Reading Time: 1 Min.
My father was born and raised in Norway, and I’ve spoken the language since living there for seven months when I was 12. In 2003, while visiting family in Oslo, my Dad’s cousin and her husband (who I consider my aunt and uncle) introduced me to the work of Jon Fosse. I read Fosse’s play Vinter (Winter) in his original New Norwegian (nynorsk), and later that night went to see the National Theater’s production at Torshovteatret in Oslo. I was blown away. From a formal written aesthetic perspective, Fosse’s play was unlike anything I had ever read before, and it moved me deeply. It looked like poetry on the page, with lots of white space, no punctuation, and clear musicality. The story was a simple, everyday encounter between two people, but it resonated on a universal scale in all its complex silences. The text begged to be spoken aloud and was imbued with layers of subtext; the pauses were clearly just as important as the words. I felt I’d stumbled across the most important writer of our time. When I saw the performance that night and read in the program that Fosse had already been translated into over 40 languages and produced all around the world, I couldn’t understand why no one had brought his work to the U.S. yet. Fosse’s acknowledgment of time and our own vulnerability illuminates our existence and creates real possibility for positive change. When I got back home to New York, armed with Fosse’s complete works in Norwegian, I searched the NY Public Library for an English translation to share with potential producers and collaborators and found only one: a British translation of Natta Syng Sine Songar (translated into: Nightsongs— which I found strange, because the original title is inherently poetic in its literal translation: the night sings its songs.) I reached out to Jon Fosse over email and boldly asked for the rights to produce and direct his U.S. debut production. To my surprise, he answered enthusiastically within two hours. As we continued our conversation, Fosse acknowledged the challenge of translation and encouraged […]
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