Can grief become a light that illuminates one’s path in life?
In 2010 I lost my partner of many years, in work and in life. The loss of a dear person has two dimensions: grief and gratitude.
The joy that has filled my life over so many years in his company, shines through the grief and makes it transparent. There is no cure for grief. One must learn to live with it, like with a chronic illness. I am not the same I was before Torgeir’s death, never will be. But I am still able to sing and smile, feeling the presence of his absence following my steps.
It is said that you die twice, the second is when you are forgotten.
I don’t want Torgeir to be forgotten.
By and with Roberta Carreri
Stage, light and video design: Stefano Di Buduo
Text: W.H. Auden, Pablo Neruda, Drummond de Andrade, Roberta Carreri and Torgeir Wethal
Music: Olafur Arnald, Amalia Rodriguez, Adolfo Ernesto Echeverría Comas, Erik Truffaz, Joseph P. Webster, Wojtek Mazolewski and Alice Carreri Pardeilhan
Costumes and props: Roberta Carreri and Karoline Banke
Dramaturgy: Anne Middelboe Christensen
Production: Roberta Carreri and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium
Duration: 40 minuts, followed by 20 minutes Q&A with the actress
Photos: Stefano Di Buduo
Thanks to Fausto Pro, Claudio Coloberti and Sabera Shaik for their precious help
World premiere: September 4, 2020 at Odin Teatret, Denmark
There had to be flowers in this performance – lots of flowers! Roberta Carreri chose these flowers as the main symbol celebrating Torgeir Wethal. Both roses and sunflowers are honouring Torgeir’s unlimited curiosity and anarchistic talent as a skilled actor and a philosophic human being.
Norwegian Torgeir joined theatre director Eugenio Barba and was a founding member of Odin Teatret in Oslo in 1964. Italian Roberta joined Odin Teatret in 1974. These two gifted artists ended up as the strongest couple, on stage and in real life – until 2010 when Torgeir died from cancer.
Roberta has taken the tough and tearful journey through mourning and sadness. As a disciplined Odin actress, she has been pursuing her wish of transforming her private grief into an existential piece of art. Simultaneously, she has been touring as an actress with Odin Teatret, performing, giving workshops, and coaching young artists worldwide.
As a dramaturg, I have had the special privilege of following her on small parts of her exhausting and unpredictable road leading towards this condensed performance. I have tried to keep up with her search of novels and poems about grief and death. I have listened to her exquisite choice of music – and I have seen it all being framed by the powerful, unpublished words by Torgeir himself.
I have seen her juggle with exquisite phrases of love and loss, elegantly jumping from one language to the other. I have heard her sing out her passion and I have watched her create her own figures of sorrow and seduction. I have felt her urge to reach an aesthetic expression on stage that would be just as strong and uncompromising as the artistic ideals of Torgeir – and just as grotesque and joyful.
Through the string curtain Roberta enters the world of memories. She literally creates a conversation with the iconic photos and videos of Torgeir, and he smiles back on the subtile and everchanging video design by Stefano di Buduo. Playful as a lover’s game and surrounded by flowers, just like Roberta wanted Torgeir to be remembered.
Dramaturg