de:manifestation - scenography as expanded field

Created and developed by Irina Komissarova in collaboration with Muza de la Luz, Paulius Kilbauskas and Eugenijus Sabaliauskas

Genre: experimental anti-horror live music performance and installation within a visual meta-narrative.

Full Credits

created and developed by Irina Komissarova

collective Muza de la Luz, Paulius Kilbauskas and Eugenijus Sabaliauskas

technical support: Rui Almeida, Ulf Knutsen

production manager: Sunniva Solberg

photo and video: ksswr, Mohammed Lehry, Oyvind Hansen, Ole W Moe Lund

produced by the Norwegian Theatre Academy

part of the §112 Fredrikstad festival

supportive talks, discussions: Sidsel Graffer, Philipp Schulte, Serge von Arx, Karen Kipphoff, Saul Garcia-Lopez, Jakob Oredsson, Solveig Ylva Dagsdottir, Lisa Birkenbach, Karoline Amalie Severinsen and Muza de la Luz

inspiration: Yuriy Kharikov and Gian Maria Tosatti

First premiere produced by Norwegian Theatre Academy and presented as part of the §112 Fredrikstad pilot festival in Fredrikstad, Norway.

May 31 and June 1, 2024.

Critical Reception:

Karoline Skuseth, artist and curator at BIT Teatergarasjen, Norway

“Irina's work is characterized by a strong commitment to feminist values and a desire to subvert traditional power dynamics, as well as a talent for combining disciplines and techniques to create immersive experiences that blur the boundary between the stage and the audience.

Her innovative approach to scenography is marked by a willingness to take risks and adapting to changing circumstances. Through her creative vision and experience as a set designer, Irina skilfully creates atmospheric spaces that appeals to a wide range of senses, inviting the audience to explore and engage with the artwork”.

Gian Maria Tosatti, Italian visual artist

“It was a visionary sink into an existential and political labyrinth, full of echoes from European philosophical and artistic thought.

What impressed me too, from that experience was how simply (and with very poor elements) she was able to overturn the perception of the visitors and taking them into her world”.

Serge von Arx, architect ETH/SIA, artistic director Scenography at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, Norway

“Irina's meticulous inquiry to subvert social power paradigms through scenography culminated in a playful and tactile parallel universe as a specially diverging cohesion. She wove the many imminent questions into a work that re-accentuates scenography coalescing human and spatial factors”.

de:manifestation unfolds as a performative meta-narrative structured across two environments: a forest and a black box. The work draws on the language of myth and anti-horror, using absence, sound, and perception to construct a dramaturgy of suspense without representation.

At its core is a simple story:

A woman, exhausted by the pressure to become someone and to manifest herself within social and existential expectations, seeks a way out. She encounters a myth about a forest entity, a being said to offer absolute relief. Those who find it experience a moment of complete presence, including love, calm, and connection. After this encounter, they fall asleep in its embrace and are consumed, a final transformation that dissolves pain, memory, and identity.

Part I: The forest

The audience is invited into a natural landscape.

At the center lies a performer, asleep in a constructed nest-like space. The scene is minimal, almost still. Around it, a carefully composed sound environment unfolds: distant movements, subtle shifts, traces of something approaching but never arriving.

The audience does not witness an event. They are placed inside a condition — a suspended state between expectation and absence.

The forest becomes a perceptual field where the presence of the unseen entity is felt rather than shown.

photo by Oyvind Hansen

photos by Ole W Moe Lund

Part II: The black box

The following day, the audience enters a black box space.

At the center, a similar structure: a nest. The performer is now awake.

Live sound and light create a controlled environment of tension. The dramaturgy builds toward the anticipated arrival of the entity. Several times, the work suggests that it is about to appear.

It never does.

Instead, the performer begins to act upon herself. A layer of edible “skin” forms part of the costume. She removes and consumes it.

The expected external transformation collapses into an internal act.

photos by Mohammed Lehry

2024 | de:manifestation / scenographic moments in two parts

Part I: The forest

Part II: The black box