ABOUT US

 

Samovarteateret – 20 years as a contemporary theatre in The Barents Region

Samovarteateret is a professional independent theatre that was established in Kirkenes in 1990 by Bente S. Andersen. This was 13 years before anyone had heart about Finnmark’s 500 new culture positions, culture-fund, ”Creative Industries” or culture as a focus area.

”To survive as a theatre in Finnmark is like selling snow in Sahara”, was the general opinion. In 2010 Samovarteateret celebrated its 20th anniversary with seven premieres, tours in Norway, Russia, Poland and Georgia, International Children- and Youth Theatre Festival, Feel-good Week, Anniversary party and a doubling of our revenue compared to the year before.

Samovarteateret has since the very beginning in 1990 focused on our geographical position and the international borders that surround us. For Samovarteateret it is important to make performances that focus on or questions the present day. We get our ideas and inspiration from international politics, our society and people we meet – and from this we create new written performances. For us it is important to tell stories from this border region, by giving the stories an artistic form and lifting them up to the stage.

Naturally, Samovarteateret has a special focus on working with Russian stage performers. And also, little by little, we have established a network of stage performers from Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Spain and Poland, that we engage in our different productions.

During the anniversary year 2010, Samovarteateret developed new exciting projects, contacts and co-operations that we will be continued in the years to come. We have also taken a look back to summarize the activity we have had over these 20 years:

Since 1990 Samovarteateret has:

• produced 43 different professional theatre productions, both in Norway and abroad. The performances has toured in Norway, the Barents Region and Europe.
• produced 82 performances with 3285children and youth from across the world.
• had 28 full-time employees. In addition this hundreds of artist engaged in different projects.
• cooperated with professional performers from 16 different countries.
• arranged 6 International Children- and Youth Festivals
• produced performances with up to 8 different languages spoken on stage at the same time.