Endgames, Dreamplays and Apocalypse

A milestone in Astrid Saalbach authorship is the trilogy Morning and Evening (1990), The Blessed Child (1996) and Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust (1998). In print, each play fits nicely into a not too spacious pocket; obviously, Saalbach´s dialogue benefits from her (short and somewhat troublesome) theatrical career. The mass of words offers no monologue for an actor to dwell in, the quantity is sparse, but the impact reversely proportioned.
The trilogy embraces Saalbach´s uneasiness with the dark details of socio-political breakdown: borderline science, loss of humanity as well as fertility, alienation, violence and regression into animality. Set in the characteristic Saalbach time, space & language of uncertainty, constant displacement, distortion, crystalline poetry, mythical overtones and wry flashes of humour.  

An observant critic (concerning her latest play) has seen Saalbach as “a kind of femininely complemented Strindberg” and compares the play (with the meaningful title) End of the World – ingredient by ingredient – with his Dream Play. Saalbach´s lost traveller – the stewardess Xenia (= the Stranger) – goes through stages/stations in an alienated, ambiguous world. Or is she reliving her (un)lived life at the moment of her death in a plane crash? Or? 

Thus, End of the World (2004) has an added meta-drama displacement. Saalbach received the Nordic Drama Award 2004 for this play with the following encomium: “Her plays are among the most outstanding European plays of the past 10-15 years. Her work is extremely varied in style, but Saalbach is nonetheless an unmistakable voice in the theatre landscape”.

Current Production

Verdens Ende / End of the World
(2004)
The air stewardess Xenia returns home after a distressing long-haul flight. On her way home the scenery and people around her suddenly seem different and changed. Something unusual is happening, in the outside world as well as within Xenia.

Det Kolde Hjerte / The Cold Heart
(2001)
After a fix in a stairwell the young, drug addict prostitute Mette hallucinates herself to a romance with the Crown Prince. Similar to the little matchgirl, she is welcomed into the warm and well-lit royal palace. However, catastrophe soon lurks behind the sudden happiness.

Aske til aske – støv til støv / Ashes to Ashes – Dust to Dust
(1998)
A dark, haunting story of love and betrayal – a story that display the extremes of human behavior. Nina is in love with a fellow doctor, Mikael, at the hospital where they both work researching the effects of brain damage. But Mikael already married can’t return her love, and Nina takes her terrible revenge on his family.

Det Velsignede Barn / The Blessed Child
(1996)
Women rule the world, and men are reduced to pathetic house-slaves. No children have been born for decades, and humanity faces extinction. Then a female servant gets pregnant, apparently by divine intervention. She gives birth to the blessed child, who is half man and half beast. The play is a grotesque satire about a generation of adults so obsessed by their careers, ridiculous alternative lifestyles, and the pursuit of personal growth, that they no longer notice their children.

Morgen og aften / Morning and Evening
(1993)
A haunting and quizzical play. Seven actors play multiple roles each. They appear in a brilliantly observed and imagined vignette, in which trivial incidents and remarks echo things which happened to the same actor when he/she played another character. Each story has a sense of completion, yet there is the suggestion of endlessness. The effect is kaleidoscopic, impromptu, yet carefully planned.

Astrid Saalbach is translated into more than 10 languages.

Review Extracts

”Astrid Saalbach’s Verdens Ende is set in an other-worldly universe, half-realism, half-dream, in an attempt to grapple with the strangely complex experience of orienting oneself at midlife … I cannot remember ever encountering a text before that was so empathetic to the way women experience the world … Bravo!”
Berlingske Tidende (DK), Verdens Ende

”Social satire and psychological satire alternate in sharp shifts … But the action itself is from Saalbach’s drama,  which really derives from Danish provincial life … Saalbach’s great merit is that she has been able to describe this reality – through words that surpass themselves.”
Information (DK), Aske til aske - støv til støv

”And it is in this union of light and dark, of comedy and tragedy, of local myopia and universal perspective, that Astrid Saalbach shows her originality and her stature as a dramatist.”
Weekendavisen (DK), Det kolde hjerte

International Cooperation

The Blessed Child, Teateriet, Stockholm, Sweden 2005
The Dancing Lesson, Kaunas Drama Theatre, Lithuania 2005
The Cold Heart, Den Nationale Scene, Bergen, Norway 2003