conversations in ten questions 31 : Cecilie Løveid

Organized by GalataPerform and being the first playwriting festival in Turkey, the New Text Festival was held for the tenth time this year between November 1st and 28th, 2021, with a hybrid structure focused on the theme of "Breath", both in the physical space and digitally. 

 We hosted Cecilie Løveid in the third of our conversations with international playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and staged and read at the festival. 

 Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel

© Helge Skodvin

What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion?

I think the essence of good writing is if you can transfer from body to body a language we all understand, that is useful for the actor, a place the theater can renew itself, again and again. Through history the literary theatre has sometimes been boring, but it has also functioned as political platforms of ideas and its language of the heart maybe more honest than any other art form. People play to people, I live there and then. Maybe you can find a good play and good playwriting two different things? Good play could be something I like to read or see. Playwriting? For me it would be a piece of literature I am writing on my own thinking and concept, that will belong to the theater list of nessecary thinking load.

Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?

Transformative power of art… as if art has to do with religious salvation? You never can say yes- or no. You can say -of course! So here we could discuss a negative concept, what can I do with you as a human. Has art transferred me? The word is so big. But it must have. Take ganster-rap. I am lucky not to do that kind of art. I think that can lure one to dangerous deeds. But, when I am thinking of it, so many of my own works is not upbuilding either, I just had to write them. I must say that the best of art is something that has both sides. Both beauty and horror. Like the antique dramas for instance. Maybe religion is a transformative form of art?

How do you think that the pandemic that we are facing at a global scale did and will transform performing arts?

I think it will, of course, such big thing must. And maybe it will never be forgotten. There will obvioulsly be a before and an after. And already the symbolic meaning from Camus' The Plague that it was around First World War- not London by 1600… Suddenly it was here and now. We already know that we love live music and theater better than the zoomed concert. Better performing arts in the same room. Energy. So we will try to get back to that, and forget fear. If new forms is coming out, I am not sure about that.

Are there any artist whom you can describe as "my master", or any person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who?

Some has a mystical effect- that is that you do not sit down to copy, but the very fact that this person is in the world or was… is enough. For me magical persons amongst the gone ones I will say Marguerite Duras and Samuel Beckett. For most of the time all examples of real art is inspirational as a phenomenon. I never copy style consiously. But of course I have done it spontaneously, only to know that you can write a little piece for the radio, and suddenly it is out there, the very fact of this possibility is always thrilling. “My master” has so many names.

When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works? 

I always find “a world”, or “an universe” to explore. It is not a big world, it is a small, and it is slightly alike a known world or experience. I often go to other periods. The Middle Ages, The Enlightenment, The Second World War…In there could be a person + some attributes, like….Wittgenstein with his little hut in the Norwegian Sognefjord… Real dreams have almost never a direct source, but it has happened that they can guide me to a solution/understanding of some importance. I also find it helpful to listen to the actors talking with each other if I develop a play from blank sheets together with them. I can give them a little new text, and they fantasies over it and make it “worse”, “stronger” than I imagined. For instance if you just say dentist chair, the actor will say murder of patient… :)

When do you decide to give a title to a work you are working on if it already does not have one? 

I always struggle with titles. It is like naming a baby. Very important. It comes often naturally, but I do not find them ‘attractive’ enough and I try to change many times to something more beautiful or smarter or poetic. It does not work. “Bordet fanger”. (Norwegian) I always have a list. When the piece is ready, I can look at the list and I do not understand why the others came up.

Do you believe your works resonate more with your local culture/community or more universally?

Very interesting question. I would say it will always be circles around circles, it depends on place and time. If I mention things or persons not wider known, it can be dangerous. As well as writing in a local dialect, can exclude those who do not live here. For better or worse a normative languange is what I preferring the most. 

What are your main concerns when a play of yours is translated into another language?

Firstly I ask: Will it be read universally or in a local context, for instance Bergen, Norway? (Do my things sound more Scandinavian than I know of?) Honestly I am just writing my stuff. Is there anything left of what my language has barely achieved in another language? Is it possible that it can be so personal that it cannot be changed? One of my plays is very “Bergen”, written on the Bergen dialect. In some places for instance, like Denmark it was refused because of this “local Bergen flavor”, but in Japan it was seriously good performed and liked! So…maybe Bergen also lyes in Japan?

Can you please elaborate on the themes of your play The Viewing that was shared with us in the staged reading?

The play starts with a widowed woman artist and her young son, she is having a show at an art gallery. The pictures are photos from her last home. They were taken the last time she visited the house. The evening of The Viewing it is very harsh for her, and she develops a ‘game’ for the situation, she takes on another identity and sees it from “outside”, as if she was a buyer of the house that they have lived with her husband. Will you “buy” your life again if it was for sale? Like some “Year of magic thinking” and a falsification of the real, you can build up something new. Together with the salesman, for instance? For a moment this idea is live out. Can she develop art from that platform? Things like taking photos of banal things/situations in the rooms. Like a door, a chair, a basin. But her son is like “a prolonged dog”, with his low IQ he cannot fake, and he loves his mother and will not let another into their life, even for a game. As the mother labels the photo of him, he cannot play on that level for long, because he has a down syndrom. After all she cannot either play the game in the end. But it can be art and tragedy. Some will say it is a melodramatic piece.

Which elements surprised you and which elements were just as you expected in the staged reading of your works by the participant artists of the New Text – New Theatre Festival in Istanbul?

It was a reading of the play, and it amused me very much. The play itself is a lure, it seems more boring traditional modern shit than it is. It has a magical doubleness to it, but also a high end level of demands for the actors. It is impossible to see and comment on it as if it was a full production. These days it is always rehearsals with a director who has his or her own, personal analysis of the written play that counts. But with that said, I think they did a very good job, the three. It is a dangerous sport for the actors. I am very impressed by the quality I could get out of it not knowing Turkish language, I followed most of the text with help of the book. I was very at home myself with the gallery scenes and with the house, played the same place. That was also my idea that it should. Maybe it went a little bit into cartoon version on and off. But that can also be a chosen style… something wanted. I found the “adults” very impressive. But the disabled son was shockingly good. What was that? Is it more easy and a gift to play character “types” which are disabled? He was just the right sort of actor here. I really wishing to see this play again in a fully developed production with proper time to build the characters. Hoping for that to happen soon! 

 [The Turkish version of this interview was published on unlimited.]