In May 2001 the company travelled from Kiev via Odessa and crossed the Black Sea to Istanbul. This journey is the bakground for the new production. Much of the material collected through this journey, in the shape of video- and sound recordings, pictures and recollections are forming the landscape - a kind of afterlandscape, after the storm - of TSALAL.

One of the main "themes" is the exploring of the auditive dimention, crossing the borders between pure sound and meaningful language.

This is mainly achieved by advanced real-time processing of the performers voices. The audible effects on their voices encapsulates the whole spectre; from mild forms of distortion to total transformation. These processes are in part controlled by the actors, in part by a computer-technician.

The performance can be experinced as a musical composition or as a "3-dimensional painting", or both at the same time.

from press-reviews:
ADVANCED THEATRE AT BLACK BOX

Even though the background for "TSALAL" is a journey - this certainly is not an ordinary traveldescription. Still, this obsessive
performance takes on the theme of travelling. The language is incomprehensible, the images are flickering and apparently without
connection, but we´re left exhausted and happy after having experienced the strange, the frightening, and - to our eyes and ears
- the almost crazy of the journey itself.

It´s like poetry by Supervielle or a painting by an early Dali. It is
about a meeting one can sense is so right you can feel it all the way into your spinal marrow.

Verdensteatret has done a marvellous scenic effort. This is an equilibrate performance where some of the most advanced technological
possibilities have been used, both visually and audibly, in "the characters" appearance - recognizable, yet still poetically
unfathomable and almost fatalistic.

The figures come and go, almost as in a slow film, and this calmness in the performance enhances the haste in the journey (further,
further!) that the projections against the backwall gives the impression of.

Like taken out of a dream, a set of strange balloons with long cords float around on stage, directed by a man who, with a pair of sciccors
in his hand, cuts from the cords and has as his only mission to keep them floating weightless in the air.

The sinister contrast is a big black bird. An unspoken threat, moving endlessly slow and with many stops, gazing at people with an evil
eye. Symbolically, you can see many different things in this black bird, as well as the balloons. Death and life, crime and decency. As
theatre this works, and that´s the meaning of it.



TSALAL started by opening the National Annual Exhibition of the Visual Arts in Oslo 2001
before the official opening night at Black Box Theatre in Oslo 15 january 2002.
The performance has after that been shown at the "DIGIart festival" in Denmark,
a festival for new digital stage art in Europe.
Furtherit was shown at the "ULTIMA festival" for contemporary music in Oslo 2002,
and at "MAGMA Berlin 2002" (festival for new nordic music in Berlin,)
at Haugesund Teater in Haugesund, Norway (january 2003),
and in Bergen, Reykjavik and Beograd during autumn 2003.

You can see a short QuickTime video from Tsalal here.

Participants in TSALAL: Asle Nilsen, Hakon Lindback, Lisbeth J. Bodd, Lars Øyno, Per Flink Basse, Mara Oldenburg, Ali Djabbary, Ulf Knudsen, Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen ,Reinert Mithassel, Petter Steen, , Marius Kjos, Øyvind Borgemoen, Kenneth K. Langås, Anti Bjørn, Trond Lossius, Morten Pettersen, Ken Theodorsen, Cathrine Bjørndalen, Cecilie Lindeman Steen.