NIE's 25th Anniversary Festival at Kloden theater
January 27, 2026
The internationally renowned company for children and young people, New International Encounter , is celebrating its 25th anniversary with us in March. Know your visiting hours and join the party!
The festival takes place from Sunday, March 15th to Saturday, March 21st. The program is packed with highlights for children, youth and adults. All performances are played at Pilotscenen , and you can get tickets as usual from NOK 20,-. Welcome!
New International Encounter (NIE) is an international company that creates award-winning theatre performances and projects through a combination of physical theatre, multiple languages, live music, storytelling and a European ensemble. The company has offices in Asker in Norway, in Prague in the Czech Republic and in Cambridge in the UK. They create theatre performances for children, young people, families and adults – for anyone who loves a good story. They bring together artists from different places, backgrounds and educations to work together. They collaborate with local communities, school classes and different venues to co-create imaginative and transformative performing arts projects. They offer talent development opportunities where they share their working methods, ways of seeing and being together, and their perspectives on the world.
The festival program on Kloden theater, Pilotscenen :
The song about everything that gets lost
Sunday, March 15 at 3:00 PM and 5:00 PM
Target group: From 6 years old
Using live music, projections, physical theatre and storytelling, we transport the audience into a magical world of life's lost treasures. The performance is an intimate and philosophical moment where the audience can both laugh and wonder about small and big questions in life. Here there is room to think about things you haven't thought about much before. Or maybe you have thought about them, but thought you were the only one.
The Song of Everything That Gets Lost is a performance based on children's thoughts and experiences about what happens to things that get lost. "Is the toy I lost last year in the same place as my grandfather who died before I was born? Is there a special place for lost socks and stars that stop shining?" We asked a group of children aged 6-9 to answer the following two questions: Where do things go when they get lost? What kind of stories do the things that disappear carry? Their answers and the stories they told us have become a performance filled with live music, humor and stories of great emotions.
“Some stars are kind of gone and not gone at once. Because when you see a star in the night sky, you can’t be completely sure whether that star is still there, or whether it’s just the light from the star that has traveled through space and all the way down to us and then in the meantime that star has gone out. You can’t be completely sure, but does it really matter?”
The song about everything that gets lost has been played around the world for several years, and has received a number of good reviews.
“The performance The Song of Everything That Is Lost is a masterclass in good dramaturgy” -Jane Raush, Aarhus University
“NIE opens up an open and larger canvas for further wonder.” -Anna Helene Valberg, Scenekunst.no
We Come from Far, Far Away
Monday, March 16 at 11:00 and 19:00
Target group: From 10 years old
Inside the big tent is a small tent, and inside the small tent is a boy. He has traveled far. He has traveled mostly alone. He will show you the things he has with him. He will also tell you why he traveled, and the path he took, but he cannot tell you how the story ends…
The story unfolds in an intimate and intense atmosphere, inside a tent, with the help of live music, storytelling, clowning and shadow theatre.
We Come from Far, Far Away is based on stories collected at the Hvalstad transit reception center for minor asylum seekers in Asker. The play follows the young people Omar and Abdallah on their escape from Aleppo in Syria, until one of them arrives in Oslo S.
The audience sits inside a tent that is set up at each venue. The action takes place up close, and also among the audience.
The material in the performance is documentary, and is shared with NIE through conversations and workshops. The participants' stories are difficult and incredible, but like most young people, they are full of energy, vitality and hope for the future.
The performance received the Hedda Award for best production for youth in 2017.
Brothers & Sisters
Tuesday, March 17 at 11:00 and 19:00
Target group: From 13 years old
Brothers & Sisters is the story of Katrine, Tiril, Markus and Fredrik. Four friends who have done most things together, and who have always stood up for each other. During the 9th grade, a change occurs. Markus falls in love, Fredrik starts playing in a band, Tiril is angry at everything and everyone and Katrine wants to lie under the covers forever. They drift apart, and after middle school they lose touch. A year passes. Two years pass before Tiril calls Markus and Fredrik and asks if they know anything about Katrine. Is she still under the covers? Has she moved abroad? Where has she become?
A performance based on young people's experiences of coping with mental illness. Both facing their own challenges, and as a support player for friends or family who are having a tough time.
Based on documentary material, NIE has created a performance about the human mind, bright spring light, self-preservation and the power of darkness.
FIRST PREMIERE: Můra (There Is Still Some Light Left)
Wednesday, March 18 at 11:00 and 19:00
Target group: From 13 years old
Where does darkness come from?
Is it coming from the shadows?
It comes from the forest, before creeping towards the houses where people live.
Where does evil come from?
Does it also come like darkness from the shadows, before it creeps into the houses where people live?
This production is based on documentary biographical material from three people who were born in 1928. Almost a hundred years ago. They all became direct and indirect victims of the rise of fascism. In this production we have investigated whether history is more than knowledge of the past. Can it also be the collective memory of democracy?
Hanna & Heinz
Thursday, March 19 at 11:00 and 19:00
Target group: From 13 years old
The performance is based on the story of Hanna Mothes, a young Norwegian woman who married a German soldier during World War II.
After the war, she, like thousands of other Norwegian women in the same situation, was forcibly sent out of the country and stripped of her Norwegian citizenship. Based on this true story, NIE has created a performance filled with music, humor and vitality.
This is a story about survival, love, loss of identity and hope. About how human identity is affected when one cannot visit the geographical area to which this identity is linked. It is also a performance about fighting for justice, and about how much it is worth enduring for the one and only great love.
There is no country in Europe that punished its war brides as harshly as Norway.
The story of Hanna and Heinz is the story of a woman who never gave up. Because she was born in Norway, she believed she had the right to return home. It took almost 60 years. Her great love was dead, and one could travel as one wanted without a passport throughout Europe before she could get her Norwegian passport back.
Erna Solberg made an official apology to Norwegian women who lost their citizenship because of love in 2019, while she was Prime Minister. 74 years after World War II.
Museum of Memories
Friday, March 20 at 11:00 and 19:00 . Saturday, March 21 at 14:00
Target group: From 14 years old
We cannot fully trust our memories, and yet there is no other reality than the one we carry with us in our memory. Every moment we live gains its meaning thanks to the past. The present and the future would lose all meaning if the past were erased from our consciousness. Between ourselves and nothing stands our ability to remember. NIE sets up its own small, ephemeral museum building. Inside a room filled with memories, five people reconstruct a life that has ended. Two brothers, a neighbor, a teacher and a lover. With warmth, music and humor, they tell stories about someone they have lost.
A brother, a student, a neighbor boy and first love.
The audience sits close together in the intimate space that resembles an archive room, and experiences the actors and the stories up close. After the performance, the drawers in the archive open, turning into a small museum, a space for reflection with various sensory experiences that can awaken associations with one's own life and memories.
"This is more than a piece of theatre; it is a consciousness shifter."
– New York Theatre Guide