Amfiteater, letn. 13, št. 1, 2025
UDK 792.02 (481)   
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2025-1/58-76
Abstract
In Norwegian theatre, the avant-garde may be less visible due to the very strong Ibsen 
tradition in stage directing marked by realism, which is the main tradition throughout 
Norwegian theatre history. However, there were attempts to create a Norwegian theatre 
avant-garde in the period between the 1920s and 1960s, which the author addresses 
in this article as a historical avant-garde perspective of beauty and monstrosity. The 
article focuses on the break from or cracking of the Ibsen tradition in stage directing, 
which indicates a break from traditional representational ways of playing Ibsen on stage, 
marked by the predominant realist stage directing and acting ideals, first during Ibsen’s 
own life and then during the decades after. The article also indicates the neo-avant-garde 
transition into the post-avant-garde from the 1960s to the 1980s and how Situationism 
came to influence it.
Keywords: historical avant-garde, neo-avant-garde, post-avant-garde, Norwegian Ibsen  
tradition, grotesque, folklore, beauty and monstrosity, stage directing
Knut Ove Arntzen is a professor emeritus of Theatre Studies at the University of Bergen. 
He is also a theatre critic and has published a wide range of articles in the research area of 
theatre staging or mise-en-scène, as well as in the area of avant-garde and postmodern 
theatre. 
knut.arntzen@uib.no 
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Poetic to Popular, Beauty and Monstrosity in 
the Norwegian Avant-Garde Theatre
Knut Ove Arntzen  
University of Bergen
During modernism, as well as in the international avant-garde, the grotesque folklore 
was important both as a visual effect and as a theatre style of its own and a part of a 
general lineage of avant-garde deviating from classical norms of harmony. However, 
harmony in the arts has often been something in between beauty and monstrosity 
(Kokiou and Malakasioti 1–13). This dichotomy is also noticeable in the Norwegian 
theatre avant-garde from the 1920s to the 1960s and, later, indicating the arrival of 
the post-avant-garde in the 1980s. It emphasises how popular art or folk culture has 
been a source of inspiration for avant-garde movements not only in the 20
th
 century 
but also in earlier historical periods: “Folk dance and songs inspired famous compos-
ers of the Romantic era and early modernism, such as Edvard Grieg and Bela Bartok” 
(Arntzen, Anthropogarde of Stage 99–109, 101).
As a term, the word “grotesque” is derived from the word “grotto”, meaning “cave”, which 
reflects subterranean associations to something alien, strange or unheimlich. According 
to the Renaissance and Baroque tradition of the pastoral, a monster or dragon was living 
in the cave. In the European theatrical avant-garde, re-theatricalisation had its impact on 
the first decades of the 20
th
 century. The inspiration came from marketplace fiestas and 
folklore with features from folklore grotesques that are retraceable in folk fairy tales. The 
idea behind it was that the theatre is supposed to be theatrical, that is, a visual theatre, as 
opposed to being visually created illusions of reality on stage. Theatre avant-garde and 
the grotesque as a dramatic genre emerged from the background of the market theatre – a 
travelling pantomime theatre performing on the marketplaces and Tivoli parks of cities 
and villages. These travelling pantomime theatres worked in connection with Italian or 
English pantomime companies that were later known as Christmas Pantomimes.
There was a development towards expressionism in drama and theatre, which was 
influenced by the extreme use of grotesque effects in line with revue theatre, vaudeville 
and cabaret dramaturgy (Leirvåg 19). When it comes to traditions, Norwegian theatre 
researcher and historian Keld Hyldig has published two volumes on the general history 
59

of Ibsen’s tradition, which is seen against the background of Norwegian theatre history 
regarding the historical context and the Danish heritage of the 19
th
-century theatre 
(Hyldig, Del 1 og Del 2). In the following, I will look at how the popular, burlesque and 
grotesque contributed to a break with the realistic Ibsen tradition in Norwegian theatre.
