við fjölskylduna – og meðbræður okkar á jörðinni - og ekki síst um það að hve miklu leyti fortíðin með öllu sínu ægivaldi er okkar eigin tilbúningur?
Leikritið Svartur hundur prestsins er fyrsta höfundarverk leikskálds sem sett er á svið af þeim verkum sem hlutu styrk frá Leikritunarsjóði Þjóðleikhússins Prologos. Áður hafa verið á fjölum leikhússins leiksmiðjuverkefni leikhópa sem styrkt voru af sjóðnum.
Úr leikdómum:
"Þetta er stórviðburður. Nýtt íslenskt verk, og það er ný skáldkona stigin fram á sjónarsviðið í leikhúsinu..."
Símon Örn Birgisson - Djöflaeyjan
„Stórskemmtilegt og áhugavert íslenskt leikverk“
SGV – Mbl
„Beinskeyttur háðleik þar sem öll element hins sjónræna verka saman. Góð sýning“
EB – Fréttablaðið
Tótal teater –
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
„Fyrsta leikrit þessa dáða skáldsagnahöfundar bar sannarlega engin byrjandamerki; það skal sagt undir eins íupphafi að þetta var einstaklega frumleg, falleg og fyndin sýning. Ekki missa af Sörtum hundi prestsins“
Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir – TMM
„Drepfyndið verk. Meira svona, takk“
Salka Guðmundsdóttir- Víðsjá, Rás1
"Hér hefur tekist vel til við að skapa heildstæða og forvitnilega sýningu með áhugaverðan boðskap og hæfilegan skammt af húmor og óvæntum uppákomum. Ég vona að sem flestir kynni sér Svartan hund prestsins...“
Kristrún Heiða Hauksdóttir -, Fréttatíminn
Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir
THE PRIEST’S BLACK DOG
Svartur hundur prestsins
A dance theatre play in two acts
The play The Priest's Black Dog by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir premiered at The National Theatre of Iceland's Black Box Stage on 17 September 2011. The director was Kristín Jóhannesdóttir. The play and the production received excellent reviews:
"The first play by this much admired novelist bears no signs of a beginner ; better say it right away that this was an especially original, beautiful and funny production. Do not miss the Svartur hundur prestsins!"
Silja Adalsteinsdóttir, critic for the cultural web magazine TMM.is
"This is a great event. A new Icelandic play, and a new female playwright has entered the stage in the theatre..."
Símon Örn Birgisson, critic for the cultural TV magazine Djöflaeyjan - The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service - Television
"Here, the artists have succeeded in creating a complete and a remarkable production with an interesting message and a good portion of humor and surprise."
Kristrún Heida Hauksdóttir, critic for the newspaper Fréttatíminn
"An extremely entertaining and interesting Icelandic play"
Sigurdur G. Valgeirsson, critic for the newspaper Morgunbladid
"A satire right on target, where all the visual elements work together. A good production."
Elísabet Brekkan, critic for the newspaper Fréttabladid
"A hilarious play. More of this, please."
Salka Gudmundsdóttir, critic for the cultural TV magazine Vídsjá - The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service - Radio 1
Note on the Icelandic title of the work:
Neither a dog nor a priest feature in this play; the title refers to an Icelandic saying “það eru fleiri hundar svartir en hundur prestsins”, which can be literally translated as “There are more black dogs than the priest’s dog.” It is used when someone is accused of something but other suspects come to light. At one point the title of the work was going to be “The Truth”.
Narrative/plot
The play introduces us to the matriarch Steingerdur, who is in her seventies, and has invited her two daughters and son in law around for waffles to announce a decision that will leave astound her family. At the beginning of the play, the eldest daughter and her husband are very much in unison, speak in the plural (we) and finish off each other’s sentences. They have no children and during the course of the play it transpires that they are thinking of adopting. The youngest daughter is the single mother of a teenager and is in the midst of an existential crisis after a string of failed love affairs and is thinking of writing a cookery book. The son, who is the mother’s favourite, is an expert in genetic research and lives abroad. Initially, everything seems to be perfectly normal and everyone performs their role, until skeletons start to emerge from the cupboard.
