We scan the iron-gray sky, riddled with gusts of wind and rain, to gauge when we'll be able to attempt an exit and reach the theater, just a few hundred meters away. Welcome to Stamsund. Here, beyond the Arctic Circle, between the 67th and the 68th parallel north, the heat wave raging across the rest of Europe at the beginning of September seems to belong to another world.
Logically, in Stamsund, the only visible spectacle should be the aurora borealis, which unfurls like diaphanous fabrics in the night sky as soon as autumn arrives. But this charming fishing village on the southern side of the island of Vestvagoy in the Lofoten archipelago, with a population of 1,200 when fully populated, boasts an unusually high level of theatrical infrastructure: Three theaters, including one of international renown, as many companies, and a spring festival that attracts professionals from all over Europe. To our knowledge, this is a unique case worldwide.
It was here that director and puppeteer Yngvild Aspeli, who in just a few years has become a leading figure in the revival of puppetry, created her new show, A Doll's House, a puppet version of the famous play by her compatriot Henrik Ibsen. The play was showcased in the village before its premiere at the World Festival of Puppet Theaters in Charleville-Mézières (northeastern France) on September 16. In the theater's small auditorium, trendy young people – Stamsund also boasts an art school – mingled with locals in boots and fisherman-style windbreakers, in a cohabitation that no longer surprises anyone here.
"You have to imagine what the village looked like in the early 1990s," said Geir-Ove Andersen, administrative director of Figurteatret, where A Doll's House was produced. "The fishing crisis caused by the scarcity of fish at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s had left the village devastated. There were fewer than 10 children in school – today there are 60 – and all the shops were closed. It was infinitely sad."
The unexpected revival came about thanks to a combination of factors, as sometimes happens when the planets mysteriously align. The disused sheds and fish factories, ideal for studios, and the unparalleled polar light began to attract artists to the island. Then a group of young people with difficulties integrating into society were sent to Stamsund to create a theatrical performance. At the same time, the Norwegian government was looking to set up a national facility in the north of the country dedicated to different forms of visual theater.
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