Myths and theatre

A paper I gave to the European Theatre Festival in Bonn (1994), where I for many years served as one of the "godfathers".

(Please excuse my own very bad translation!)

In China the government chose i 1931 to ban the little book Alice in wonderland. Simply because it was judged as wrong and unhealthy to let the public read books where animals and people were described as equal and where creatures with horns and tails spoke a human language.
     So stupidly grown-up is it possible to be! Or as Winnie-the-Pooh would have said - and I quote: "Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
     "Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
     "And he has Brain."
     "Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
     There was a long silence.
     "I suppose," said Phooh, " that that's why he never understands anything."
     There are a lot of Rabbits around, who believe that fairy tales and myths are to be regarded as an escape from reality. But that is to turn things upside down. For on the contrary, if it is something fairy tales, parables and fantasy can help us with,it is precicely to understand reality. Let's presume that reality is a forest in which we've lost our way and gone a stray. And surely most of us have... But then it doesn't help a bit to sit down and study stones and twigs. The only fair chance we have to orientate ourselves is to find a high place. And myths and fairy tales provide just such a tree in which to climb up for a view. To get the lay of the land...
     It's the same thing if you stand with your nose close against a painting. Then the picture most likely will appear confusing and without a meaning: shapeless flecks of colour, streaks and points. It is only when you back away a few steps, that you begin to understand what the picture is all about. At a distance it becomes easier to see the connection between the different parts.
     In litterature from the oldest times, writers have used fairy tales and fables to create this kind of necessary distance. "The world of fantasy" is a trick authors use when they want to simplify, when they want to put forward the essential things of a question.
     Myths and fairytales can never be out of date. Because they are not only about "once upon a time" and "long ago", they can just as well tell about "every time" and "always". But every new generation must conquer them, over and over again. Tell them in their own way. Hold them up, and let the light from their own everyday shine through them.
     But what is a myth actually? There are lots of different opinions. In everyday speech most people use the word "myth" as the opposite of the word "truth". It isn't true, we say, it's only a myth- and so on.
     Mythology has become defined by modern man i many ways. All explanations can one way or another contain certain grains of truth. But in our context one thing is for sure: Most myths in their original form are ritual texts, texts for holy rituals, ceremonies. They are holy history. And from this point I see two different paths on which to continue: either the myth becomes history, such as in Israel - where myths are identified with the history of the Jewish people. Or - and this is the other path to travel: myth transforms itself slowly into a fairy tale... omething that is a story, but noe a HI-story, not historic facts.
     It is always easy to see that when the one and the same motif appear both in myth and in feiry tales, it's always the myth that is the original, it was here the motif was first formed.
     The circumstances and conditions for myths have drastically changed. The old tribal ceremonies that marked birth, transition to adulthood, marriage, burial etc, served to translate the individual's life- crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal "forms", or I could have said "cliches". They allowed the individual to see himself as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest - and at the same time they repeated,rehearsed for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages. The whole society became visible to itself as an imperishable living unit. Today - everything is different. Then - in the old days - all meaning was in the group, in the great anonymous forms, none in the self-expressive individual. Today... no meaning is in the group, all is in the individual. Besides... the community today is actually the whole world, the planet, not only the tribe,or the bounded nation.
     For me the myth is a kind of trampoline for fantasy. But as a writer, it is the myths that are outside the direct "holy use" that fascinates me most. It's here I feel most freely to do whatever I want. So I choose to play with Zeus and Venus, Balder and Frøya rather than Allah or Jesus. I'm most comfortable among myths that have cast off their ropes and moorings to the Holy. At this moment they run freely about in fantasy's heaven... like huge air ships (zepeliners). Alien - but at the same time - strangely familiar. While they patiently wait to become fairy tales...
     Fairy tales and today's fantastic stories are related to one another. They are aunts and uncles, nephews and cousins. Another label for modern fantastic stories could -instead of science fiction - be electric fairy tales. Bit how does that relate to the myth - to the "original" story?
     The points of resemblances are many. But an essential difference jumps in our eyes: Myth is almost always conservative and preserving. While neither the fairy tale nor the fantastic story needs to be so. Rather to the contrary. Often fairy tales are progressive, radical and even rebellious and revolutionary! Myth says that there are certain rules, certain borders. Beware! Myth comes, in a way, "from above". From those that lead and govern. The fairy tale - on the contrary - comes "from below". From the people. Myth says: Such - and not otherwise - must everything be. The fairy tale is a protest. An anti- myth, so to say. Myth is about the gods - about the strong and powerfull. The fairy tale is about the weak, the youngest son, the useless idler. He that everyone laughs at. He that nothing owns... And always it is the rich and powerful that muyst pay. But the protest often hides behind a mask of innocence. This is a part of the fairy tale that repressed people of all time have understood to use. Just think about postwar literature in eastern Europe, how the only path to dissidence often went through fantasic stories and fairy tales. The fairy tale says that there is always hope. Deep down it always carries longing for change. Myth - on the contrary - almost always advocates the existing state of things. What about the modern fantastic story? Generally it is used progressive, but it can also be usesd as a defence for the status quo. For example, after the formula we all know: 1) Something has gone wrong 2) the world and our civilization are threatened 3) life's vitality, in other words, is inhibited, 4) but the hero rides out 5) and after many dangerous events 6) he succeeds to remove the obstacles 7) so that everything becomes as before 8) in other words, a restoration of "law and order". In my opinion James Bond and Indiana Jones are examples of this model. In the same way as most crime-stories... So perhaps it's no wonder that crimestories always have been the favorite reading for the upper classes... But as mentioned, the fantastic story doesn't need to follow acording to this form. In the same way as fairy tales it can speak of rebellion. And that is never in the myths nature, as far as I can see... Instead myth explains why everything is as it is, and why everything should and must be as it is - and not the least different. It has been customary to describe the seasonal festivals of socalled native peoples as efforts to control nature. This is a misinterpretation. No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending, on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure. together with the rest of the nature, the season of terrible cold... Myth tells us why it snows, when it snows - it doesn't try to prevent the snow from falling. There is much of the will to control in every act of man, but within the sphere we now move around,if we are looking for the need to lead and influence, it is the magic ceremonies we should take a closer look at, and not the religious one. Through magic ceremonies we believe we can bring rain, cure illness, get beautiful girls to fall in love with us etc. I don't want to assert that there isn't a gray zone - to be sure. But generally: the dominating motif in every religious cermony - as opposed to the magic ones - is that one subjects oneself to the deity, comes to terms with fate's unavoidability. If we look at fantasy and the fantastic from this angle, we clearly see that modern fantastic stories remind us a lot more of magic than of myths. And that writers - in all modesty - are a lot more related to sorceres and wizards than to priests. And that I suppose none of us has anything against?

ENGLISH PAGE