SALT

A theatrical performance about poverty and freedom

In 1893, 26 fishermen from Harboøre drowned during a storm.
During the funeral, the inner-mission priest Carl Moe in his funeral speech condemns several of the drowned who were not believers, which triggers great indignation in many circles. Among others, the young Grundtvigian Morten Rask from the Social Democrats is very upset. He now undertakes, as his life’s work, to depose Carl Moe from his ministry and free the inner-mission city from the oppression he believes it lives under.
He travels to Harboøre, but does not meet the enemy in the form of individuals, but a strong solidarity collective. It makes his mission more difficult. Every time he seeks contact with a single human being, hoping to hear a realization of submission in the inner missionary community, he is rejected.
But one day he meets the child Ida, whose drowned father was one of the condemned and who Ida is fully convinced of, now lives in hell. With the innocent child at the helm, Morten Rask is now fighting a battle that is both about rescuing the inner-mission fishermen from a community they do not want to leave, but also a battle about calling a drowned father back to his daughter to say goodbye.

The story in SALT is inspired by historical events and by Hans Kirk’s novel The Fishermen and is the second part of the Olske Orchestra’s trilogy “A nation’s self-hatred – Denmark between shame and self-esteem”, which deals with Danes’ self-understanding over the past 300 years and how it has shaped our relationship with the outside world.
SALT is set in a dramatic story in a poetic and physically expressive idiom performed by a company of 6 actors and dancers. Light projections of floating oceans and westerly winds, cracked voices in hymn singing, the density and warmth of the collective fill the space and not least the contradictions between the lonely doubt and the collective fundamentalism.

After the performance SUGAR with its slave adventure in distant continents during the flourishing period in the 1700s, we close ourselves with Salt inside the national borders after the loss of the greatness of the empire and focus on the notion of faith, freedom and budding nationalism.

The theater ensemble Det Olske Orkester is known for its experimental, physical theater performances and has won several awards, including a Reumert for the performance “Then We Went Away” in 2013.