Jon Fosse: Sleep, My Baby, Sleep ^{2 0 2 5}

In the context of the (specific) atmosphere of listening to Ferlin's voice, Fosse's play, as well as its dramaturgical paradigm, exists only in some symbolic field of powerful reflection. Ferlin's directing, choreography, rejects characters, names, characterization and plot, and instead builds an atmosphere of uncertainty and vulnerability through the body, through space, music, silence, and through fragments of movement. Just as Fosse asks the reader to listen – not just words, but breath, silence or rhythm – so too the play invites the audience to look-as-a-state-of-attention. Towards what? Towards micro-movement, uncertain transitions and the unspoken. In one of Fosse's most performed plays, Natta syng sine songar (1997), such a paradigm of forced listening has already been used, where, namely, the word “I” is repeated more than a hundred times, and such repetitiveness is not a mere figure, but exists in the language itself. It maintains tension, connection between characters, and a void that gives depth. This implies that communication in Fosse’s world is always uncertain, always fragile, so words come and go, leaving a trace but not providing answers. Such openness to uncertainty and ambiguity, a very “specific ambiguity”, becomes a space for the subjective filling of meaning, as well as for the individual resonance of the audience. Taking this principle, Ferlin’s choreography does not offer a clear, universal message – and does not impose meaning, but opens a vortex of sensation(s) or interpretation(s). The characters are nameless performers, and the performers are impersonal characters, without stable (inter)relationships; their existence is in the body, space, and time. Thus, the performance takes from Fosse’s poetics not only the stage form (silence, repetition, minimalism), but also the ethics of vulnerability, the acceptance of uncertainty – for the body and in the body, that is, for what is “between words”. In Ferlin's direction, ordinary movements or routines are made more difficult – both literally (weights on the performers' legs, which are not visible) and metaphorically – everything in the performance gains weight, becomes supportable, potent. By integrating Fosse's dramaturgical-aesthetic-poetic principles into its choreographic text, the performance builds a liminal world that hovers between reality and dream, which does not allow for a soothing reading, but rather encourages constant sensitization – towards vulnerability, towards the body, towards space. And in this vulnerability, a space for togetherness opens up – the viewer is no longer a distanced observer, but a participant invited to fill the void and experience meaning with their own perceptions and senses.