Verdensteatret

The principal protagonist in BRIDGE OVER MUD is a rambling landscape filled with technological apparatus and intricate objects. Projections, abstract images and noises emanate from these objects, fading before you have time to comprehend, a electro-mechanical object theatre that can only be grasped in terms of association and emotion. Prior to commencing work on BRIDGE OVER MUD Verdensteatret’s 12-strong team was on tour almost continuously for a period of two years. The impression, materials and experiences they gathered during this time were then condensed into an opulent audio-visual composition. All elements of a play – text, images, movement, lighting, sound and video, are treated as if they were the instruments of an orchestra. Everything is interconnected, and everything can be treated as an aesthetic object. The artists collected what they termed ‘flotsam’: objects found by chance that now have been recycled to a new purpose. The artists make each object and apparatus: a plastic cup can turn into a delicate sculptural element. The performers in BRIDGE OVER MUD are mere tools of the machines and instruments. Clad in black, they loiter at the edges of the stage. Instead, the audience looks upon an expansive installation of several dozen metres of model railway tracks. Fragmented, detailed, both organic and mechanistic. A dozen waggons roll along the tracks, the light of their headlamps, broken by prisms, casts striations of light on the screen at the rear of the stage. Figurative metal objects drive through the room. Garlands, shaped like corals, rise through the space. The videos show forms that are reminiscent of landscapes, but there is no defined scale and the images thus defy classification. The sound dominates: rattling, droning and roaring, interspersed by silences. Fragments of voices can be heard. The audience is left to make of this what it will: They hear the sound and the images. What they experience is simultaneously familiar and alien, comforting and threatening. The Verdenstreatret thus remains true to the original meaning of its name: BRIDGE OVER MUD is the »theatre of the world.«