GLAD 20 YEARS - Flipbook - Page 24
A Crack
in Culture
In 2006, Jesper Michelsen along with Lars Werner Thomsen ran an amateur theatre project with
physically disabled people. They nurtured great ambitions to create professional theatre with the
target group.
“No one did that in Denmark at the time, but we were deeply inspired after visits to colleagues
in Sweden and UK. We had seen the programmes on TV Zulu and really wanted to meet the people
from TV-Glad. We went to say hello,” reminisces Jesper Michelsen.
“Welcome, come in, Mikkel and Henrik said. We have no money, but we can offer you a desk and
we’ll answer whatever questions you may have. And after that it went on wheels. We got the opportunity to create an actor’s education, which became a sort of food chain to enable people to produce
theatre with all the professional layers that we wanted. And thus Glad Theatre came into existence.
And by the way, we found the name hopeless, but we have learnt to live with it,” says Jesper Michelsen
drily.
Now one can experience Glad Theatre at established theatre stages, performances in public
spaces and special performances, and the professional ambitions have been more than met:
“I’m wildly proud that we have created a crack in what is offered on stage in Denmark. The ensemble consists of app. 16 actors, all of whom for professional reasons time and again push their
personal boundaries. We are highly ambitious. Because our mutual trust and confidence, discipline
and cohesion are better than ever before, we’re now ready for the next level. We have actors that
are ready to throw themselves on the floor and break down, as good actors do.”
One actor is Anna Sophie Lübeck, who is blind. She had the dominant leading role in the play ‘Your
Look, My Sight’ which received smashing reviews and was awarded five stars by kulturtid.dk. Anna
Sophie explains why this particular play was special to her:
“To me, it’s incredible how I have been able to make my mark on the performances at Glad
Theatre, like I did with ‘Your Look, My Sight’. Part of the excitement with that particular play was that
because it was highly exposed in the media, we never knew who would turn up to watch. Suddenly,
I’d be face to face with old friends, but also with the Minister for Culture and a famous film director,
Erik Clausen.”
Glad Theatre means the world to Anna Sophie: “I am proud of what we have achieved during my
13 years at Glad Theatre. It really means everything to me. Without it, I wouldn’t know what to do
workwise. We blind people can’t just go and get a job.”
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