Johanne Dybwad and Agnes Mowinckel: A Poetic-Theatrical and 
Political Avant-Garde
In the first part of the 1900s, Johanne Dybwad (1867–1950) was the chief actress and 
stage director at Nationaltheatret in Kristiania (Oslo). She aimed to create a fusion of 
realism and stylisation. That was not avant-garde, but Dybwad still represented an 
initiative towards the avant-garde through her use of a Craig-inspired monumental-
realistic directing style. It was she who introduced the political documentary theatre, 
such as in her production of Ernst Toller’s Hoppla wir leben (Hoppla vi lever – Hurra 
We Are Alive) at the Nationaltheatret in Kristiania in 1927. In Norway, this production 
was described as “literary expressionism” (Nygaard og Eide 75–76).  
Combining monumentality in scenography and realism had already been established 
as a Norwegian stage directing style of the Ibsen tradition of the Nationaltheatret. The 
Dybwad tradition reflected some of the avant-garde tendencies, such as European re-
theatricalisation that changed conventional theatre to a more stylised kind of theatre. 
Reality-imitating theatre was no longer in focus, and it was substituted by a partly 
neo-classicist monumental style. The development was a result of a multitude of 
impulses, not the least from Gordon Craig’s idea of the actor as an inanimate figure or 
Übermarionette (Craig 9–14).
Agnes Mowinckel (1875–1963) was a stage director at Det Norske Teatret in Oslo. 
During her term of employment, there was indeed an actual theatre avant-garde 
in the European sense of the word. She presented stage productions of German 
expressionist plays (1923–1935). Prior to that, she presented Frank Wedekind’s youth 
drama Spring Awakening (Frühlingserwachen) at Intimteatret (The Intimate Theatre) 
in 1922. Agnes Mowinckel was inspired by the intimate scene movement, something 
which was totally in line with the tradition instigated by the Théâtre Libre in Paris 
since 1887. She established her own intimate theatre called Balkongen in Oslo (The 
Balcony, 1927–1928), while she continuously kept in touch with avant-garde painters 
such as Per Krohg and Willie Middelfart. 
In other words, the central focus of Mowinckel’s productions was the visual 
expression on stage. She traced important plays by contemporary authors, such as 
the surrealistic grotesque The Magnificent Cuckold (Den storartede hanrei) by Belgian 
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surrealist playwright Ferdinand Crommelynck, which she produced at Det Frie Teater 
in 1924. In 1928, she even presented the Play Dybbuk by Shalom An-Ski, a playwright 
who wrote all his plays in Yiddish. This was a folkloric and poetic fairy-tale play that 
Yevgeny Vakhtangov had produced in Moscow in 1922. Agnes Mowinckel directed 
it in a theatrical, stylised manner contrary to psychological realism. In addition, 
she engaged artists from the Russian avant-garde theatre who came to Norway as 
refugees, such as Alexey Zaitzow and Grigory Danilovich.
Agnes Mowinckel’s productions could be poetical, political and social. Her primary 
source of inspiration, however, came from the French poetic theatre style that Jacques 
Copeau had established at his Vieux Colombier in Paris. This French theatre was very 
much inspired by the Italian Commedia dell’ Arte. Like other small theatres in Paris at 
the time, such as Théâtre du Atelier, it absorbed a lot of surrealistic features.
Stein Bugge: The First Cracking of the Ibsen Tradition
During the interwar period, Stein Bugge (1896–1961) was important in Norwegian 
theatre circles as a theatre visionary. His importance grew in the post-war period from 
1945 to the 1950s. He was, like Agnes Mowinckel, oriented towards the theatrical and 
poetical inheritance from Jacques Copeau and Le Cartel.
Copeau had wished to establish a folk theatre (people’s theatre) based on comedy, the 
grotesque and monstrosity in accordance with stylistic ideals of re-theatricalisation, 
folklore and stylising. Copeau’s inspiration came from the Italian Commedia dell’ Arte 
tradition and some similar traditions. Copeau’s theatre wanted a more playful 
and physical form of theatre that would abandon the aim of producing realistic or 
naturalistic mimesis on stage. Bugge made himself unpopular when he broke with the 
dominant Ibsen tradition to the advantage of the style of Ludvig Holberg, a Danish-
Norwegian comedy writer. It seems that Bugge considered Holberg’s comedies 
grotesque plays and, especially, Holberg’s Jeppe on the Mountain (Jeppe på Bjerget). 
