KALEV`s SON (Kalevipoeg)
inspired by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald
Kalevipoeg is a hero, a myth, a national epic. Finally Kalevipoeg is a „cool“ and extremely physical play with humor, irony and poetry.
Kalevipoeg - A giant with enormous power, who loses his father before his birth, becomes king by throwing stones to decide who will rule the land. A Finnish sorcerer deprives him of his mother. Kalevipoeg rapes, kills, revenges, ploughs the soil, builds towns and eventually succeeds in his lifework – defeating and chaining the devil. Everything has been achieved. What next? Crisis, a trip to the end of the world, and finally death by his own cursed sword.
Fantastic subjects, fabulous human life - theatre, fantasy, history, chronics and poetic art in a marvelous combination. Four excellent actors and a director have jointly created a major play of this monumental work.
Markus Zohner, founder and Artistic director of the Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie, adapted the Estonian national epos for the stage. Zohner is actor, director and theatre educator in one. Under his artistic guidance the Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie has performed for more than 12 years at many different theatre festivals and theatres all over the world. Like a vacation kinetic blank Exercise of Kalevipoeg. How on earth will they manage with all that!?
„ Kalevipoeg“ of VAT Teater reminds in many ways Ain Prosa’s play „Shakespeare’s collected works“, which premiered in 1996 in Rakvere Theatre and where the classic’s whole product was performed by three young actors on an ordinary theatre night.
On occasions of performing such text massive with plenty of scenes of action, people always feel a certain excitement of „well how on earth will they manage with all that, how will they play crossing the sea“ etc. on a short stage, in a short time and with few people, such things can be solved in only one way – with the help and guidance by the actors the whole action takes place in the heads of the viewers, which in cases of most theatre-goers holds considerably more than a stage or a few hours.
From the „Kalevipoeg“ of the VAT teater, one should not expect a farce on the themes of being an Estonian, as predominantly was the „Kalevipoeg“ performed by Rakvere Theatre in the summer. The Swiss producer Markus Zohner has taken the epic as a magic fairy tale for adults, where there are still deeper nuances for us, and put the whole story in his own shape. Which means the epic is being performed by four actors and there is nothing more on a wooden
stage, as there is also no musical and light design…
The actors do not often get a chance to open their mouths. Or to be correct – their mouths are constantly opened, but do not produce any text. The fact that the primary means of expression in this play is not the text but pauses, silence, uttering sounds and the actors’ trained movements of facial and other muscles, is by all means welcomed. Experiencing such verbal modesty so primordially characteristic to Estonians is like a vacation from organism paralyzing
and unboundedly proliferating babbling terror, which is most ruthlessly represented by radio dj’s. The „Kalevipoeg“ of VAT Teater is not easy to watch for those, who are too lazy to think or have forgotten how it is done. Although the stage is pregnant from physical action and sometimes the audience gets to hear relevant sentences from the original epic, the viewer must constantly deal with filling in the blanks. despite the fact that the play does not try to violently produce humor and is in places even serious, the whole action is hobbled by benevolent grin. Because people just start to laugh when they realize that now Kalevipoeg is ploughing and forming a furrow, although the actor does not have a plough not to speak of the earth; and now he is raping and now he is walking through the sea…
At least on the premiere, the Finnish, the Germans as well as the Estonians were all glad about understanding that their mind is still working. And when the good actors will perform even more plastically and precisely, it will also be understood by all the other nations, who will see them on the festivals in the future.
Rait Avestik Tallinn/Estonia 19.1.2004
Kalevipoeg - A giant with enormous power, who loses his father before his birth, becomes king by throwing stones to decide who will rule the land. A Finnish sorcerer deprives him of his mother. Kalevipoeg rapes, kills, revenges, ploughs the soil, builds towns and eventually succeeds in his lifework – defeating and chaining the devil. Everything has been achieved. What next? Crisis, a trip to the end of the world, and finally death by his own cursed sword.
Fantastic subjects, fabulous human life - theatre, fantasy, history, chronics and poetic art in a marvelous combination. Four excellent actors and a director have jointly created a major play of this monumental work.
Markus Zohner, founder and Artistic director of the Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie, adapted the Estonian national epos for the stage. Zohner is actor, director and theatre educator in one. Under his artistic guidance the Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie has performed for more than 12 years at many different theatre festivals and theatres all over the world. Like a vacation kinetic blank Exercise of Kalevipoeg. How on earth will they manage with all that!?
„ Kalevipoeg“ of VAT Teater reminds in many ways Ain Prosa’s play „Shakespeare’s collected works“, which premiered in 1996 in Rakvere Theatre and where the classic’s whole product was performed by three young actors on an ordinary theatre night.
On occasions of performing such text massive with plenty of scenes of action, people always feel a certain excitement of „well how on earth will they manage with all that, how will they play crossing the sea“ etc. on a short stage, in a short time and with few people, such things can be solved in only one way – with the help and guidance by the actors the whole action takes place in the heads of the viewers, which in cases of most theatre-goers holds considerably more than a stage or a few hours.
From the „Kalevipoeg“ of the VAT teater, one should not expect a farce on the themes of being an Estonian, as predominantly was the „Kalevipoeg“ performed by Rakvere Theatre in the summer. The Swiss producer Markus Zohner has taken the epic as a magic fairy tale for adults, where there are still deeper nuances for us, and put the whole story in his own shape. Which means the epic is being performed by four actors and there is nothing more on a wooden
stage, as there is also no musical and light design…
The actors do not often get a chance to open their mouths. Or to be correct – their mouths are constantly opened, but do not produce any text. The fact that the primary means of expression in this play is not the text but pauses, silence, uttering sounds and the actors’ trained movements of facial and other muscles, is by all means welcomed. Experiencing such verbal modesty so primordially characteristic to Estonians is like a vacation from organism paralyzing
and unboundedly proliferating babbling terror, which is most ruthlessly represented by radio dj’s. The „Kalevipoeg“ of VAT Teater is not easy to watch for those, who are too lazy to think or have forgotten how it is done. Although the stage is pregnant from physical action and sometimes the audience gets to hear relevant sentences from the original epic, the viewer must constantly deal with filling in the blanks. despite the fact that the play does not try to violently produce humor and is in places even serious, the whole action is hobbled by benevolent grin. Because people just start to laugh when they realize that now Kalevipoeg is ploughing and forming a furrow, although the actor does not have a plough not to speak of the earth; and now he is raping and now he is walking through the sea…
At least on the premiere, the Finnish, the Germans as well as the Estonians were all glad about understanding that their mind is still working. And when the good actors will perform even more plastically and precisely, it will also be understood by all the other nations, who will see them on the festivals in the future.
Rait Avestik Tallinn/Estonia 19.1.2004
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