A Banality Dreams production in co-production with Vidaråsen Landsby

“To be honest is original enough.” Keith Johnstone

David is the king, but a very sensitive one, who prefers to paint or improvise songs on the piano. Glør, a football-fan and flag-collector loves romance and obsessively scours the glozzy magazines for wedding pictures. Eli, a talented singer and flute player and a very lady-like woman likes to spend her time taking photos of her Piggy. Tore is an undercover spy that rides around on his bike to uncover mischief and sometimes takes a break to recite from Peer Gynt. And not to forget Gunn Kristin, who is a bad troll, but still offers drinks and cake to her guests. This and many more are the characters of Natural Fiction Circus, a multi-media theatre performance about dreams of life and fictions of daily living, realized by the International Performance-Collective Banality Dreams together with a group of inhabitants from Vidaråsen Landsby.

Vidaråsen Landsby is one of the worldwide known Camphill Villages, a community for adults with developmental disabilities. In spring 2009 a group of 9 artists from different disciplines and 11 disabled actors from Vidaråsen Landsby came together in a dialogue to open new perspectives on art and on life.
The starting point of the project was Banality Dreams fascination of the disabled actors incredible richness of creative impulses and unique world of perceptions, reflections and interpretations of reality. The projects main principle was to let everything come out of the dialog between the participants. More than directing, Banality Dreams wanted to be the bridge between the actors and the outer world, the audience.

During a two month working period they created a theatre performance with short films, live music and painting. Natural Fiction Circus takes the audience on a journey into the extraordinary world of the disabled participants and gives an experience of their special and very personal views on the modern reality that we all share. A performance which provokes and moves, entertains and touches and thereby questions concepts of art and its borders.

The premiere took place in May 2009 in the old factory hall Støperiet in the city of Tønsberg (Norway). In October 2009 Banality Dreams presented, together with the unusual performers from Vidaråsen Landsby, the Berlin version of ‘Natural Fiction Circus’ exclusively for the No Limits Festival.