Grief and gratitude are two sides of the same coin when you lose a loved one.
In "Flowers for Torgeir", Roberta Carreri pays tribute to her work and life partner for many years.
The performance is a beautiful and nuanced depiction of the light that causes the darkness of grief to crack.
The joy that has filled my life over so many years in his company, shines through the grief and makes it transparent.
There is no cure for grief. One must learn to live with it, like with a chronic illness.
I am not the same as I was before Torgeir died – and I never will be.
But I am still able to sing and smile while feeling the presence of his absence that will always follow my steps.
A poetic video design by Stefano di Buduo is projected onto a transparent, permeable and moving canvas that acts as a foreground and background to Carreri’s world of flowers and memories.
Flowers to a great actor.
Flowers to a great person.
Flowers to Torgeir.
(Roberta Carreri, 2020)
A Roberta Carreri & Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium Co-Production (2020)
Actors
Roberta Carreri
Actress
The team behind
Roberta Carreri
Idea and instruction
Stefano di Buduo
Scenography, video and lighting design
Paul Anthony Hales
Sound Technician
About Torgeir Wethal
Torgeir Wethal was born in Oslo, Norway in 1947 and discovered the world of theatre with his school drama class when he was eight years old. He was just eleven when he started earning money by performing on a traditional stage. At the age of seventeen, Torgeir met Eugenio Barba and became one of the founders of Odin Teatret. When Torgier was nineteen, he moved with Barba and the small ensemble from Norway to Denmark. Here he lived and worked, interrupted only by the theatre’s many international tours, until his death on June 27, 2010. He was 63 years old.
Review Weekendavisen 2023
"Just that prioritization, I can say now, was probably a mistake. But my approach also bore fruit. On Constitution Day, cut off from the stagnant heat of dinner, Nordisk Teaterlaboratoriums staging of "Flowers to Torgeir" at Teater V made an impression.
The performance about the late founder of Odin Teatret - Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, the Norwegian actor Torgeir Wethal, premiered in 2020, and it adds an extra layer to the performance that Roberta Carreri has now danced around with her late partner - because Torgeir is present at the stage in the form of sound clips and video projections - for almost three years. She shows us with all clarity that grief develops, but never settles. It is a heart-pounding performance, more private than personal, almost demonstratively agreed when Roberta Carreri sings in Italian and without context quotes W. H. Auden's »Funeral Blues«. It works for the simple reason that it conveys something true."
By Amalie Langballe (excerpt)
BROGET: Perler & grus / Weekendavisen June 16 2023, Section 3 (Kultur) Page 6.
