A few years ago I lived in a shared apartment with, among others, an aspiring actor. He’d been in a few plays, produced a few others, had short career as a trouble maker in a Norwegian reality show and even starred in a not-that-successful movie.

We never got too close when we lived together and immediately lost contact when he moved out. But over the years I’ve got regular updates on what’s been happening in his life through friends, and a while back I learned that he’d been accepted to attend the Oslo National Academy of the Arts to try to get a Bachelor of Acting. Quite impressive as they only accept 8 new students every year.

Three years have passed now since he got accepted and yesterday I went with a few friends to see his graduation play, “Closer”. The fine arts is not usually my thing, I think the last time I went to the theater was 15 or so years ago, and I saw “Of Mice and Men” with Klas and his family. To be honest, I’m more of a movie goer.

The play was adapted for a film with the same title in 2004, but I never saw it. That it’s listed as a drama and romance movie in the IMDB might be the reason. I didn’t even know that the movie existed until yesterday when someone asked me during the intermission what I thought of the play compared to the movie.

Watching the scene where Alice and Dan break up for the first time was rather surreal. Suddenly I was moved back in time to one of the many discussions me and Gine had when we were breaking up. Remove what Alice and Dan said about cheating on each other and you’re left with a conversation I’ve had before. And it wasn’t just similar to one, around 3/4 of it was a word-by-fucking-word carbon copy. It was really weird and at one point I found myself very close to mouthing the performer’s lines as they were saying them. Goes to show that the things people say to each other when they break up is pretty much the same. Maybe we’re influenced by movies we see and books we read. It could be that we tend to subconsciously use phrases from make-believe worlds, because in those worlds, things almost always work out in the end.

Or maybe it was just a freak coincidence.

Seeing Herman in action as Larry was very entertaining, all the four actors did a great job. Their final performance will be tomorrow, May 22^nd, and if you have the time and like going to the theater, head over to the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and enjoy two and a half entertaining hours with some of the actors and actresses you are likely to see in Norwegian plays and movies in the coming years. More information here.