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English-language play to explore hidden ‘Secrets’

Denmark’s English-speaking theatre group Why Not Theatre will premiere its new play in a secret location somewhere in Copenhagen's new Carlsberg district.

Published: 7 August 2015 09:07 CEST

English-language play to explore hidden 'Secrets'

Why Not Theatre is one of Denmark's English-speaking companies. Photo: Sue Hansen-Styles

Why Not Theatre Company, one of Denmark leading English-speaking groups, is readying a new production.

The play, Secrets, will premiere on September 11th, but organizers won't say where. The location of 'Secrets' is, appropriately enough, a secret.

“The decision to play 'Secrets' outside the traditional theatre, where everything tends to be safe and recognizable, is a conscious one: we meet at Café Elefanten at Carlsberg no later than 15 minutes before the performance starts and are then guided – on foot – to a secret place,” the theatre group said in a statement to The Local.

The group said the performance will be “a musical and poetical journey” into what makes all of us keep certain things to ourselves.

“Why do we all have secrets? What is your boyfriend or girlfriend or your parents keeping from you? What is your biggest, deepest, most embarrassing or more grotesque secret?” the company wrote.

'Secrets' will be the company's first play from director Jeremy Thomas-Poulsen.

“It is the first time Why Not Theatre Company works with young American director, Jeremy Thomas-Poulsen, and the first time that we are exploring a new and exciting theatre style”, Sue Hansen-Styles, the company's artistic director and actress, told The Local..

“In the play, Jeremy weaves together the spoken word, poetry, music and short stories written by a young Serbian writer who also lives here in Copenhagen” she added.

Why Not Theatre has been providing professional theatre in English since 2007 and has been awarded by CPH-Culture Best of 2014 for the play WIT, including ‘Best female lead of the year’ (Sue Hansen-Styles), ‘Best foreign play of the year’ and a nomination for ‘Best play of the year’.

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Top Paris theatre reopens as Covid occupy movement ends

A picture taken on January 26, 2011 in Paris shows the facade of the Odéon theatre. LOIC VENANCE / AFP

The protesters took down the banners they had slung across the facade of the venue in the Left Bank as they left at dawn, leaving just one inscribed “See you soon”.

“We’re reopening!,” theatre director Stéphane Braunschweig exclaimed on the venue’s website, adding that it was “a relief and a great joy to be able to finally celebrate the reunion of the artists with the public.”

The Odéon, one of France’s six national theatres, was one of around 100 venues that were occupied in recent weeks by people working in arts and entertainment.

The protesters are demanding that the government extend a special Covid relief programme for “intermittents” — performers, musicians, technicians and other people who live from contract to contract in arts and entertainment.

READ ALSO: Protesters occupy French theatres to demand an end to closure of cultural spaces

With theatres shut since October due to the pandemic, the occupations had gone largely unnoticed by the general public until this week when cultural venues were finally cleared to reopen.

The Odéon, which was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette in 1782, had planned to mark the reopening in style, by staging Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece “The Glass Menagerie”, with cinema star Isabelle Huppert as a former southern belle mourning the comforts of her youth.

But the protests scuppered the first five performances, with management saying the venue was blocked — a claim the protesters denied.

“What we wanted was for it (the performance) to go ahead, along with an occupation allowing us to speak out and hang our banners. We don’t want to stop the show,” Denis Gravouil, head of the performing arts chapter of the militant CGT union, said on Sunday.

Two other major theatres — the Colline theatre in eastern Paris and the National Theatre of Strasbourg — have also been affected by the protests.

France has one of the world’s most generous support systems for self-employed people in the arts and media, providing unemployment benefit to those who can prove they have worked at least 507 hours over the past 12 months.

But with venues closed for nearly seven months, and strict capacity limits imposed on those that reopened this week, the “intermittents” complained they could not make up their hours.

The government had already extended a year-long deadline for them to return to work by four months.

The “intermittents” are pushing for a year-long extension instead.

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