ELLA

Hebert Acternbusch

Reykjavik - Iceland 1986

The EGG-Theatre Company

How

Viðar Eggertsson (One of Iceland's greatest directors and actors) came to see my production of TRAFFORD  TANZI at Project Arts Centre in 1984.  We chatted after the show and decided we should make a production together. We discussed a numeber of ideas and  I suggested Ella By Herbert Acternbusch,  set in a chicken coup, with live chickens about a man who plays the son of his mentally ill mother in her clothes. She had been "a bit simple" and used by the Nazis in WW2 for experiments  then kept afterwards in a cabin at the back of her sisters house.  Joseph was her son as a result of a rape.

When & Where

We made the production with Vidar's company 

The EGG-Theatre Company (Iceland)

in a cellar in Reykjavik  in 1986. 

The Audience watched the show through chicken wire and glass windows . I used natural lights and  fittings and some  "metal halide lights '  to create this idea of past and a hallucajenic dream  state,

Who :

Viðar Eggertsson  Joseph

Kristin Anna Thorarinsdottir (Ella)

Thorgeir Thorgeirson   Translor

Gudjon Ketilsson  Setting 

Gerla (Gudrun Erla Geirsdottir ) Costumes

Margret Guttormsdóttir  Stage Manager 

Michael Scott   Lighting

12 live chickens also performed nightly