The modern grotesque was a genre blossoming in early Soviet theatre and drama, 
like with Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, Yevgeny Schwartz and Daniil Kharms, with roots in 
strange stories from E. T . A. Hoffman to Nikolai Gogol.
Unfortunately, Stein Bugge’s comedy productions ceased to become economically 
successful. They were rarely produced by the Norwegian theatres of his time or later. 
So, Bugge never had his breakthrough as an avant-garde playwright. However, as a 
poetical and rhythmical stage director, he had a significant influence on the avant-garde 
in Norwegian theatre. In an article, he pronounced his view on what was essential for 
creating the artistic impression of theatre, that is, what he would consider to be “the pure 
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theatre”. Bugge was preoccupied with the thought that theatre had to be disconnected 
from the literary text to create a “pure theatre” – a theatre style with origins from the 
stylised theatre forms of earlier times. The intention of this “pure theatre” was to create a 
free flow of imagination on stage. To put it in his own words: “The pure theatre – such as 
it has been formed by a whole row of shining geniuses from modern theatre history – has 
disconnected stage arts from the literary analysis and from mimetic realism” (Bugge 294).
In Brussels in 1928, Bugge’s Belgian publisher printed his artistic manifesto, The Ideal 
Theatre (Det ideale teater) in Norwegian, which was then edited in Norwegian in Oslo 
in 1947. His manifesto was based on the opposition to naturalism, which was instigated 
by Belgian symbolistic playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Bugge comprehended the 
position that Ibsen’s dramatic realism had attained, yet he simultaneously opposed 
this same position. Seen from this perspective, we may regard theatre avant-garde as 
connected to a break with naturalism and realism. This idea is especially relevant to a 
Norwegian context regarding the dominant Ibsen tradition of the Norwegian theatre. 
According to Stein Bugge, Ibsen represented a view on theatre that would have to 
be trespassed totally in line with other avant-garde directions within the arts. Bugge 
looked for inspiration in the pre-bourgeois theatre traditions of the past (Bugge 17–33).
To Stein Bugge, the theatre of ancient Greece and Rome and of the Medieval Ages 
represented the best theatrical ideal since these theatre forms represented an experience 
of theatrical totality where actors and spectators were united in their belonging to a 
religious dimension. According to Norwegian theatre researcher Trine Næss, Stein Bugge’s 
most important theory is his holistic view of theatre and his idea about the meaning and 
function of theatre. Næss claims that the implication of this view is that in theatre, the 
religious and sociological aspect are interconnected (Næss 98). This, I suppose, will have 
to be comprehended in relation to Bugge’s strong commitment to folklore and, through 
this again, to a religious dimension that historically has been characteristic of folk culture. 
The development of new stage forms was intended to fit into this theatre perspective.
Stein Bugge felt compelled to derive inspiration from theatre forms of preceding 
historical periods that had made use of the platform stage and of popular stylised 
acting forms, such as the Commedia dell’ Arte and juggler traditions. Again, theatre 
sprang out of the traditions and styles of the people. To Bugge, a stage arrangement 
functioned as a regularly constructed image of the whole spiritual world of the play. 
It was a contemporary complex and eternally shifting expression of the dramatic 
conflict of a play. He saw the importance of space and how to use the scorebook to 
establish a relationship between text and space. To quote Bugge again:
A stage arrangement, then, is not merely a fitting grouping of acting actors around 
decoratively lined up pieces of furniture in stage interiors. A stage arrangement is 
rather the fixed determination of fictive people’s predetermined imagined role 
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holders’ predetermined courses within the cubical space of the stage. (Bugge 279)
Bugge’s use of the term “cubical” applies to an idea of his orientation towards 
modernism, that is, if we see the analogy to the painting style known as cubism. His 
aim was really something far more than just a monumental and stylised expression. In 
his mind, the stage room had to make space for the words on which you had to think to 
fully comprehend the drama. The focus is on the living human beings, and the actors are 
requested never to forget what their respective characters are doing on stage. In this 
way, Bugge contributed further to developing a monumental tradition in Norwegian 
theatre that stage director Johanne Dybwad had initiated earlier in the century. Also, 
she was very inspired by the inventive German stage director Max Reinhardt.
