The Minister of Cultural Affairs Mrs Ellen Horn

The Ibsen Festival at the Cameri Theatre

Tel Aviv, 21 April 2000

Minister Peres
Minister Melchior
Mr Mayor
PLO Representative in Norway
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen
Dear Friends,

I am happy and honoured to attend Oslo on Stage, on the occasion of the Ibsen Festival at the Cameri.

The name Oslo naturally evokes memories of other intercultural encounters. When on in August 1993, after half a century of conflicts, the world learnt that the Declaration of Principles - the Oslo Agreement - had been signed in Oslo, immense hope arose everywhere, hope for the dawning of peace in the Middle East.

As Director of the National Theatre in Oslo, I had the privilege of meeting Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres and President Arafat on the occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in 1994. I also had the great pleasure and privilege of receiving them all in my theatre for the Nobel Peace Concert, where a great number of both Israeli and Palestinian artists were present.

When I visited your country last time in 1996 – just after the tragic death of Yitzak Rabin – I made a lot of new friends, and was struck by the quality and passion of the artistic work and the prosperous cultural life of Israel. The openness around the human dilemmas of the Middle East – and the friendliness and warmth of your people made a great impression on me.

Now in my new position, as Minister of Culture, Israel is the first foreign country that I visit. The new social-democratic government of Norway have ambitions of supporting cultural and artistic exchange and co-operation between Norway, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

I believe that our best tribute to Yitzak Rabin and the other courageous architects of peace is to do everything in our power to ensure that the momentum for peace is maintained and increased, in the Middle East as elsewhere.

Mr. Rabin understood that peace had to be made between peoples, not simply between nations. Peace cannot be brought about only through treaties, it must be written in the hearts and minds of men and women.

This is why I believe in the crucial role of culture as a force promoting integration and peaceful coexistence of people in societies. Cultures have at their core knowledge and values. They evolve and grow in a process of creative interchange. Art and culture - in all its forms – is not only tradition but also creation. This is why it has a part to play in pre-empting conflict.

Creative expression in all its forms develop our understanding of ourselves and of others, and give us a sense of pride in who we are. I believe creativity, this unique capacity of the human race to endlessly reinvent the way we live, will be one of our greatest asset in building our societies. Creativity allows us to reinvent meaning and responses. But human creativity could not produce new ideas, if it did not have the immense resource of cultural heritage to draw on.

Each country, however small, contributes to the richness of diversity. There is no country so big, it has no lessons to learn and none so small, it has no lessons to give.

The worlds of music, theatre and dance offer many opportunities for cultural brokers to foster cultural pluralism and intercultural dialogue.

The Cameri Theatre has offered many such opportunities, by being the venue of intercultural encounters. On its stage Jews and Arabs perform together. Their performances bring together Israeli and Palestinian youths to share cultural experiences. Such cultural encounters are, I believe, inspired by a recognition that culture is essential to human identity and therefore to human dignity.

These days the Cameri provides the setting for another wonderful encounter on stage: the Ibsen Festival. The Festival brings together actors from the National Theatre in Norway and actors from the Cameri. All united in their interpretation of the works of our Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

For half a century Ibsen devoted his life and his energies to the art of drama, and he won international acclaim as the greatest and most influential dramatist of his time. His dramas unite actors and audiences all over the world.

Ibsen’s immense accomplishment was to demonstrate that the universal is universal.

He scaled the universal down to the size of your own mind, your own soul, and he forbids you to escape acknowledgement of your own identity.

The spotlight of his plays made contemporary aspects of life highly visible. Ibsen brought the problems and ideas of the day onto his stage, and created realistic dramas of psychological conflict. Although Ibsen presents problems, he rarely gives solutions. "A dramatist’s business", he always said, "is not to answer questions, but only to ask them".

Ibsen deals directly with the theme of the individual attempting to realize himself in the face of established conventions. It turns out that the world is in motion; old values and previous conceptions are adrift. What starts the whole process is the need for change, something springing forth from the individual’s volition. The basis of Ibsen’s human portrayal is his characters’ conceptions of what makes life worth living – their values and their understanding of existence.

Ibsen’s work represents a long poetic contemplation of people’s need to live differently than they do. There is a contradiction between will and real prospects at the root of his art. A distance between what his characters can achieve and what they want to achieve that is the cause of the tragic aspects of these people’s lives. Looking back on 25 years of writing in 1875, Ibsen declared that most of what he had written involved the contradiction between ability and aspiration, between will and possibility.

Ibsen himself has given the best characteristic of his approach to drama. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle – being defeated, or charged with victory.

Before closing – let me express my hope that the Ibsen Festival will inspire further co-operation between Israeli and Norwegian artists to the enrichment of the cultural life of our countries.

Thank you for your attention.