Katja Lindeberg Produksjoner puts the Norwegian majority man under the microscope in a warm, naked and funny performance about the male role.
What is the essence of being a man? Can Andrew Tate, Jordan Petterson, Tix, Lars Monsen and Superman tell us anything about it? Is there a core? Where are the paradoxes? The gray areas? What is not being told? Is the male role as free and spacious as we would like it to be?
In a maximalist and stereotypical man cave, we meet three male actors. A female facilitator sits in a control room next to them. She observes and studies the men, and interacts live with them via video on stage. Through the interaction between the actors and honest confidences with the audience, the performance aims to understand more about what it can be like to be a man today. The stage becomes a research laboratory. The men cannot escape either each other's, the woman's or the audience's gaze, which turns the idea of the man as subject and observer upside down.
The text material for the performance is taken directly from interviews and conversations with men of different ages and backgrounds, and from the company's own research. They have traveled to a men's conference in Berlin, attended a drag king workshop and been hunting, carved out a man cave, talked about feelings – all to get closer to what it means to be a man.
Why am I doing this? Why this great interest in men? Am I longing for a masculine power that I don't feel I possess as a woman? Do I hold a grudge against men I have given too much defining power? An anger at powerful men I've coveted, sought validation from, and feared. Do I want to get under their skin? Undress them? Get behind the role so I can get close? Finding a space for vulnerability. Perhaps I am helping to create the distance myself, through giving men power or through the prejudices I meet men with?
Katja Brita Lindeberg is an actress, screenwriter and director and has run her own company Produksjoner since 2012. Exploration of themes around gender roles and self-image has been a common thread in Lindeberg's artistry and is something she has thematized in performances for both children and adults. With the success performance Bare en våt munn, Lindeberg tackled the woman. Når det jeg egentlig vil er at du skal holde rundt meg is the sequel: A performance about socially constructed masculinity and male experiences related to being a man in today's Norway.
Note. The performance on Friday 26 is with sign language interpretation
