CLAY is theatre fiction that plays with your mind and ravages your senses. It takes you somewhere you’d rather not go – into the darkness, where beauty becomes grotesque and the grotesque becomes beautiful.
In 2022, Susie Wang made The Look in co-production with the National Theatre. Now, the old performance been reborn with new actors, new scenography, a new storyline – and a new title: CLAY.
Clay remembers how it has been handled. When we touch it, we force its particles into new patterns. The clay seems to yield, but it never forgets its previous forms. The new structures clash with the old, and when the clay dries or is fired, the shapes may stretch, twist – or even crack.
The story in CLAY bends and twists in new directions, but it begins as before:
Maia, a ceramicist, is teaching a sculpture class for tourists. She is pregnant, it is hot, and everything moves slowly. Suddenly, she is attacked by a man with a rage no one can explain. Maia fights back and knocks him unconscious. While he lies senseless, she plants a cruel revenge deep inside him. When he comes to, he is no longer himself. But clay never forgets, and as the play unfolds, that revenge grows beyond all proportion.
As usual with Susie Wang, it is the body that bears the brunt. The action moves from life to death and back again, freely shifting between the ridiculous and the divine.
● Susie Wang is an Oslo-based theatre group founded in 2017 by Trine Falch, Martin Langlie, Mona Solhaug and Bo Krister Wallstrøm. After many years within performance-oriented theatre, their work took a dramatic turn, and as Susie Wang they now make fictional theatre with characters and plots.
Cast:
- Maia/Scarlet – Mona Solhaug
- Rosie – Julie Solberg
- Con – Kim Atle Hansen
- Cherry – Mees Borgman
- Clay – Phillip Isaksen