Stein Bugge’s stage directing of Nikolai Gogol’s The Auditor (Revisoren) at Det Norske 
Teatret in Oslo in 1936 was typical of this orientation. It was a production that he repeated 
later at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen in 1947. The expressionistic stage image of this 
production had a twisted perspective in which the actors appeared in stylised poses (Fig. 
1). When Ludvig Holberg’s play Mascarade was produced at Nationaltheatret in Oslo in 
1945, Bugge’s stage directing presented the play on a pastoral, playful rococo stage (Fig. 
2). Productions of this kind were typical of Bugge’s poetic and rhythmical commedia 
grotesque style. This tells us of theatre’s disconnection from representational drama 
and transmission over to grotesques, cabarets and revue theatre. This production 
clearly took on more of an expressionistic and poetic character.
Fig. 1: Revisoren, Den Nationale Scene, 1947, Bergen. From Det ideale teater, p. 305.
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Fig. 2: Mascarade, Nationaltheatret, 1945, Oslo. From Det ideale teater, p. 272.
Hans Jacob Nilsen’s Stage Directing Style and Peer Gynt
Hans Jacob Nilsen (1897–1957) was an educated engineer who became an actor and 
stage director. Nilsen’s production of Peer Gynt at Det Norske Teatret in 1948 was 
with music composed by Norwegian composer Harald Sæverud (1897–1992) as an 
attempt to break with the Romantic tradition. In that tradition, Edvard Grieg’s music 
was predominant, although Ibsen himself was all but satisfied with it (Nilsen 16). 
Breaking with the Ibsen tradition meant making use of a directing style that dared 
to be unfaithful to the theatre conventions of the time, even though psychological 
realism also stood firm in the stage directing of contemporary Ibsen plays. Ibsen 
himself had, in fact, contributed to this in his score books or staging manual, and in 
fact, many directors felt tied to their instructions.
Hans Jacob Nielsen, then, was presenting Peer Gynt as a non-Romantic drama and 
turning this type of production into reality. He claimed that concerning Peer Gynt, 
Ibsen acted as a non-Romantic playwright in the sense that, from his hand, the play 
was intended as a satire (Nilsen 16). But there is an inherent paradox in the fact that 
the satire had strong roots in Classical German Romanticism, so the plays of German 
Romanticism may indeed be as satirical and bitter as they could be sweetly tuned. 
Nilsen, however, wanted to break free from the national Romantic acting traditions, 
64

not from the ironic or satiric dimensions of the play itself. This meant that the new 
music for Peer Gynt had to break with everything imitating and euphemistic. Harald 
Sæverud proved to be willing to compose a music score that had precisely that effect 
(Sæverud 39–43).
This production succeeded his engagement as managing and artistic director 
in Bergen (1934–1939, and the years he had spent in Sweden during the German 
occupation of Norway, where he had acted on stage in a production of Peer Gynt 
directed by Swedish Per Lindberg. After World War II, Nilsen was engaged as artistic 
and managing director at Det Norske Teatret in Oslo, 1946–1950. This is where his 
Peer Gynt in 1948 became one of his major productions. It was characterised by 
folkloric and grotesque elements. It is quite a paradox that he labelled his directing 
style as ethical realism, that is, a style in which dreams and poems were made equal 
(Midbøe 52). Harald Sæverud composed the music for this production and the two 
shared views in their comprehension of the importance of folklore. Seen from this 
angle, they both represented a contemporary trend in the direction of the folkloric-
grotesque avant-garde. A convergence was then taking place between inspiration 
from folk art and the grotesque in music and in stage arts and what this production is 
concerned with. The context is the will to present an anti-Romantic interpretation of 
Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in 1948.
Scenographer Arne Walentin (1915–2006) created a technologically modern and 
updated stage image with newly available light and sound reproductions that had 
great avant-garde potential, something that this Peer Gynt production really proved. A 
lot of the sensation by it lay precisely in the technical, the stage sounds and the bodies’ 
free rhythmical movement that had become almost an aim of its own. Sæverud’s stage 
music contributed significantly to this effect.
