The Lady from the Sea

Inspired by Henrik Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea, which sits within the playwright's trilogy focusing on the theme of female self-realisation, renowned Italian photographer Thomas Zanon-Larcher and British theatre director Jules Wright continue their series of narratives realised in performance, film and photography with actors placed in environments external to the conventional set or stage. Indeed, here the context is sharpened powerfully by the chosen location. Taking as their lead the notion that both the play's protagonist Ellida, and her lover, originate from the far northern hemisphere, Zanon-Larcher and Wright set out beyond the Arctic Circle to work in the Polar Day, reaching as far north as IS-Fjord Radio-the last radio communication location before the North Pole-and Ny-Alusund-the last departure point for the great solitary polar explorers. With such an approach, both director, photographer and actors establish the authenticity of solitude emphasised within the essence of Ibsen's characters and the kind of driven isolation that perpetuates the classical Norwegian constitution. This book details within Zanon-Larcher's evocative photography, both the methodology of his and Wright's creative approach and the theatre and sheer presence of the landscape itself. Beautifully shot on 6:12 colour and 5:4 black and white, the panoramic images grapple with the beauty and fragility of the Arctic and reflect the power of such imagery which has imposed itself upon the idea of solitude and reflection since polar explorers first recorded their existential journeys. These photographs themselves indeed do more than tell the story of Ellida, and together with in depth discussions with Wright, sit reproductions of Zanon-Larcher's sketchbooks, in which photographic plans are fascinatingly relayed alongside pasted Polaroids, deepening our understanding of a unique and compelling approach to a theatrical masterwork.