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Today is Monday and with the first three weeks successfully completed, we’re now entering the forth. It’s 05.07pm and that means that I have about an hour to write about the week that has just passed, before dinner is served. I’ve placed myself outside the dining hall, in the hope of catching some late afternoon/early evening September sun and up until now my wish has been fulfilled.
A lot of people went back to their hometowns on the second weekend, and so did I. After spending two weeks in a new place, in a new bed and with new people, it was nice to go back to the places and faces you know and maybe most importantly, to those who knows you. Even though I find the settings and the mood at Performers House very relaxed and grounded, one would have to have superpowers to not get tired or worn out of all the new impressions. And the thing is as well, that it (and by it I mean going away) also brings out the feeling of excitement about going back again. And so, after I had recharged in Århus, I returned to Silkeborg and Performers House - to an almost empty school, yet still full of life.
Monday morning it was back to business and we started out with a round of “I'm in” at arriving with Karin in the big theatre hall, which is a kind of game where we sit in a big circle, sharing things that has made an impact on us, bothers us or somehow effects us, that being in both positive or negative ways. Every student ends with the sentence “I'm in” and then everyone “welcomes” them. Luckily we were all in - and with that we began our third week at Performers House.
Monday was also the day where we were given new tasks for Idea into Action, which is a class where we are divided into groups of four or five people, with each line represented. Each week we're given a task, which shall be solved in solidarity within the groups and thereafter performed for the other students and teachers. This week the subject was “Raw, Primal and Provocative” and in comparison to the task we were given last week, this one encouraged us to do more or less what we wanted to, as long as the three words written above were represented in some way. This turned out to be quite a difficult theme with many different interpretations and ideas, which in some groups even led to arguments and tears. Despite of this it turned out to be, in my opinion, several examples of great and creative performances. Apparently the teachers found it interesting as well, as we were told to work on the subject for one more week and I'm quite excited to see where that will take us.
Monday is also the day for the Danish course that Naja and I are doing for the foreigners. I really enjoy these hours, especially because we're having fun and learning at the same time and I find it a really nice way to spend time together. I hope they're having a just as good time as I am, and taking that Danish is a really difficult language to master I think that they're all doing very well. I've been trying to learn some polish as well, up until now only swearwords though, so I won't write any of it, but I'm quite sure that with our new polish names, Najka and Sazchka will be fluent in polish by the end of this semester…
 On Friday we had our first Café and the three lovely “Red Hot Cherries” opened the show, bringing our minds and moods back in time with tunes from the fifties. Hereafter, one great performance followed another and I was amazed to experience the wide range of music -that being Old Danish folk, Greenlandic rock or Laura singing her own songs - all artists being very talented, leaving great impressions.
I went to bed at around 3.pm, tired and a bit tipsy, but happy because first of all Jeppe made sure that I got the obligatory night-snack and second of all, it had been a very nice and fun evening with my new fellow-students, roommates and friends.
On Saturday some of us gathered a small team and cleaned up in the theatre hall, putting scene and instruments back in their places. –and even though we were all a bit hung-over and none of us had gotten enough sleep, jokes and laughter still filled the room - and that, I think, is a nice picture of what it’s often like here at PH.
After dinner we all went, with heavy eyes, to see the play “Water” at Jyske Musik og Teaterhus. There were lots of different opinions about this, and I personally didn’t like it, but when it comes down to this I don’t necessarily think that negative experiences in the universe of art are less useful than good ones. –though I must admit that if I hadn’t spend thetime translating the monolog to Julia and Manca, I probably would have fallen asleep like some of the others.
Ok, so I didn’t make it before dinner, in fact I’m sitting at Kåre’s computer, way beyond deadline and I’m trying to make up my mind on how to finish this. And I think that I would actually like to go back to Monday, to when I sat on the platform – cause while I was sitting out there, one by one, people started coming out there as well. Some were riding a one-wheeled bike, some where joggling and some were just talking. And without sounding like one big cliché, that is one of the things that I like the most about this place, - that right from the beginning there have been room for every one of us and for all our differences. It doesn't matter what language you speak or whether your cultural background is Ghanaian, Mexican, Polish, American or Danish. And they might eat fish on Christmas-eve in Poland, while the Czechs are waiting for “Jezisek” (little jesus) and the Danes are dancing around the Christmas tree, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because fortunately we click and connect and work very well together anyway.
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Story: Sasja T. Larsen
Photo: Anne Marie Rützou Bruntse
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