The focus on the bodily figurative is well documented by a contemporary Dutch critical 
review that described the production as “ballet-like” (Midbøe 164). The elements of 
satire and folkloric grotesque also took on a physical or bodily character. The music 
contributed to the experience of the play as something almost tactile. Dramaturgically, 
Nilsen confirmed the avant-garde-ish using episodes of action as the dramaturgical 
basis for his stage directing. Arne Walentin’s use of picture projections on the rounded 
horizon of the revolving scene brilliantly realised this effect. Despite a scanty use of 
decorations, there was no Puritan simplification taking place on stage. Yet, the stage 
solution came to present the whole spectrum of new technical acquisitions. Thirty-two 
stage images were presented, all of which were picture projections by Arne Walentin 
projected on the backdrop from painted glass plates. The transition between them 
was simplified using the revolving scene (Midbøe 62).
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The Roughness and Wildness of Folklore: Peer Gynt and the 
Aesthetics of Grotesque
Hans Jacob Nilsen wanted brutal music for his Peer Gynt production, a music designed 
to “tear and burn” to create anxiety and discomfort. For this purpose, he regarded 
Sæverud as the perfect choice of composer since he appeared to have “the musical 
temper of appropriate force and sorcery” (URL Siljustøl museum). Nilsen describes 
Sæverud as sufficiently rough and wild in his musical access to Peer Gynt.
The 1948 production of Peer Gynt came to reflect all of this, and Nilsen's choice of 
composer played a crucial part in creating this effect. The stage directing, as well as the 
choice of music, made use of rhythm, stylising and the folkloric grotesque; Sæverud’s 
source of inspiration came from Norwegian folk music. If we interpret the production 
from a historical avant-garde theatre perspective, we can see that the characteristic 
elements are present. There is a focus on stage stylising and the grotesque, as well as 
on the choice of acting style and on the tableau- and landscape-based scenography 
of Arne Walentin. Besides, this production was characterised by a dramatic tempo 
hitherto unknown (Midbøe 69–70).
Norwegian literary researcher Knut Brynhildsvoll reviewed the dramatic text of Peer 
Gynt from a folkloric grotesque perspective, or the identity crisis of Peer Gynt as seen 
in a grotesque-aesthetic perspective (161–173). Here, we touch on the dichotomy 
in between beauty and monstrosity, mentioned in the introduction of my article. 
Brynhildsvoll maintains that the acting on stage appears with a subversive discourse 
in which the characters are talking past each other in a way that contributes to making 
the dialogues burlesque and quirky (161).
It is Peer Gynt as theatre text Brynhildsvoll reviews in his article, with no direct 
mention of Nilsen – except for the point concerning in which way it is implicated 
that the 1948 Nilsen production of the play was anti-Romantic. One possible answer 
to this is, of course, that it broke with the Romantic music of Edvard Grieg and the 
Norwegian National Romantic tradition of stage reception. However, Brynhildsvoll is 
questioning the thought of it being anti-Romantic when we look at the play from the 
perspective of the grotesque since the tradition of the grotesque, in fact, was created 
during the era of Classical Romanticism (Brynhildsvoll 164).
The grotesque is a reference that Hans Midbøe makes ample use of in his monograph 
about Nilsen’s 1948 Peer Gynt production. He emphasises the grotesque in between 
beauty and monstrosity. To Nilsen as well as to Sæverud, it appears to have been an 
aim to parody the Norwegian farmer through the use of the grotesque. It is confirmed 
mainly through many of the critical reviews, such as in a comment to Gerd Kjølaas’ 
stage choreography, where we read that she “has choreographed the dancing steps 
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totally in correspondence with the original idea behind the production, graciously-
grotesque, expressive and humorous” (Midbøe 69). This play is also “about the 
ogrish within us and about folk music” (49–52), and he states that “the Norwegian 
satire is grotesque by nature”. On Lydia Opøien as “the woman dressed in green”, he 
says that “she [Opøien] is sparkling and grotesque in her vitality” (Midbøe 111). On 
the Anitra character in Sossen Scheldrup’s guise, he says that “she was naughty and 
wild, came on stage with a vivid physical presentation and a grotesque attire” (111). 
He also points to the music reviewer Elinor Behrens, who writes that Sæverud’s 
music makes use of tough intervals, something which contributes to “liberate” Peer 
Gynt from the sentimentality of Romanticism and makes the play more vernacular 
(Midbøe 168–170).
