The Writer in Iran

Our successful puppet performance The Writer, made in collaboration with Ulrike Quade Company (NL) and Nordland Visual Theatre, is still going strong 7 years after its premiere. The coming week it will visit the 16th Tehran-Mobarak International Puppet Theater Festival in Teheran, Iran. The Writer was the first co-production JSK made with Ulrike Quade Company, and it excites us that next year we will premiere our third collaboration, Coco.

The Writer premiered at Stamsund International Theatre Festival in 2009, 150 years after the Nobel prize winning author Knut Hamsun was born in Norway in 1859. It has toured in The Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, Macedonia, France, Germany and England. It won several awards: The Audience Award at Belgrade International Theatre Festival, BITEF 2009 and The Best Show Award, The Little Prince, at the 2010 Lutke International Puppet Theatre Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

A jaw-droppingly impressive production, an explosive performance, a heartrending story of love, misguided patriotism and betrayal: ‘The Writer’ is an excellent example of the immense possibilities of contemporary puppet-theatre. (5 stars).
The Venue, UK

Where does art end and politics start? And who draws this fine line? Nobel Prize winning writer Knut Hamsun sided with the Germans in World War II and is therefore largely forgotten nowadays. Even though among experts he is still considered one of the founding fathers of modern literature, and highly influential for his innovative style. Where did he slip? After 60 years of hatred, shame and distrust, there’s still no sign of reconciliation.

The Writer let’s the writer talk to someone again, to a three generations later someone, who perhaps has a different view upon the ever so latent minefield called freedom of thought and speech. A conversation that still avoids all the answers, simply because there may not be any. But nonetheless, intimate conversations may still provide us with associative material to why and how someone chooses to join fascistic ideologies.