It soon transpires that they’re all out to get something and that there are several unsolved issues in the family. The sisters will neither listen to their brother or mother. The son seems to be the only person who is interested in the mother’s plans. The sisters, on the other hand, regard them as a sign of senility and want to get her into an old folk’s home, sell her house and get their hands on her inheritance, but fear that their brother will hinder their plans. What’s more the son is privy to a family secret regarding their father Adam, who is dead and no-one wants to talk about. There are therefore more sides to all the characters than it initially seems. The younger daughter offers to give her bigger sister an ovary to enable her to have a child, but it doesn’t go down well, and brings out the tension between the two sisters. Cracks are revealed in the relationship between the eldest daughter and the son in law and it turns out that the son, whom the daughters had always believed to be gay, has a girlfriend and is expecting a child.
We also discover that the mother has a more colourful life than the family realised and has many audacious plans for the future. It transpires that she has felt a calling to help orphans and has already sold the house and spent the money on founding an orphanage for girls on the other side of the planet. She has already packed her bags and is going to visit the orphanage. She has also accumulated considerable debt and is going to solve it all by importing hammocks. The deceased father, Adam, comes into the narrative of the play as a figure who lost money trading shares on the stock market. Whenever he came home from work, he would lock himself into the garage to do some carpentry. But it turns out that carpentry was not his true passion, however. Adam was a transvestite, who sat at the sewing machine, making beautiful dresses for himself and his wife.
Characters
Steingerdur, the mother, a matriarch in her seventies
Marta, the eldest daughter, 39 years old
Magdalena, youngest daughter, 37 years old
Skarphédinn, the son, 33 years old
Njáll, the son in law, Marta’s husband, 37 years old
Interview with the author of the play, Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir
Initially, I was guided by three ideas. Firstly, to write a multi-layered role for a mature actress and I decided that this character would hold all the threads and make audacious plans. Secondly, I wanted to create a dance theatre piece and, thirdly, that there would be no secondary roles in the play. I’ve never understood the division between principal and secondary roles. Good acting does not depend on the number of lines one has and a lot is demanded of all the actors in the play, at all times.
By setting the play at a waffles gathering, one could say that I’m following the established theatrical and filmic tradition of using a communal meal as the framework for a family confrontation. The play explores how, among other things, power structures are created in the family and the causes of the conflicts. It also explores how well the members of a family know each other. What do we know about each other? Two sisters and a brother grow up together but then lead their separate adult lives. When they meet at a gathering at their mother’s house they are different and almost strangers to each other, in fact, but they regress into their old roles – into what we can call childhood itself.
Since the play is about the role of language in individual expression, I wanted to have other voices in the play and decided straight away to write some dancing into the play and work on it in collaboration with a choreographer. Dance is part of the content and structure of the play. It represents the aspects of the characterisations that are without words, acting as a kind of mirror to the soul and rupture with the text – which gives the play a slightly “Brechtian” structure perhaps. In fact, one can say that when the play was premiered at the National Theatre the dancing, scenography and sound worked together to reveal the reverse side of the characters. The stage design therefore reflects the maze formed by the relationships within the family.
MOTHER: Doesn’t anyone want coffee?
SON IN LAW: No, thanks.
MOTHER: Doesn’t anyone want coffee?
ELDEST DAUGHTER: No thanks, mom.
MOTHER: Doesn’t anyone want coffee?
YOUNGEST DAUGHTER: No thanks, mom.
MOTHER: I’ll make some then.
Subject matter of the play
The subject matter of the play revolves around “existential” issues and focuses on a number of contrasting pairs:
1. family versus the global family
2. words/conversations versus events
3. memory versus imagination (in relation to truth)
4. Masked behaviour (theatre) versus reality
1. Family
Eldest daughter: If you had been different, so many other things would have been different.