Hans Midbøe often refers to interpretations of the Peer Gynt character in his 
monograph, like when he mentions a description in Hans Heiberg’s theatre review in 
the newspaper Verdens Gang, which says: “This Peer is a completely egoistical, work-
shirking, lying man, disloyal to everything and everybody, bragging whenever he can, 
but humble whenever he needs to be” (Heiberg, critical review). What Heiberg says 
in his article corresponds at large to Nilsen’s own idea of his directing style, namely 
that the tragedy of the egoist is what must be addressed where ethical realism is 
concerned (Midbøe 116).
The theatre avant-garde in Norway ranged from symbolist drama to social 
engagement-drama and poetical theatre and had its roots in the European 
movement of re-theatricalisation as well as taking on a folklorist grotesque 
dimension. This is expressed in Stein Bugge’s comedies as well as in Hans Jacob 
Nilsen’s Peer Gynt production of 1948. Nilsen’s production was intended as a riot 
against National Romanticism and the original Romantic reception of Ibsen’s 
play. This implied that the focus shifts to a focus on Peer as an opportunistic war 
monger rather than on Peer as a Romantic outlaw. With his production, Nilsen 
finally broke through or cracked the national-Romantic Peer, accompanied by the 
music of Edvard Grieg. In 1948, the Peer figure or character was played by Nilsen 
himself in a psychologically realistic manner. But, considered as a whole, it appears 
that the grotesque was the protruding element. It seems that the production, to 
some degree, has been connected to the idea of the Norwegian landscape in a new 
or more expressionistic way. In the conception of the play, Peer Gynt is grotesque. 
The expressive style that grew out of this conception was partly produced through 
folklore and parody, and, indeed, it represented a revolt against the traditional 
romantic way of performing Peer Gynt, shifting from focusing on the poetic beauty 
to the monstrosity of the grotesque.
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The Succeeding Development of the Norwegian Theatre 
Avant-Garde
In the 1950s, the Norwegian theatre avant-garde was succeeded by a theatre in 
which authors like Tarjej Vesaas and Georg Johannesen were important playwrights. 
In the 1960s, Jens Bjørneboe (1920–1976) came into the field of theatre with his 
documentary theatre and revue theatre style. Bjørneboe was an important supporter 
of Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret in Oslo from its planning phase and onto its foundation 
in 1964. Odin Teatret later moved to Holstebro in Denmark. In 1966, Scene 7 at Club 
7 in Oslo was, led by the actress Sossen Krogh (1923–2016) and was inspired mainly 
by French theatre and absurd drama (Brantzeg 4–9).
At Det Norske Teatret in the years 1971–1985, new European drama was conveyed to 
the spectators through young, internationally renowned directors in an exploratory, 
theatrical style. In the end, the new performative avant-garde took a foothold in 
Norway, inspired by the Fluxus movement and the Situationists like Gruppe 66 (Group 
66) in Bergen. Gruppe 66 was marked by its own artistic twist to contemporary 
Norwegian social and political conditions. In this twist, it represented something very 
new and original that has been described as border-breaking and hybrid-ish through 
its use of poetry, new music, jazz and films. Gruppe 66 made use of happenings, 
actions and Co-ri tus-events in combination with masks and the use of Laterna 
Magica, characterised by shadow play and the use of marionettes, reminding a bit of 
Nilsen’s directing tools for Peer Gynt.
The Co-ritus was a new strategy for understanding art as live-action more than art in 
the sense of autonomy or being oriented towards the oeuvre as such. In 1966, Danish 
Situationist artist Jens Jørgen Thorsen (1932–2000) came to Bergen to participate 
in Gruppe 66’s artistic project in the Bergen Art Society (Kunstforeningen), where 
he presented a series of art films and one pornographic film, and at the same time 
launching the concept of Co-ritus in a Norwegian context. Co-ritus became a strategy 
for artists to look upon themselves as progressive, and the concept indicated an 
artistic investigation into rituals and shared experiences as a way of creating a new 
relationship between the spectators and the audience in the arts, in the sense that the 
artistic process is a shared process, as Thorsen expressed to a journalist in the daily 
newspaper Bergens Arbeiderblad (Thorsen, Co-ritus) (Fig. 3).
