Uppdraget (Fear Not)
“Gid har ett Uppdrag. Han ska rädda världen. Det enda han väntar på är några detaljer i kontraktet med Förenta Nationerna. Deb har gjort en intervju med Gid, en intervju som övergår i kyssar. Deb lever med Leo som längtar efter ett större sammanhang. Helst ett kriminellt nätverk. Nu har Gid och hans fru Laura bjudit hem Deb och Leo. Men ingen verkar hitta i köket. Toaletten fungerar inte. Och plötsligt står en främmande kvinna i rummet. Trots att ytterdörren är låst.”
WRITTEN BY Björn Runge
DIRECTED BY Björn Runge
SCENOGRAPHY Peter Lundqvist
LIGHT Ulf Brantås
MAKE-UP Susanne von Platen
COSTUME Maria Geber
MUSIC Ulf Dageby
CAST Pernilla August, Ann Petrén, Jakob Eklund, Sanna Krepper och Francisco Sobrado
This play was written in 2006 and initiated my collaboration with the Stockholm Municipal Theater. The premiere took place in March 2007. The title of the play was originally The Assignment. It all started with a slip of the tongue: “The Unified Nations”. Based on these words, I began to write. A person claims to have been given an assignment by the Unified Nations, an assignment that would affect the world. I remember the intoxicating feeling of writing the dialogue and arranging the characters in a physical space. In the early 1990s, I had written two full-length plays: A Poor Bastard and Earthquake in Slow Motion. With these, basically nothing happened. The agent Berit Gullberg were encouraging, but nothing concrete came out of these projects, so in the decade that followed I focused all my energy on scripts written for film and television.
The Assignment was my first stage script in probably fifteen years. In 2006, I had staged my first play, Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes, at the Gothenburg Municipal Theater. And my appetite for the scenic possibilities was whetted. Benny Fredrikssson, at that time CEO of the Stockholm Municipal Theater, persuaded me to put up a play of my own.
So I wrote Don’t be Afraid and directed the play myself. Actors were Jakob Eklund, Ann Petrén, Sanna Krepper, Pernilla August and Francisco Sobrado.
The reviews were very positive and the play played during the spring season for full houses.
Having revised the text, I have changed very little, only deleted some superfluous lines and decided to alter the title. From now on, the piece is called Don’t be Afraid, a phrase that recurs here and there in the play.
