The Radio Theatre has launched its winter program last Saturday on the channel Rás 1.
The Radio Theater has played an important role in its operations since the early days of RÚV, performing new and recent plays on Saturdays at 14:00.
This year’s winter programme started out with a rendition of “An Important Man” by Bjarni Jónsson.
The play is about the middle-aged Helgi, as he tries to make sense of his past and situation after an accident that leaves him unable to work and added complications, by recording a podcast. The play will be available until October 19th on RÚV’s online radio player.
RÚV describes Bjarni Jónsson as a leading Icelandic playwright and also a member of the theater group Kriðpleir, which has staged the works Bónusferðin og Litla jólin at the Radio Theater in recent years with great popularity.
In October, the Radio Theatre, in collaboration with the troupe Trigger Warning, will present the work “Welcome Home”, which is based in part on a stage play of the same name by María Thelma Smáradóttir, Kára Hergils and Andrea Vilhjálmsdóttir. The play weaves together stories of María Thelma, the first actress of Asian descent to graduate from the Iceland Academy of the Arts, and her mother, Vala Rúnar, who was born in Thailand in the middle of the last century, and deals with themes such as the meaning of the origin, different cultures, prejudices and humanity.
It’s also reported that around Christmas, the Radio Theatre will premiere a new chapter of a story by actress and screenwriter Jóhanna Friðrika Sæmundsdóttir. The work is based on the stories of two teachers who living at different times, one in 1900 and the other in 2000, and deals with childbearing, what it is like not being able to have children and what it is like to have children without necessarily intending to.
Another part of the programme will be an innovative documentary under the name “Potatoes”. It’s based on the stage work of the theatre group CGFC and was nominated for the Icelandic Performing Arts Prize last spring. In this work, past and present meet in a discussion of the humble but important phenomenon of the potato that has saved the nation from scurvy and kept it afloat over the centuries, promising also a cast of interesting characters.
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