The social engagement came very strongly about, and facing the late and postindustrial 
society, it became a question among the progressive artists how they should prevent 
ordinary people from falling into the hands of those who wanted to exploit ordinary 
people’s newfound leisure time by inviting the audience to take part in the artistic process. 
Thus, the arts were no longer considered autonomous, something for its own sake and 
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goals. Jens Jørgen Thorsen expressed that his aim was to connect experience as such and 
the ritual or ritualistic. Mixing art and life came to expression in the search for practices 
marked by collectives or group-based work (Thorsen). When Jens Jørgen Thorsen came 
to Bergen for Gruppe 66 in 1966, it had a tremendous impact. The Norwegian artist 
action- and performance artist Kjartan Slettemark (1932–2008) worked with artistic 
strategies involving theatrical means of expression in happenings. In 1967, he presented 
a happening outside Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, dressed in a jeans suit painted with 
rosemaling (folkloristic painting), performing the tarot game seated on a piece of animal 
skin. The tarot game consisted of 5000 picture images of Mao Tse-tung.
Fig. 3: Co-ritus by Gruppe 66 in Bergen Kunstforening in 1966, with Olav Herman-Hansen and 
Jens Jørgen Thorsen 
In Stockholm, the same year, he stayed a long time in bed together with a female 
assistant, dressed in a nurse’s uniform and distributing pills. On a later occasion, 
he marched through the supermarket/department store Sundt in Bergen, carrying 
a poster where was written: “Kunst er Sundt” (Roland 95–96), literally meaning 
“ Art is healthy” – corresponding to the fact that “sundt” in Norwegian can also be 
read as “healthy” in English. Slettemark’s happenings, actions and performances 
have some resemblance to the Co-ritus idea (Thorsen). However, they are not 
stagings with a clear framing of how to include the audience in a Co-ritus-like 
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ritual, but Slettemark presented solo rituals in public spaces and vernissages. He 
dealt ironically with consumerism.
Neo-avant-garde theatrical performance in Norway is specifically marked by the fact 
that Odin Teatret was founded by Eugenio Barba (1936–) in Oslo in 1964 but soon 
moved on to Denmark and the large town of Holstebro in 1966, so laboratory theatre 
as a central movement of the neo-avant-garde did not take a stronghold in Norway 
except for some companies of the laboratory, physical training, such as Grenland 
Friteater established in 1976 and still functioning with a basis in the Porsgrunn/Skien 
region. Other examples could be mentioned. However, the socially engaged free theatre 
companies of the 1970s and the performative experiments of the 1980s contributed 
to the founding of a post-avant-garde within the Norwegian visual and performative 
arts, with the creation of companies such as Verdensteatret and Baktruppen.
A neo- or post-avant-garde developed in Norway by the 1980s with conceptual 
performance artist Kurt Johannessen (1960–), as well as with Baktruppen (1986–
2009). Baktruppen would define themselves as those who walk behind, thus being 
an arrière garde, which is exactly what the name Baktruppen means in Norwegian. 
Baktruppen also made a Peer Gynt production titled Super Per in 1994, in which 
Per (with one e) admits that he is lying to her mother by ironically answering “yes” 
when Mother Åse says: “Peer you are lying”, in contradiction to “No, I am not” as in 
the original play text by Ibsen. Other companies of the 1980s generation, like the 
conceptual theatre company Verdensteatret (1986–), would introduce a new and 
more postmodern understanding of what theatre can be. In this case, it was the 
introduction of theatre as a kind of telling machine, which also inspired the German 
International Ibsen Award-winner in 2012, Heiner Goebbels (1952–). It also 
contributed to the growth of a new international programming theatre movement, 
in which Bergen International Theatre became an important player. They have 
recently celebrated the 40
th
 anniversary of the first festival in 1984. These new 
companies also contributed to a new vocabulary of visual dramaturgical kind or 
means of expressions put on an equal footing, and equally also gave premises to 
and became references for the concept of the post-dramatic (Arntzen, Nordic inter-
action 182–190). My conclusion is that both in historical avant-garde as well as 
in neo- and post-avant-garde, we could see the shifting from Romantic and poetic 
towards the grotesque and folkloric, as in neo- and post-avant-garde coming to 
expression in conceptual performance interacting with Situationism and Co-ritus 
corresponding to the dichotomy of beauty and monstrosity. 
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