Life in all its Beauty and Gruesomeness

Teater Grob was originally founded as an ensemble theatre in 1998, but has been run since 2005 by Thomas Levin (b. 1978) and Per Scheel-Krüger (b. 1968), both currently performing actors. 
 
Artistic Profile
Realistic theatre is a focal point with young people and with genre-conscious Teater Grob. The performances are characterized by a very natural acting style – the result of the theatre’s declared objective of creating intense and contemporary performances (”Manifesto #1”).

The performances typically take place on intimate stages, close to the audience, and always take their starting point in a relevant issue or social tendency. Grob is distinctively generational theatre that insistently prods the self-righteous, navel-contemplating welfare state. 

The theatre only performs newly-written dramas with lines that sound like ordinary speech and situation-driven plots as the indisputable core.  The performances are typically developed in a sort of “actor’s workshop”, where the whole production team develops the performance into an organic whole.  Since 2005, the theatre no longer has a permanent ensemble but now works with 3-6 hand-picked actors in its performances.

Current Productions
All the performances take place in Danish and can be subtitled in English.

Hjem kære hjem / Home, Sweet Home
(2007)
A young soldier, returned from Iraq, has been invited to dinner with his best friend and his friend’s girlfriend.  Over the course of the evening, the couple is confronted with a person who has acquired a different view of life than the one they live and are familiar with. A fateful evening for all three in which relations, values and principles are put to a crucial test.
 
Jeg, mig om mit / I, Me on Mine
(2006)
A story of egoism. We all know it. We don’t endorse it. And, yet, we cultivate it. The lives of four people and an infant are interwoven in an unusual story, directly from everyday life.

Kunsten at vedligeholde en far / The Art of Maintaining a Father
(2000)
A tragicomic coming-to-terms with the generation of 1968. A father and his two sons are going to get grandmother’s summer cottage ready to move in.  Gradually, as the day progresses, things take a different and unexpected direction, when old, inflamed conflicts are brought to the surface.
Playwright: Thor Bjørn Krebs

Reviews Extracts

”On the surface, everything is awkward and cosy, but when we walk away from the stage, the summer house has been bombed into chaos. The floor is ripped up; the rudimentary furnishings are in a mess; father and son have had it out about the simple truth that the father did not live up to his own principles.  He had too little love for his own and too much free good will for the Third World. A coming-to-terms with the time of communes and hippies we have seen before ... but never so dramatically and precisely rendered.…”
Politiken (DK), Kunsten at vedligeholde en far

”You can see Kunsten at vedligeholde en far as an echo of the generational drama of the 1980s and 1990s, à la Lars Noreen …. But the political address and the political revelation are new. Danish drama in recent years has been more or less openly aligned with the left wing. In Thor Bjørn Krebs’ play, this political commitment is reduced to hypocrisy, attitude, an empty shell…. The three characters are people taken right out of reality, but they are also interesting for the greater generational conflict they represent.”
Weekendavisen (DK), Kunsten at vedligeholde en far