Closing Reflection
From the 2026 Ibsen Scope Festival in Skein, Norway on May 8, 2026
As we gather in this final moment, I want to invite us into a pause together. We’ve spent two days moving between performances, conversations, meals, translations, rehearsals, bars, hotel rooms, van rides and other kinds of encounters. We’ve consumed a great deal. There was one conversation, though, with an artist from Lebanon that has remained with me. We spoke about the time and space that this festival provided them to get away from the noise, the war, the violence and the constant anxiety. The silence that Skein allowed for them.
So before we rush toward the next thing, I want to make a little space for memory. We’re going to play a short piece. And while it plays, I simply invite you to notice what remains with you from the Festival.
One image.
One phrase.
One moment.
One sound.
One encounter that inspired you.
One experience that you may tell others about upon your return.
Don’t search too hard for the “right” memory. Just notice what comes to mind.
For me, what remains are fragments. Arrivals from around the planet. Visa complications. The journey from Oslo to Skien. iPhone translation apps held between strangers. Coffees and muffins balanced in cold hands. Little round potatoes appearing again and again. Groupings of cigarette smokers. Quiet hotel breakfasts. Walks along the water back and forth between venues. Scarves and coats in May. Ambient music before conversations began. Technicians carefully activating moments. Cheerful greetings from theater staff each morning. Carefully crafted introductions before performances. The slow extending of oneself as we got to know one another. The quick walls coming down after encountering someone’s work.
Laughter. Knowing looks across crowded rooms. Dart-throwing in the bar. Shivering around crackling fires at night. Lights reflected in tired eyes. Trios of women. Quartets of men. Skin. Hair. Beards. Blood pressure cuffs. Words spoken. Words sung. Words hurled. Ibsen.
Artists from Palestine, Argentina, South Korea, Lebanon, Norway, Brazil, Serbia, India, Sápmi and elsewhere bringing pieces of their realities into this temporary shared one. Important guests arriving from Oslo and other regions of Norway. Encountering new work from old friends. Exchanging contact information. Promises to stay in touch. Choosing one more drink. Some choosing sleep instead.
Tables. Candles. Imagination.
And somewhere inside all of this, a temporary civilization emerged. Not a perfect civilization. Not a permanent one. But a functioning one. One built not only from curation and an institution, but from hospitality, listening, translation, pacing, generosity, exhaustion, curiosity and attention. A system where people carrying radically different histories, politics, languages and realities agreed, for a few brief days, to remain in relation to one another.
We’ve been saying that we are living through a period where many forces are teaching us to retreat into binaries. Into tribes. Into simplification. Into suspicion of one another. And yet here, people crossed oceans and borders to sit together in rooms and encounter complexity. To be confused. To be moved. To disagree. To listen across language. To witness realities not their own. That is really something.
This gathering did not happen outside the world. The world came here too. Wars. Borders. Funding inequities. Different relationships to freedom, safety and speech. Different systems quietly overlapping inside the same rooms. No one experienced this festival in exactly the same way.
And yet, something happened here.
It wasn’t utopia. Perhaps something more human than that. A temporary rhythm made of conversation, fire, theater, Norwegian sunlight, conversation, risk and care. Soon, many of us will scatter again. Airports. Trains. Different currencies. Different crises. Different time zones. Different systems waiting for us when we land. But for a brief stretch of time, we built another system together here.
And perhaps part of our task now is to carry pieces of it forward. The listening. The curiosity. The generosity. The willingness to remain in relation to one another a little longer than convenience might normally allow.
Tusen takk.
