By Pernille Bøg. Translated by Thomas E. Kennedy.

"Doesn’t anybody want to shag me?" That was the exit line in dramatist Vivian Nielsen’s new Danish light theatre production of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The line was put in the mouth of the Danes’ pretty-woman-with-a-penchant-for-headaches icon actress Malene Schwarz, clad in burka and Kalashnikov, and aiming directly at the audience. Nielsen is a good snapshot of Danish theatre in 2007, where gender, religion and social issues dominated the stage and Danish audiences were on a first-name basis with the actors. Fictions were broken down and replaced by reality - that highly seductive, foul-smelling thing that mostly has to do with ourselves. Performances were dismembered, texts blown to bits, and the fourth wall pulled down with a crash.

Nevertheless, in the midst of these textual nuclear test explosions, we find a few survivors who are still alive and kicking. Audiences tended to seek out people who could sew bits of text together and put a balm of soothing coherent stories on infected wounds. The dramatists gave us characters to talk to and emotions that mirrored ourselves. “Dramatists without borders” came out with something to say, whether it was about the war in Iraq or the current state of the battle of the sexes.

In 2007, Danish dramatist JAKOB WEIS walked off with a distinguished prize in Danish stage art when he received a Reumert Prize for his brilliant reading of the times and the graceful, sharp dialogue in his two plays, Håndbog i overlevelse (‘Survivor’s Handbook’) and Helmer Hardcore (‘Helmer Hardcore’). His dramatic style is on the money and in your face.
In ‘Survivor’s Handbook’ we meet three burned-out characters in a dreary cafeteria at the race track, where the culinary culmination can be summarized in three words: “the big platter.” Here we meet Leo and Emilie, Sunday after Sunday – like horses that run the same track again and again without ever getting anywhere. He dulls his pain with port and para-mutual games; she, with Chardonnay and the sexual services of a cocaine-ravaged Romeo. Leo is the dreamer, she is the cynic and Romeo is the image of a love that has ended in out-and-out abuse. A little chamberplay about everyday ruts, escapes and destructive compulsions. On a philosophic level ‘Survivor’s Handbook’ lays out the contemporary mission in life, of pain and cynicism. Or, in Emilie’s words: "Matchbook bullshit". Because of course there is more to the story about Leo, Emilie and Romeo. A “Wednesday’s child”.

It isn’t for nothing that the Helmer we meet in ‘Helmer Hardcore’ is called “hardcore”. He’s plumb out of luck and spends the whole performance on the can. Which is on fire and continues to burn out from under him. Nora has fled Ibsen’s doll’s house, and Helmer is left behind with his clown nose, like a huge crybaby. According to Jakob Weis, the bank director went to the can when Nora left Ibsen’s classic. She ran off with her lover, checked into the Hotel Continental, and had it off with a man who shaved his balls.

"Lots of boys are raised by a school marm, who doesn’t have much patience for noisy boys. A boy can’t burn off his energy because she thinks he ought to sit down and do jigsaw puzzles and plastic beadwork. Fortunately, in my own upbringing I could let my inner dude out, but a lot of amorphous guys are broken by it." - Actor Jens Jørn Spottag on ‘Helmer Hardcore’

KAMILLA WARGO BREKLING also concentrates her gaze on men in her no-less-than-brilliant man collage PIS - en forestilling om mænd i dag (‘Piss – a Play about Men Today’), which is a play about testosterone, boyhood dreams and vulnerability. Using the formula “less is more”, she creates a shrill, musical text about five men: the wimp, the freedom-craving divorcé, the new father, the career queer and the everyday super hero. It’s about all their dreams of scoring Lady Marian and the winning goal of the World Championship. It’s about the despair when you are struck by cancer and rejected by the woman of your dreams, and about all of life’s other little oddities. Like, what can a man do with the hair on his ass when he’s losing it on his head? ‘Piss’ is a sensitive text for five brilliant male voices, in a boyish drama about men today.

