Are You a Fan of Norse Mythology? Check out Vanaheimr, a Production by The Fox & Beggar Theater - Dec 22 at The Cedar

Article by Becky Fillinger, photos provided

We all love the tried-and-true holiday shows and look forward to them every year. But if you’re eager to experience a brand-new show, based on Norse mythology, we have a recommendation for you! We spoke to Nat Allister, Artistic & Managing Director for The Fox & Beggar Theater, about his upcoming production Vanaheimr. There’s only one show on December 22, so order your tickets quickly! 

Nat AllisterQ:  Please tell us a bit about The Fox & Beggar Theater – what’s the history and mission?   

A:  I was born and raised in Northfield, MN, but I started The Fox & Beggar Theater in North Carolina in 2014 while living in Asheville. The idea lay somewhere in all of the marvelous intersections between circus, theater, dance, and visual art.Our first show was called "Animalia," a massive nouveau cirque production inspired by the six classes of animals in a sort of surreal reimagining of Genesis. "Animalia" was pretty, but also quite dark; and the shows basically got prettier and darker from there. Next came "Tarocco" on the centennial of WWI, about a dying Italian infantryman's delirious fantasies in which he imagined himself The Fool on an existential journey encountering all twenty Major Arcana of the Tarot. The show tackled the topics of death and trauma, and being forced to accept something that you couldn't fully understand. More shows came, generally seeking beauty and magic inside the darker places of the human psyche. Somewhere along the way, I came up with the phrase "little lights for dark worlds" to describe my art, which felt right.

In 2020, I moved back to Minnesota and have been rebuilding The Fox & Beggar Theater from the ground up, as a sponsored project of Springboard for the Arts. In the last two years I've embarked on two tours around the Upper Midwest with two fantastic casts. These shows were actually both comedies, of all things - a Spaghetti Western about late-stage capitalism called "Goodnight, Absalom!," and a devised circus show about modern loneliness called "The Lonesome Spectacular!" This December's "Vanaheimr" will be a full return to the dark wilderness of my earlier work.

Q: I can’t express how much I regret that I didn’t see your earlier productions! Speaking of Vanaheirm, you have a performance at The Cedar Cultural Center coming up on December 22. Is it a preview of a work in progress? What can you tell us about it? 

A: I've always been fascinated by Norse mythology, and love this passage written by Michael Chabon: [Norse mythology] begins in darkness, and ends in darkness, and is veined like a fire with darkness that forks and branches. It is a world conjured against darkness, in its lee, so to speak; around a fire, in a camp at the edges of a continent-sized forest, under a sky black with snow clouds, with nothing to the north but nothingness and flickering ice." The stories are rich and wild and messy and beautiful and compelling, and have done more to inspire the modern fantasy novel than any other single source. However, they can also be troubling at times, and perhaps it is no accident that these stories have historically attracted the attention of the far right, from Wagner and Hitler to more recent sects of neo-fascism.

For those who were raised on Norse mythology, you might recall a group that is always mentioned, yet has rarely (if ever) been properly explored. These are the Vanir, a tribe of deities allied to the war-loving Æsir but connected to stuff like nature, fertility, and the harvest. Five years ago, I dreamed of a project called Vanaheimr for the very first time, retelling stories from Norse mythology from the perspective of this less-understood tribe of deities. Along the way, I learned that scholars have wondered if this tribe was picked up from the forgotten gods and goddesses of a Neolithic group of hunter-gatherers that existed in Scandinavia before the Bronze Age. Their culture was wiped out, but perhaps their worldview lives on in the surviving myths of the Viking Age. And I thought: this is good. This is a story worth exploring.

So Vanaheimr was born - a show about nuance, and conflict, and planetary collapse. A show about our ancient history and about our future as a species on this planet.

In 2020, after moving back home to Minnesota, I began developing the show for a Minnesota run. I wrote the script (composed entirely in trochaic tetrameter, and performed by just two narrators) at an artist residency last winter in the deep north woods in the middle of a snowstorm. And now, I am beyond excited for the next chapter, coming to The Cedar Cultural Center on the longest night of the year.

We will be previewing the show inside a lavish wintry set designed by me, Scott Bloom, and Alina Antoniou. Shadow puppetry will be created and performed by Rebecca Mellstrom and Kate Tobie. Willie J. Johnson and Rhiannon Fiskradatz will be narrating the story over blood-pounding music composed by Walken Schweigert and performed by Walken, Alma Engebretson, and myself. Dancers Dom Locke and Levi Martin will be performing both behind and in front of our shadow screen, costumed by the great Twin Cities designer Kathy Kohl, and lit by Trevor Zapiecki. And that's not all; there's too many artists to list in one post and some are still coming.

Above and below - making dark spirits in the Vanaheimr workshop.

This upcoming preview on the solstice is meant to function as a fundraiser, a promotional event, and a ritual blessing to kick off the project for further development, before performing with a cast of twenty-two artists next year in December, 2023. I'll be presenting the full project after the performance and talking about the 2023 run, which will be free, all-ages, and open to the public.

Q: Do I need a background in Norse mythology to appreciate the show? 

A: The show is packed with references to the worlds of the pre-Christian Nordic peoples. Anyone who loves these myths as much as I do will hopefully delight in seeing these characters brought to life. However, nobody needs to know them to appreciate Vanaheimr. The show is visual, and it's auditory, and it's meditative; it's meant to engage the senses and to touch you deep down in the old and wild places in your heart.