Welcome to The Great Pause, curated by Marta Keil, Guro Hustad Stugu and Alexander Roberts, produced by Rosendal Teater as a part of Bastard International Performing Arts Festival 2023.

This year, the forum is under the title The Great Pause. Gathering people from across the city, as well as different parts of the world, we invite you to participate in an exchange on the topic of exhaustion – looking at both its causes, as well as potential ways to resist it.

You are invited to undertake one-on-one pausing rituals led by artist Barbara Raes and curator Eva Neklyaeva, plus three collective encounters through the week. People are encouraged to sign up for one or both of the one-on-one rituals where there is availability. Descriptions of the different elements can be found below.

We encourage you to be able to participate in all of the elements through the week, and ask that you inform us if there is something you cannot attend.

All sessions are wheelchair accessible.

Collective sessions:
The curators invite you to a welcome session, a check in and wrap up session. Meet the others signed up for the forum, as well as open a collective conversation about the forum’s core enquiry.

When/where:
11 - 13.00 at Rosendal Kafe, Innherredsveien 73, Trondheim on Thursday 27th April
10 - 11.30 at Rosendal Kafe, Innherredsveien 73, Trondheim on Saturday 29th April
18- 19.30 at Rosendal Theatre in front of the house at the fire pit on Saturday 29th April

One-on-one sessions:
Barbara Raes invites you to...

In the context of The Great Pause, Barbara Raes will bring a glance of her private practice with Beyond the Spoken to the Bastard Festival.

In a private time slot Barbara will look with you into the grief of the fatigue caused by all what is unborn in you. It can be the highest silence or deepest emptiness. Be welcome to bring what the unborn means to you, in the literal or more symbolic sense.

You can reserve a timeslot alone or together with a beloved one.

Next to these individual sessions, Barbara will facilitate a fire ritual together with musician Benjamin Boutreur, at the end of the festival. To heal the space where the desire and the fatigue, the known and the unknown, the fire and the wood encounter.

• Barbara Raes worked as artistic director of Arts Centre BUDA and Vooruit (called VierNulVier today). In 2014, she said goodbye to the arts field and trained herself as a facilitator of farewell rituals at Green Fuse in Totnes (UK). In 2015 she founded Beyond the Spoken, a practice where she guides people in their grieving process by creating and facilitating a unique farewell ritual for them. Ever since Barbara has become a unique connector between art, care, rituals and farewells.

When/where: 90 minute sessions on either Wednesday 26.04, Thursday 27.04, Friday 28.04, or Saturday 29.04 at location to be shared digitally upon sign up.

Fire ritual on Saturday between 20.30 and 00.00 at location to be shared digitally upon sign up.

Sign up for the one-on-one sessions is found here:https://docs.google.com/spread...

Eva Neklyeva invites you to...
Rituals for pleasure. A session on practical magic for creating space for pleasure within your life. This offering is for you if you are looking for a simple way of easing back into pleasure. A kind of softness that supports you in saying yes to the things that really bring you joy. This ritual is a very simple moment of practical magic.

By signing up, you are already creating space and time for your pleasure. It really is that effortless.

During the encounter, Eva proposes a sensual practice that helps you to root in the present moment, to try something new and to let go of the roles and scenarios that do not serve you anymore. Eva employs a wide array of practices, from herbalism to touch to body-positive approach. Together, you tend to the wilderness within you.

This ritual can be done alone or with partner(s) (a person or people with whom you are comfortable sharing an intimate moment). If you do it alone, we focus on your personal pleasure, if you come with partner(s), we would create a new ritual to support the play between the two or all of you. Call it luxury stripped down to basics.

Each 90-minute session will involve a 20-minute pre-conversation, where you will discuss what it is you are looking for, your boundaries and expectations. In this way, the ritual will be designed in a way that has personal significance for you.

On the Saturday of the festival you are invited for a farewell-fire-ritual that involves a wordless farewell to a personal blockage to pleasure.

Where/when: 90 minute sessions on either Wednesday 26.04, Thursday 27.04, Friday 28.04, or Saturday 29.04 at location to be shared digitally upon sign up.

Sign up by sending an email to alexander@rosendalteater.no