Women also get their turn in the stage spotlight. Based on true events, dramatist PETER ASMUSSEN has created Om et Øjeblik (‘In a Moment’). Five women are intertwined in each other’s lives. We meet them the way we look today - we human beings - with our dreams at an ebb and our façade cracking. With a much-too-small guitar and an all-too-insistent smile. This is the sound of life: well orchestrated, musical, and with a sense for the resonance of language, the intimacy of voices, and with great power of communication. A surprising, imaginative and intimate journey into life’s decisive moments. Breast cancer, incest, miscarriage, infidelity and suicide are recurring dark themes in ‘In a Moment’, but they are softened by leitmotifs such as “You can sure as hell sing fast, if you’re the only one singing the Christmas carols” and “Shuuut uuup!”  That – fortunately – is how the theatre of reality can sound.

"It is often close relationships people return to when you ask them to tell about the decisive moments in their lives. I once heard about two Jews who fled during the war. It was their happiest moment, they said. They were on a fishing boat out on the Sound, when a German patrol boat approached. They thought they were going to lose everything; then they grabbed each other: “You just need to know that I love you and I’ve never loved anyone as much as I’ve loved you.”  Even though the circumstances were awful, that was what they remembered: their declaration of love."   - Peter Asmussen on ‘In a Moment’.

In her monologue Piéta (‘Piéta’) dramatist ASTRID SAALBACH also puts women at the centre of her report on the state of modern loneliness. The light from a hotel room minibar drills through the inebriated cranium of a middle-aged career woman named Rie. "Ow, ow! Never again,” she intones to herself in her thin silk slip, while she looks for the panties some random Spaniard pulled off her the night before. The unhappily divorced account manager is doomed to a total blackout. Or, rather, the ex-account manager. Because not only has she lost her memory and her husband Niels, she has also lost her job – and herself - quite a few white wine spritzers ago. Astrid Saalbach’s monologue ‘Piéta’ is a gallows-humour story of suffering, about living a lie, and alcoholism. It is about a modern person who bows to all the demands of the so-called perfect life. Among the issues the monologue raises is what the rat race does to us as people and a society. ‘Piéta’ shows an alternate picture of society’s “successful people”, without wagging fingers or admonishing anyone. Here is a liberating drama in which Rie may have a murder on her conscience.

"I called the monologue ‘Piéta’, which means, among other things, “a prayer for mercy”, and I hope the audience will feel for her and intercede for her. We shouldn’t feel sorry for her because she is no victim, but we should see her as someone trapped in a lie. In definitive solitude. And we should empathize with her as a human being because it’s hard to be human." - Astrid Saalbach on ‘Piéta’.

There is yet another female figure who seized the limelight in 2007. NIKOLINE WERDELIN's drama Natmandens datter (‘The Night Man’s Daughter’) conquered the theatre season on stages in Copenhagen and the provinces. ‘The Night Man’s Daughter’ marks an absolute high point in Werdelin’s career. Behind the strange name, “Night Man”, hides the designation for one of the 1700s’ most despised characters. The protagonist Lovise makes her living as a servant for Madame Schultz and she lends a hand at Frederik’s Hospital, but one day things go terribly wrong. Lovise is illiterate and gives the wrong medicine to a woman undergoing severe labour pains. She decides to learn to read and this is the beginning of a tempestuous love of words and the possibility of social advancement. But the price for improving her lot is high. The reading lessons are expensive and Lovise has to pay with her own body. It sounds like a tragedy, but in Werdelin’s comedy laughter wins out over cruelty, and the legacy of the famous Danish playwright Holberg is clearly present. Werdelin has never been better or more ambitious in her format. She handles historical material with relevance, linguistic nuance and incredible elegance.

"Nikoline Werdelin is a dramatist who sells more tickets than even our biggest actors.  Pretty much all her plays are quickly put into circulation in Copenhagen and the provinces. ‘The Night Man’s Daughter’ goes the distance as a modern classic." - Berlingske Tidende’s theatre reviewer Jakob Steen Olsen on Nikoline Werdelin's ‘The Night Man’s Daughter’.

