Sofia Jupither - "20 November" - Extrait
“Sooner or later, you will all have to look at me.” With 20 November, Lars Norén gives us the opportunity to watch and listen for an hour to an 18-year-old man about to shoot up his school in Emsdetten, Westphalia. The Swedish playwright researched the 2006 massacre extensively, reading the young man's diary and his posts on social networks, watching the video he made before his shooting spree, etc. In a painfully honest and unrelenting monologue, he speaks of his bullying, his hatred of school and institutions, his feeling of being trapped. In a text halfway between the manifesto and the soliloquy, he develops a political theory to justify what he's about to do, while revealing his most intimate wounds. This teenager looks like so many others; why him? Why now? Sofia Jupither wants us to hear a young man, not a monster. Is he a product of his time? The victim of a delusion? A fighter on the front lines of upcoming civil wars? He bares all but remains inscrutable. With his raw sensitivity and solidity, David Fukamachi Regnfors faces the audience and becomes this frightening mystery. A violence that can't erase his humanity.
Whether in the family circle or on the margins of society, Lars Norén always plumbs the human soul with bluntness and tenderness. Seen as the heir to Ibsen, Strindberg, and Bergman—whom he once succeeded as director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre—he focuses on family relationships (Demons, Bobby Fischer is Alive and Lives in Pasadena) as well as on historical and recent tragedies (Cold, War, 20 November). At the heart of his vision always remains this tormented human he likes to dissect and describe. Since 1999, he has been the director of Riks Drama, an itinerant national theatre.
Distribution
Text Lars Norén
Direction Sofia Jupither
Stage design Erlend Birkeland
Lights Ellen Ruge
With David Fukamachi Regnfors
Production
Production Jupither Josephsson Theatre Company
Co-production Royal Dramatic Theatre Stockholm, Uppsala City Theatre
20 November by Lars Norén, translation Katrin Ahlgren is published by éditions de L'Arche.