RUTH MAIERS DAGBOK - a three-part monologue.
"Showing off life is one of man's tasks. And certainly not the worst." Vienna, October 26, 1937.
Jewish Ruth Maier kept a regular diary for the last ten years of her short life, until she was sent to Auschwitz and killed at the age of 22.
We follow her as a young girl in Vienna, where she grows up in a safe and well-off bourgeois home, we experience her encounter with Nazi Germany and Kristallnacht, her escape to Norway, the outbreak of war and loneliness in a foreign country - and, not least, we get a glimpse of her life with her twin soul and great love: the poet Gunvor Hofmo.
The unique diary is discovered by author and literary communicator Jan Erik Vold when he gains access to all of Hofmo's surviving papers, and the book is published. Today, Ruth Maier's archive is included in Norway's documentary heritage, and thus part of UNESCO's World Heritage. The archive is looked after by the Holocaust Center.
The theatrical monologue is shaped as an open narrative theater, where Gunvor Hofmo's poems are woven into Ruth's story, and the threads are tied together by Jan Erik Vold. Actress Anitra Terese Eriksen portrays Ruth, Gunvor and Vold. Clarinettist Georg Reiss is also on stage.
The production had its world premiere on November 27, 2022 at the Jewish Museum in Oslo in connection with the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews. Dag og Tid describes the performance as follows: "Lyrical-musical monotheater that warms despite the tragedy", and Vårt Land: "a poignant stage story."
Behind the production is Akå Productions, an independent group consisting of actress Anitra Terese Eriksen, director and playwright Anne-Karen Hytten and producer Hilde Grythe.
