It may not have anything to do with age

Lea Furumo was a participant in the Classics for Kids workshop at Black Box Teater in the fall of 2017. In this text she reflects on the artistic process.

By Lea Furumo

I have a nice, albeit inconvenient, tendency to always speak up if something bothers me. The other day I was sitting at my desk at school, like most other days, and my teacher said something I reacted to. That is to say, she said something I found absolutely hair-raising to even think.

Because of this tendency to speak up, I replied something like: "You can't say that!". What she had said was: "I've been told by a colleague that you're very nice, but that you have no desire to learn. Is that true?"

Here you have thirty students in front of you, I thought, they're paying attention to what you're saying, even though your lessons mostly consist of us sitting and listening to you talk for well over 90 minutes. And then you ask us if we want to learn. But I just said: "You can't say that!" It wasn't well received, and the mood got even worse when I said: "Maybe it has something to do with the teacher?". I don't regret speaking up at all, but it turned out the way it often does: It wasn't until the next day that I remembered what I should have said: "Take us seriously, we're human beings."

And that's what the Classics for Kids workshop has been most about for me. Because when I attended the workshop at the Black Box theater, I felt for the first time in a long time that I was taken seriously even though I was younger and less educated than many. For the first time in a long time, I felt heard even though I was "the one who had to learn something".

So I've been part of a workshop where we had to put on a show in a week. And that's what I spent my fall break on. It was worth it. There were around ten actors who took part, of different ages and with different levels of education. I was among those who hadn't finished high school yet, and some of the participants are still in middle school. The performance was to portray the myth of Orpheus and Evrydike. And we agreed fairly early on that we wouldn't set a target group for the performance. The workshop was a kind of extension of the Classics for Kids project, which is a series of performances for children and young people based on recognized literary works such as Crime and Punishment. In other words, an attempt to create meaningful theater for young people.

The project and the workshop have been very educational, but first and foremost a great relief. A kind of confirmation that I'm not alone. It wasn't just that everyone I worked with throughout the workshop treated me as if I had something to say, but the whole idea of Classics for Kids is about taking young people seriously. This has been a cause close to my heart for a very long time, and I realized as early as the first weekend that I'd joined something that was going to be hard to say goodbye to.

I heard about this workshop from my father. He works with theater, and he has probably helped to awaken my interest in art. I was very interested in working with professionals, it comes naturally with the enthusiasm for art, and I quickly got rid of the fear of being overlooked and underestimated. Still, I didn't completely relax. I had never worked in this way before. All the projects I've been involved in previously have been school-related, or productions in the children's theater I recently left. Even though in school we learn to challenge the titular theater form to some extent, both the school projects and the children's theater productions have mostly been very traditional. The play "should" also be as realistic as possible, and Stanislavsky's method is constantly mentioned.

In the Classics for Kids workshop, I got a taste of a completely different kind of process. We spent a lot of time understanding and discussing the story. Building your own understanding, listening to other people's thoughts and discussing this is one of the most fun things I know. Before we started working on stage, I felt firstly quite comfortable with the myth of Orpheus and Evrydike, and secondly very safe in the group. It was so easy to get started with that as the foundation.

I was lucky to get the role of Evrydike in part of the play, but as the focus was not on the characters' inner lives and the actors' interpretation of the role, there were more people than me playing her. She was represented with a red dress rather than a whole and complex character. One of the most difficult things was this unfamiliar acting style. We were put in a picture, and often Hildur just asked us to try things out, so that she as a director could see what worked. So I didn't have to have any intention or many thoughts about what or how the character was thinking, and I felt a bit like a prop in an artistic expression, which was really nice.

Light and sound played a much more important role than I was used to, and through moods and images we could more easily convey the essence of more complicated texts. Precisely because all the tools had to play an equally important role, all the text and sound were produced at the same time and during the process.

What was difficult to convey through images was explained simply and precisely by the actors. And so children could also understand. Children who got to see some real theater, and they were taken seriously. It was well received, for the most part. People, i.e. adults and children, i.e. the audience, all had their own opinions about it. Maybe it has something to do with people.

Lea Furumo (front) and Viola Tømte as Evrydike in the stunt production Orpheus and Evrydike, Classics for Kids workshop, Black Box Teater, October 2017. Photo: Anders Borchgrevink.