Oddur Björnsson

Why Do I Write Plays?

Do people not become writers because they already are, or in other words: It’s in the genes? To some, this is quite clear from an early age, even though they know nothing about geneology and have never heard of Mendel: they know they are authors and nothing else (as Halldór Laxness). Still, it is more common that people come to this conclusion by various different ways (even by the method of “ruling things out”) and sometimes it takes a long time, having spent half a lifetime doing different jobs, such as various working class jobs at sea or land, office work or lawier work, sometimes teaching or various academic jobs, medicine and priest-ship. Some were farmers or even professional drunks. Some worked at all of this at the same time while they had the energy, but still the writer was in their genes and taking notice of that fact could not be avoided – sooner or later. And no turning back! Of course this applies to other art forms, but in the old days it was easier to come into possession of a pencil or a feather pen than oil and brushes, not to mention instruments.

As regards authors, their talent is often best spent at one genre: most turn to prose, some to lyrik – and some to writing plays. Some tackle (not all as well) all of this (Strindberg was also great at prose writing). – As for myself, I would perhaps have become a chellist or even a director – a la Toscanini, had I afforded the chello. Music is my love, that’s for sure. In order to get one going at writing, to create the right balance of the mind and for one’s health also, nothing is better than Bach in the morning, not to mention the chello suites! – But now I have to reverse and try to explain why on earth I became a playwrite instead of something totally different, a painter for instance or a musician (that was in fact out of the question for reasons other than lack of money, for altough I know how to listen to music, the talent was not quite there, that having to be unquestionable – also when it comes to painting; on these battle fields I was doomed to be at the receiving end).

As a boy and a teenager, I was thought to be good at drawing and was sent to the art school, where Kurt Zier himself bought a watercolour of mine. Although everyone agreed this was where my talent lay, one person was of a different opinion: this person was I. And the chello had no purpose getting into my hands, since I was at highschool and not music shool, and when it came down to it, music school was probably not the right place for me. During my high school years, I fiddled with oil, chalk drawings and charcoil. I had also started writing a little, lyrical prose it could be called. The book Fornar ástir got me going. I think this is where some seeds about becoming a writer were planted. Halldór [Laxness] and Þórbergur [Þórðarson] at the same time encouraged me in my dreams and doomed them hopeless. After finishing high scool, I went to Vienna, determined to sign up for psychology at the university there. Having arrived to this prestigious institution, something called Theater Wissenschaft caught my eye, and there my fait was determined. I had in fact been in love with the theatre from an early age, my father being efficient at getting the family to go to the theatre.

In Vienna, the theatres themselves became my my theatre university. And I relalized during this time that my writing career would be devoted to writing plays, one advantage being that neither Halldór nor Þórbergur were in my way in that field. It turned out to be the absurd theatre that broke down all barriers for me with its charming absurdity, unbelievably funny and unbelievabley deep at its best, full of music and strange art and still stranger visualization of human behaviour. Otherwise, the “plastic” of disciplined acting (no less in classic pieces, even traditional) spoke to the artist in me and the rhythm of discourse to the musician (even the poet that resided somewhere within), not least if the text was by Shakespeare.

I thus find myself at home in theatre writing. In poems and prose I feel more like a “foreigner”, even if I am guilty of having flirted with both. Playwriting  fullfils my investigative nature, both as regards characters and “human behaviour” and the presentation of ideas, and artistic needs in general, which evolve around creating first and foremost. My most fertile moments in the theatre are when I sit alone in the auditorium with an empty stage in front of me. Then ideas are kindled together with a strange life and you start to compose in this empty space, activating it with means that only belong in the theatre and have to do with creation and the presentation of ideas mentioned above. I enjoy music and visual art as a receiver, think in fact that both come into play in the theatre – the method itself, if only to give it the grace it cannot be without, however we turn and twist it. The text is not excluded here.

In other words: I write plays beacause I cannot do anything else. (For one has to do something! Right?)

Oddur Björnsson, 2003.

Translated by Kristín Viðarsdóttir.

Guðmundur Brynjólfsson: On the works of Oddur Björnsson

To most people, Oddur Björnsson is a playwright first and foremost. This is not surprising, given that he has been most prolific in that area. But he has also published a novel, Kvörnin (The Grinder 1967), and the children’s story Í Krukkuborg (In the City of Jars) which came out in 1969. In 1979 the Icelandic National Theatre premiered a children’s play based on the latter. It is the story of a little boy, Siggi, who dreams one night about the world inside his fish tank, a world of amazing wonders (considerably greater than in the average fish tank). As in most good children’s plays, there is a struggle between good and evil, and the octopuses rule the world of the fish with an iron tentacle. Their leader is named Adolf, no less, and the name by itself speaks of his evil nature. There is a great deal of social critique in the story, mainly of oppression of any kind, and of human cruelty. Oddur is also always credited as the author of the children’s play Snjókarlinn okkar (Our Snowman) which was performed by the Reykjavik Theatre Company (Leikfélag Reykjavíkur) in 1967, although the work was written in a kind of a theatre workshop and many took part in creating it.

