What? Where? When? What for? 

Hilde and Halvard, created by Thomas Bye and Simone Thiis, is a deeply immersive performance about a teacher who is accused of kissing his 13-year-old student.

This interactive performance takes us on a journey through 3rd grade at an upper secondary school in Lilleby, where we follow Hilde who has just moved from a small place called Balsfjord. We later learn that the reason she moved is because she thinks she and her teacher had an intimate moment together in the girls' locker room five years ago. The teacher can't remember the fabled intimate moment with Hilde, and appears to be a well-liked person both as a teacher and colleague. The scene is set in a classroom, where the audience is the fellow pupils.

The acting was believable and fantastic, and the actors also asked several people in the audience and really made you feel at ease as the "character" you were playing. The way they behaved when they got angry at each other was very realistic and authentic because Hilde and Halvard kept raising their voices over each other. The narrator's voice was like our inner thinking, which often came with "you're wondering why..." or "you're thinking...". Even though Hilde and Halvard is a play about a serious topic, they brought in humor in a way that wasn't too offensive or inappropriate.

The audience is a big part of the performance, and if you have the wrong audience, the play can lose some of its magic. Our audience was very good because everyone was engaged and quickly got into the role of a student. The actors gave us our own seats and took us into the story, with the audience deciding who was "guilty". And made the story seem much more alive than if it had been in a regular theater where you sat in a hall and watched.

We speak for the entire audience when we say that this was really well executed and really fun to be a part of. As I said, the audience is a critical part of the performance and it can quickly become small and it's not going to work in the same way if the audience is inactive, unsociable and uncooperative. There are many clues throughout the story, and not all of them are equally obvious, so it's important to follow along and put on your detective hat and dive into the mystery at Lilleby Videregående Skole. We recommend this story for grades 10 and up because it may be more difficult for younger children to understand and be more active in the play.

Written by Maria (15), Caroline (15) and Heidi (14) at Markedet for scenekunst 2023.