OPSANG
Mardi 14 décembre le spectacle Opsang sera proposé à 19h à la Cartonnerie. “Une comédie musicale, ponctuée d’irone et de standards rock’n’roll. Jamais l’immoralité n’aura été aussi populaire.” Le metteur en scène danois, Heinrich Christensen, revient sur ce spectacle déjà vu par plus de 20.000 personnes.
What is Opsang about ?
The English translation of Opsang is lecture, so when someone behaves badly you give him or her an “Opsang”. But in Danish it has a double meaning because “Sang” means to sing. So the play is in fact like a “musical lecture”.
The basic idea was to see whether it was possible to make a show about morals for kids between 14 and 18, because adults are worried about what is happening to the youth today. The story is about two consultants coming to a school to tell the teenagers not to commit the seven deadly sins. No playing about, no sex, no drugs, “you are living through a period when your brain is all over the place. It’s dangerous to use your brain, you are dangerous. You have to be calm for like seven years.” They tell stories about kids who didn’t do what they said and who ended up in a bad place. In fact most of them ended up dead. One story is about a character that swears profusely, almost as if he had tourettes syndrome. But then he falls on the school bully who beats him up for it.
What picture of youth does the play give?
The consultants say that the young are just in to TV and drugs and that they are lazy. But the way they go about saying it is far too exaggerated. So their reasoning falls down. The audiences are uually a mix between grown-ups and teenagers. In fact the kids coming with their parents is the best set-up. Because parents and teachers are portrayed in a rather extreme way in the play.
The show is very popular in Denmark. How do you think audiences in other countries will react?
The play has already been translated into Norwegian and Swedish. But in Norway, the language had to be softened. In Denmark, you can be very explicit on stage but not so much in other countries. For example, an Englishman who saw the show at a Danish festival said he would be unable to produce the show in the UK otherwise he would be prosecuted.
But adults all over Europe are wondering why their kids are lazier, hornier than they were, and kids love shows where there is a grotesque element. Also the show generally stimulates conversations and debates between the parents/teachers and the children. You could say that the real lecture or “opsang” happens therefore after the play