One might say that among Icelandic playwrights Oddur Björnsson is the one with the closest ties to the so-called “theatre of the absurd”. He is undeniably a student of Samuel Beckett, and he is also influenced by authors like Jarry, Arrabal and Camus. Starting out as a playwright, Oddur was careful if one may use that term, his first works were short, sharp and to the point, but in spite of their simplicity they often had depth, complicated questions or a complex reality. Music plays a very big part in all of Oddur’s plays and some of his plays are practically impossible to stage unless the author’s musical instructions are followed.

Oddur’s first play which really caught the public’s attention is Köngulóin (The Spider). The work was premiered by the Gríma theatre company in 1962. It is a short one act play about Alexander Pope the 6th, his children Cesare and Lukrezia and Don Juan. It is a snapshot of these members of the Borgia family, famously known for their decadent lifestyle and cruelty but also for their political genius. Oddur plays around with the idea of a powerful man as a spider, and how fragile the power of such men is, by featuring a mass of spiders crawling about the stage in such high numbers that one cannot take a step without squashing a few. Oddur developed this work further and in 1970 the radio drama Brúðkaup furstans af Fernara (The Count of Fernara’s Wedding) was broadcast for the first time. Here Oddur continued to tell the story of the Borgia family, in particular its vices. The final thrust in that process was the play Dansleikur (A Dance) which premiered at the Icelandic National Theatre in 1974. In Dansleikur, Oddur has perfected the story which he started to tell with Köngulóin, this piece is extensive in its range and cruel but at the same time it has a certain lightness, and this kind of contrast is fairly typical of Oddur’s longer plays. Dansleikur is a commentary on corruption and hypocrisy, the plot is laughably naive – almost childish – but so true at the same time, and last, but not least, the work is a razor sharp criticism on the division of wealth in the world. In this work Oddur uses stage directions a great deal, complete with notes which it would at first glance not seem easy to convey to the audience. But they have all been carefully thought out, the actor absorbs them along with his lines and they enrich the director’s imagination.

Another one act play by Oddur is Partí (Party). The work was first performed by Gríma at the same time as Köngulóin. A third work which premiered at the same time is Við lestur framhaldssögunnar (Reading the Radio Story). Partí is a fast-paced fantasy play in the spirit of absurdism, told with quick-fire exchanges which seem without much content, weird characters and absurd situations. For instance a horse arrives at the party and proceeds to chat with the other guests, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Við lestur framhaldssögunnar is subtitled Parodia (A Parody). This one-act play is a legitimate offspring of absurdist theatre, featuring only three characters: 1st Stoker, 2nd Stoker and Voice from beyond the door. It revolves around the interaction between the two stokers, and Oddur writes their lines colloquially, for instance “Whacolathey?” “What colour are they?”, 1st Stoker reads 2nd Stoker a cheesy romance story from a magazine and they also exchange half-witted comments. The work does not have an actual narrative, but is a kind of a snapshot from an uneventful life.

Amalía is yet another one-act play from this period in Oddur’s career. It is a play about a woman who sits in front of a mirror in which appear images of her at various ages, of a different gender, and as different people. Amalía is a fairly grotesque play and not as absurd as it looks at first. Two versions exist of the play, one has been published and can be found in the collection 4 Leikþættir (4 One-Act Plays) from 1963. In 1965 the Icelandic  National Theatre staged an interesting one-act play by Oddur, entitled Jóðlíf (Yolk Life). The play is about two fetuses having a conversation in their place of residence, a female womb. They ponder questions of life and existence and the choice of this particular setting and characters makes all the questions and speculations even more poignant. These archetypes of innocence are both tough social critics and victims of the material world. The work is comical in places, but also very sad. Above all, this is a very clever play.

In 1967 Oddur published a novel entitled Kvörnin (The Grinder). It is quite short, in fact hardly more than a novella. It tells the story of a young man who finds himself at a crossroads in his life after his matriculation exam. This is a sharp coming of age story, or rather a story of initiation into manhood, as the boy is breaking away from his mother, meeting other women, and at the end of the play he leaves.