From 18th-century social criticism to a contemporary critique of the human consequences of Denmark’s participation in the Iraq war. One of the year’s great theatre events was Hjem kære hjem (‘Home, Sweet Home’) by the talented ANDREAS GARFIELD. It could so easily have been self-righteous or futile “debate” theatre, but Garfield delivers a flawless and well-written piece of drama. In this suburban tragicomedy the war in Iraq comes to the dinner table in the little community of Hvidovre. Here, the beautiful culture journalist Iben and IT project manager Kim live with their roses in the garden and moving boxes in the house. They fuck under their white sheets and their white clothes with made-to-order opinions and the right label in the collar, and they collect Pillivuyt. Then Kim’s best friend, Captain Carsten, returns home from Iraq and their comfy Hvidovre existence is threatened. For it is one thing to participate in an illegal war and something else again to return home. Home to what? Cabbage! “There's a place for us. Somewhere, a place for us. Peace and quiet and open air wait for us somewhere," sings the naive humanist Iben while Carsten blows his head off, so the walls are definitely no longer white. Powerful, well-written drama from a young playwright we can look forward to seeing more from.

"The way it was written, I could hear my brother, who spent a year in Iraq. The lines and attitudes could have been his. The themes that are dealt with are also the thoughts you have as a relative – I think it puts into words the ideas people have about the war in Iraq".  - Anonymous audience member

We saw quite a bit of political theatre in 2007. While Garfield represents the “old school”, where a play consists of a beginning, a middle and an end, dramatist CHRISTIAN LOLLIKE experiments with text montage. In Grace Was Here (‘Grace Was Here’) he plays with the values of forgiveness and revenge, good and evil, taking his starting point in Lars von Trier’s infamous film “Dogville”. “You’re not erotic, but juggle with a dildo, that you can do!” The rebuke is directed at the audience. Eggheads, people who are no longer “enlightened”, but “buff”. In other words, according to the accuser, Lollike, things are going pretty badly for us. He wants us to see ourselves in the story of Grace, who comes as a stranger into a small, closed society and, as payment for her exile, is subjected to worse and worse abuse from the town’s inhabitants. She apparently forgives them everything – to her father’s immense frustration –but ends up smashing all the eggheads with a baseball bat. Screw these people! People don’t know how to deal with goodness. They humiliate it; they rape it. And how do we treat ”our foreigners”?

"It is much easier for a person to react with vengeance than forgiveness, because forgiveness requires something from us." - Christian Lollike on ‘Grace Was Here’.

The eighth and final glimpse into the Danish theatre landscape directs your gaze over the flatlands of southern Jutland. Here we find Danish dramatist ERLING JEPSEN, who, with his dramatization of his successful novel Med venlig deltagelse (‘With Heartfelt Sympathy’), made his national debut as a dramatist in 2007. ‘With Heartfelt Sympathy’ is a Hamlet story about a son who returns home to avenge his father. When Allan’s father – the “Milkman” – dies, Allan returns to his childhood home in southern Jutland to find out whether his father died a natural death. The unusually large piece of cheese stuck in his father’s throat seems suspicious. It has been nine years since Allan and his sister have been home, and the reunion with his mother is not without tension. With his familiar and well-tested recipe Jepsen leads us into the grey zone between laughter and tears and invites us into the “family bosom” of incest, insanity, suicide and denial. With grotesque laughter as the dramatist’s most elegantly seductive tool, retribution, revenge and the grandfather clock’s threatening reminder of the father’s walk in the woods with a loaded gun become commonplace, along with the regional delicacies of spiked coffee and cookies known as knepkager (which has some rather obscene overtones). Jepsen gradually leads us out to where we don’t even question the fact that we find ourselves in a graveyard, digging up his father along with Jepsen’s alter ego, Allan Jensen. The surrealistic Jepsen turns over the southern Jutland topsoil to the sound of his father’s cracking skull on his way down into the grave, without resembling Beckett, Pinter, Soya or Scherfig. Here Jepsen becomes Jepsen. There is much to laugh at among the gravediggers, haemorrhoids and knepkager, but even more to rejoice over from the man who has become the “grand old man” of Danish drama.

"When I came to Copenhagen, way back when, I discovered that I had no background. At least no background that could be used for anything in artistic circles. I was ashamed of it. I understood that I had come from a social and moral no mans’ land. If I had stayed in southern Jutland I would probably never have become an artist. I would never have had the nerve to go crazy, but I would certainly have perished in one way or another.” - Erling Jepsen