Theatre at the supermarket
 
Customers shopping. Employees are placing out goods and sitting at the cashier. Everything seems to be ‘business as usual’ at the MiniRimi supermarket in Stamsund. Yet, it is not.
Wednesday afternoon “Borrowed landscape” premiered in Norway at the Stamsund international Theatre Festival. It did not happen in the darkness of a theatre space. On the contrary – at the local grocery store in outer Stamsund, in the bright afternoon.
Four by four, the audience members are equipped with headphones and radio receivers, going for a fictional shopping among the shelves with dried-food and the freezer cabinets. But they are not alone in the store. Four performers and one sound engineer are working with adding multiple layers to the shopping trip.

- Meditative
At the same time, the store is operating as usual. Regular customers come in to pick up their milk and bread, pay and leave.
- I normally buy what I need in a supermarket, and then I leave. Now I got interested in all the products and their ingredients, and at the same time strange things were happening. All the sudden I found myself in an exhibition area, an artistic environment. I have never seen a supermarket in this way, said Robert Steijn.
He just got off his headphones, bought a bottle of water and is on his way out of the store along with Eun Kyung Lee.
- It was nice. Quiet and Meditative. We listened to the performer’s thoughts. I did not feel that they were trying to manipulate me in any way, she says.

- Adding something completely new.
Heine Avdal from Norway and Yukiko Shinozaki from Japan are based in Brussels have made location-based performances for last several years, where they infiltrate the various areas of society. This is the first time they deal with a supermarket.
- Heine Avdal is one of the hottest choreographers in Norway and Europe at the moment. We are very proud to have him here, and it is very amusing that he comes with a project that brings something completely new to the festival. This is something everyone in Stamsund can experience, either as audience or from “the outside”, says Oddny Wiggen from the SiT.
The performance is shown every day till Saturday. Each performance lasts for 25 minutes. Purchase tickets at the festival office.
http://www.lofotposten.no/kultur/article6084235.ece