Stage Adaptation Of Quirky Cult Novel, NAIVE. SUPER Lands At Norwegian Center

Kurt Engh's adaptation of Erlend Loe's 1995 Norwegian coming-of-age novel Naïve. Super returns to Norway House following its initial workshop production in 2019.

The play is presented through the mind of the unnamed narrator, who has, in bridging adulthood, dropped out of university. They incessantly make lists. They question the validity of time itself. They yearn deeply to get to the bottom of life and how best to live it.

In the novel, the narrator is a substitute for Erlend Loe himself. Engh has interrogated the text to be able to adapt to anyone who performs as the narrator. In his adaptation, Engh also plays a proxy of the narrator and other characters, interpreting and manipulating his environment in and around the narrator and audience. The performance is spoken through the voice of a new actor each night, none of whom have rehearsed with Engh. Staged using environmental sound, video, an overhead projector, and a fax machine, the performers literally uncover the play in real-time.

"My adaptation was originally made in a transitional part of my life," says Engh of his work. "I had just moved, I didn't have a job, and the world seemed a scary place." Much like the narrator in the novel, Engh was dealing with tough changes, and the 2019 version of the play hit close to home. "Restaging the play [in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic] feels entirely new because we all just put our lives on hold and asked ourselves what our purpose in life is. We had time to bounce a ball against the wall, hammer a peg into a board, to talk to a neighbor. The longevity of the novel is a testament to the universality of these transitional moments in our lives."

Norway House, the Norwegian Arts, Business and Culture Center in America, celebrated the grand opening of its 18,000-square-foot, $19.6 million expansion in October 2022, with special guest Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway. The 90-minute play will be presented in the unfinished basement of Norway House's new addition. The space will eventually house Norway House's genealogical archives and an interactive exhibit on migration.

Naïve. Super runs for three weekends, September 1-17. Tickets are sold on a sliding scale, from $15-$25, and are available for purchase via Eventbrite. The production is funded in part by a grant from the Tri-M Foundation.

Norway House is a forward-thinking arts and business organization focused on connecting Americans with contemporary Norway and being the home for Norwegian business and culture in Minneapolis. Norway House offers a long list of programming, including concerts, performances, classes, peace summits, outdoor events, and more. The campus offers a café, event and meeting spaces, a gallery, and Ingebretsen's Nordic Marketplace. It is also home to the Honorary Norwegian Consulate, The Norwegian American Newspaper, Global Translation & Interpreter, and Concordia Language Villages, among other tenants and partnering organizations. Norway House opened its iconic blue building on East Franklin Avenue in 2015. Located in the heart of Minneapolis in Ventura Village, the neighborhood had been home to the city's Norwegian immigrants beginning in 1860 and is today a diverse, multicultural neighborhood and home to new generations of immigrants.

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