The Priest’s Black Dog is a tragicomedy about five individuals who have been lumbered together as a family. The play challenges the definition of a family and asks, among other things: how well do we know our “close” ones? If there isn’t a sufficient base of shared experience and memories, is the mere fact that relative strangers share the same blood sufficient grounds for calling themselves a family? And who holds the copyright on memories in the family? The play deals with how people speak when feelings are at stake, the power games that go on in families and what happens when the division of roles is overturned. By focusing on the classical microcosm of the family a larger picture of society as a whole is drawn. This is placed in juxtaposition with the responsibility for the global family.
2. Dialogues/words
Eldest daughter: I just feel that all the words have already been used so much
One of the elements that characterises the dialogues in the play is that each character speaks from his/her own viewpoint, sometimes overlapping and very often without listening to each other. The family has some issues to discuss, but is unable to do so because no-one wants a dialogue and no-one wants to listen to anyone else except themselves. The play is about, among other things, how people talk together, the important role words play in our relationships with others and whether reality can be expressed in words. One of the questions that is posed is whether language is used to gain an understanding of other people and show empathy or to gain control over the world and justify power. The conversations that take place in which feelings are involved are rarely substantive. They are more about justifying one’s position and reflect the power struggles between individuals or groups. Language therefore becomes an instrument of control. It is no coincidence that the old woman in the play has a special interest in linguistics.
MOTHER: Linguistics. Oh god, how I would have wanted to have studied linguistics… derivational morphology… Oh sweet Lord... phonology, comparative grammar, sociolinguistics, semantics, oblique cases, preserving the dative in the passive voice… how I would have been in my element if I’d studied linguistics... I would have travelled to linguistic symposiums all around the globe... To Catalonia...
SON IN LAW: Is that really what the world needs right now?
MOTHER: Yes, where words come from, people need to know that.
3. The truth (in connection with the interplay between memory and the imagination)
ELDEST DAUGHTER: I only speak the truth.
(pause)
In the broadest sense of the term.
MOTHER: There is so much acting in so-called truth. Isn’t language fascinating?
SON: In the broadest sense?
ELDEST DAUGHTER: You can’t just take the truth into your own hands and decide on who I think you are. You can’t control what I remember.
The play questions the nature of truth and not least asks to what extent the past with all its tyrannical power is our own invention? No-one can agree on the past and everyone believes they hold the truth about it. The author has said that before she wrote the play, she saw a television program about memory, which demonstrated that memory was located in the brain in the same place as the imagination. This raised the question about the extent to which the things we think we remember are in fact fiction. If the truth, which we assumed was a certainty, is not reliable, one can ask with whom the ownership of truth – and therefore reality – lies. The play deals with memories of the past and dreams of the future.
About the author
Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir is the author of three novels and one collection of poetry. The Priest’s Black Dog is her first stage play. Her previous novels have received awards in Iceland, France and Canada, and her latest novel, published under the title of “The Greenhouse” in English, has received great critical acclaim and been translated into many languages. Audur Ava studied Art in Paris and is a lecturer in Art at the University of Iceland. She has also written articles and books about art and worked in collaboration with curators for, among other things, the Venice Biennale.
About the director
Kristín Jóhannesdóttir has directed two full-length feature films (Rainbow's End and As in Heaven), tele-films and several stage plays for The National Theatre of Iceland, Reykjavik City Theatre and The Icelandic Academy of the Arts. She studied literature and cinema in Montpellier and Paris, and received her diploma in film direction at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français. She has directed theatre plays by Peter Handke, David Hare, Arthur Miller, Frank Wedekind and Max Frisch and Icelandic playwrights Halldór Laxness, Jökull Jakobsson and Sigurdur Pálsson, as well as the opera The Moonlight Island, libretto: S. Pálsson, music: A.H. Sveinsson. She received Gríman - The Icelandic Theatre Prize for her direction of Utan gátta by Sigurdur Pálsson.