Suðurlandsvegur

SUÐURLANDSVEGUR (2012)

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With Oscar Mangione and Fredrik Ehlin.

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May 19th, 2012, at a petrol station with a small restaurant, somewhere along Suðurlandsvegur in Iceland.

In a corner of the room is a man drinking coffee. He is shabby, troubled, and he wears an elegant but dusty and somewhat ragged suit. He used to be part of a group, but after completing a report —the first and only one — the project was cancelled, and the group disbanded. He stayed in the office and found other, simpler, things to do. At first, a variety of minor tasks: letters were to be filed, answered, scanned, printed, copied, or stamped; sometimes small editorial tasks as well as recurrent, eventually canceled, Monday meetings. In the end his only business was to take care of the garbage.

Every night he enters the subterranean world of waste management, hauling the leftovers of life above through winding corridors, to the great garbage compactor. One night, as he is about to finish the work, he discovers a passage leading even further down below the surface. Instead of going up with the elevator to the newly cleaned premises and a much-needed nap, a journey in the underworlds begins. It doesn’t end until this day when he shows up at a petrol station. He is a man whose history no one dares to imagine.

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Performed at Litla Kaffistofan, Iceland, on May 19, 2012, by Hilmar Guðjónsson.

Written and directed by Fredrik Ehlin, Andjeas Ejiksson, Oscar Mangione.