May 15, 2024
March 9, 2017
Young voice with new stage text at Akershus Teater
In 2015, Mathias Aspen was one of the young people from Nittedal Ungdomsskole who followed Showbox and wrote about performing arts for Unge Stemmer. Now he has been selected by Akershus Theatre in their project ungTEKSTakershus, and will have his text staged in a professional performing arts production.
In 2015, Mathias Aspen was one of the young people from Nittedal Ungdomsskole who followed Showbox and wrote about performing arts for Unge Stemmer. Now he is one of two young people selected by Akershus Theatre in their project ungTEKSTakershus, who will have their text staged in a professional performing arts production, premiering on Monday 27 March.ungTEKSTakershus is an art project that aims to inspire the 15-25 age group in Akershus to use theatre as a means of expression. Like Young Voices, the project was born out of the idea that young people have voices, stories, opinions and observations that are strong, clear, creative and, not least, important to hear.
I meet Mathias in the foyer of Ullensaker kulturhus, where he has been rehearsing for this spring's big performance with his class. Mathias is currently studying drama at Jessheim upper secondary school. At the beginning of the school year, he took part in a writing workshop organized by Akershus Theatre, where the students wrote texts that were then performed by the other drama classes at the school. On the basis of this, he was one of six selected to participate in further work, and he developed the text Thoughts in Abundance, which is now being dramatized. Mathias first started working on a text about a time travel about friendship and loss, but did not reach the finish line. After a workshop with Øystein Brager, who runs ungTEKSTakershus, he was inspired to write down all the thoughts that have come up during the day, and he has developed this into scenes and inner monologues.
Mathias praises Øystein and all the workshops he's attended this semester: " I've been exposed to new thoughts and we've talked about different types of text. I was inspired to write my text after Øystein told me about an author who wrote down his thoughts when he couldn't sleep. "Thoughts in Abundance" is therefore based on my life.
The goals of the project include discovering and nurturing talent and theatrical interest among young people, as well as showing that theater is a relevant and creative platform for expression. Akershus teater also wanted to create a meeting place between young people and professional performers. Mathias' text will be performed by Evelyn Rasmussen Osazuwa, Minken Fosheim and Peder Opstad, and on Wednesday evening this week he attended a rehearsal with the actors for the first time. He describes it as very fun and exciting.
Like ungTEKSTakershus, it's important for Unge stemmer to show that young people's voices are worth listening to, and Mathias is one of those we got to read the opinions of when he was a "SUSer" and followed Showbox in 2015. We wondered if the experience with Young Voices and Showbox affected him in any way, and he tells us that it was exciting to see so many different things - "I have much higher demands for performing arts after Showbox. Both what I see and what I create myself. Especially dancing after I saw "Viruset" at the opening of Showbox last year, it was AMAZING!
We are looking forward to seeing Mathias' text performed at his former secondary school in Nittedal, March 29. Tour overview can be found here, entrance is free.