Sorcerer by Ed Atkins and Steven Zultanski

Join us for the Copenhagen premiere of the film Sorcerer and a celebration of the accompanying book, just out from Prototype Publishing. After the film, the authors will have a short conversation about the work, followed by an opportunity to buy the book and have a drink.

Sorcerer is a book, a film, and a theatre project about the pleasures of being together and of being alone. The characters find contentment in each other’s company, conversing in the placid, eerie rhythms of a sitcom in which conflict never arises. Unease is exported to furniture, gadgets, and bodily movements. The result is a counterintuitive kind of realism, lying somewhere between the procedural and the miraculous.

‘I once compared Sorcerer to a Harold Pinter play. But Pinter never instructed you on how to dismantle your face, amplify your house plumbing, levitate your computer, dance with your sofa, or place a penknife on a bed so that it appears as if no one put it there. Atkins and Zultanski’s play redesigns the contemporary home as a machine for comedy, sadness, and anxiety. Sorcerer is a unique work of theatre and literature, beautiful and unsettling. I can only relate it to the words of the late, great Angela Lansbury: “My family always said I’d travel anywhere to put on a false nose.”’ – Dan Fox

Sorcerer was originally commissioned by Rikke Hedeager and staged at Copenhagen’s Teater Revolver from 19 March to 9 April 2022. It stars Lotte Andersen, Peter Christoffersen, and Ida Cæcilie Rasmussen, with choreography by Nønne Mai Svalholm.

The event is in English. The admission is free and seats are given on a first come, first served basis.

BIOS

Ed Atkins (b. 1982, UK) lives in Copenhagen. Recent solo shows include The New Museum, New York; Tank, Shanghai; Kunsthaus Bregenz; K21 Düsseldorf; and MMK Frankfurt. Next year, Tate Britain will present a survey of Atkins’ work.

Steven Zultanski (b. 1981, US) is the author of several books, most recently Relief (Make Now), On the Literary Means of Representing the Powerful as Powerless (Information as Material), Honestly (Book*hug) and Bribery (Ugly Duckling Press). His critical writing has appeared in Frieze, Kunstkritikk, Spike, and elsewhere. He lives in Copenhagen.