Authority. Performative exhibition by Søren Evinson, Roger Bernat and Toni Cots

On stage are Toni Cots, an actor with the Nordic company Odin Teatret between 1975 and 1984, and Søren Evinson, a performer. Cots is unaware of what the performance has in store for him, but he unreservedly submits to his young disciple’s instructions. The interaction between the two turns into a game of trust and vulnerability that traverses the taboos of the socio-affective behaviour that animates the current rhetoric of care. The contact between master and disciple allows Cots not only to revive as an actor, but also to surrender to the history of an art overflowing with manipulation, exploitation and psychic submission. For his part, Evinson supplants the master to reach the level of amorality, passion and arrogance that is inescapably functional in the search for beauty during the last century of theatrical creation.

Authority is a device that reveals the endless availability of actors to expose themselves and the charismatic tendency of masters to manipulate. Both are capable of sacrificing themselves in order to comply with the decalogue of demanded expressiveness and truth; they are victims of themselves and have learned to be so by being victims of all their masters.