Oddur’s first full length play is Hornakórallinn (The Corner Coral), a musical (music by Leifur Þórarinsson) which premiered in the Icelandic National Theatre in 1967. In fact the play is a variation on the Jóhann Sigurjónsson play Galdra Loftur (Loftur the Sorcerer), but at the same time it is a perfectly individual work and bears Oddur’s stylistic signature. The play tells of Loftur’s excessive ambition which does not lead to good, as the unholy figure of the Devil springs from it. The play also features Loftur’s mother who stands for the good old values, and the young woman Dísa, who symbolises love, beauty and simplicity. The play, despite being light-hearted and fun, is a cruel satire of man’s aggression and arrogance towards everything and everyone.

The following year the play Tíu tilbrigði (Ten variations) premiered at the National Theatre’s Lindarbær stage. This is a true absurdist play where “the same” story appears again and again in different versions. The characters are few and become fewer as the play continues. It is difficult to find any message in the variations but one can detect a certain parody on art, in fact the main character is a composer, Lúðvík. The chamber opera Dans på rosor (Bed of Roses) by Arne Mellnas is based on the play. In a similar vein is the play Meistarinn (The Master) which was staged at the Icelandic National Theatre in 1977. However the parody there is directed at something else, for instance at intellectual pretence and “wisdom”. The play is mystical and the line between the characters’ selves is at times unclear.

Eftir konsertinn (After the Concert) is probably the most “normal” of Oddur Björnsson’s work, if one can use that term. This chamber drama premiered in the National Theatre in 1983. In the beginning, the work has a regular structure and it seems that the storyline will be fairly clear and conventional; for instance Oddur uses the classic device of a “visitor from the past” who creates a turning point in the play. But although the work is the most traditional of Oddur’s works, this does not mean it does not contain peculiar situations and happenings. The party in the play is magnificently bizarre and for a time it may seem that Oddur is taking the play in a direction of complete absurdity. This does not happen however, and with the use of a particular stylistic device he brings about a conclusion which is more in the original spirit of the play.

Perhaps Oddur’s most ambitious and also most substantial work if one may say that about a play, is 13. krossferðin (The 13th Crusade). Like the vast majority of Oddur’s works, this play which premiered at The National Theatre in the autumn of 1993, is written in the spirit of absurdism. It is about war in the many senses of that Icelandic word. Three soldiers are in search of a war (in the same way as Pirandello’s characters are in search of an author). The soldiers differ individually, like human beings do, but as so often with human beings, they all seek the same thing but they use different methods to attain their goal. The play tells of a crusade which is waged– as always – against something undefined which is supposed to make our lives complete when it has been won. Oddur realises that this is the way history has been and will probably continue to be for the time being, and in the ceaseless globetrotting of mankind the author sees a number of situations about which nothing can be done now, any more than before. One might say that Oddur’s authorial position is Brechtian – he stays quietly in the background when appropriate but blasts his horn with gusto when he feels it necessary. When performed on stage, the play is quite a visual display but it is a difficult read.

Apart from the works previously mentioned, Oddur Björnsson has written over twenty radio plays. There is the aforementioned Brúðkaups furstans af Fernara, and of other very good radio plays one could name Þrjár sögur úr heita pottinum (Three Stories From the Hot Tub 1983) and Aríetta (Arietta, 1985). The last is a very good example of the interplay between music and the spoken word in Oddur’s works. Many of his works have been translated into other languages and some have been performed abroad, both on stage and on radio. Other works by Oddur are the television dramas Postulín (Porcelain, 1971) and Draugasaga (Ghost Story, 1985). In 1965 the book Steinar og sterkir litir: svipmyndir 16 myndlistarmanna (Stones and Strong Colours: Portraits of 16 Artists) came out, and it included a chapter by Oddur, “Að sópa gólf” (“Sweeping a Floor”) on the artist Sverrir Haraldsson. Occasionally, poems by Oddur have also appeared in newspapers and magazines, and some of his plays have poems in them.

Oddur Björnsson is a playwright who has almost solely devoted himself to the creation of Icelandic absurdist plays. Yet his works are not specifically Icelandic, in fact they are more international than they appear at first with their cast of bizarre characters. This is because behind Oddur’s absurdism there is often an intelligent satire with a universal relevance.

© Guðmundur Brynjólfsson, 2003.

Translated by Vera Júlíusdóttir.

Articles

Neijmann, Daisy L., ed. A History of Icelandic Literature
University of Nebraska Press, 2007, pp. 564, 567-568, 570, 577

2011 – The Gríma award of Icelandic theatre: An honorary award for a lifetime contribution to the theatre arts.

1994 – The National Broadcasting Service’s Author’s Prize.