A play based on the children’s book The Story of the Blue Planet by Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason premiered in Luzern, Switzerland, on Wednesday. The play will be performed until January.
This is not the first time that the story is staged in theaters; it has also been staged in Canada, Finland and Pakistan. The National Theater of Iceland staged the story in 2001 where it became a hit and earned several awards, a press release states.
The Story of the Blue Planet was originally published in Iceland as Sagan af bláa hnettinum in 1999.
The same year the book was granted the Icelandic Literature Award and in 2009 it earned the “Prize of Prizes” at the occasion of the Literature Award’s 20th anniversary.
The Story of the Blue Planet is the most widely distributed Icelandic children’s book in recent decades. It has appeared in China, Japan, Greece, Thailand and South Korea in addition to a number of European countries.
In other theater news, independent stage performers in Iceland attracted 217,000 spectators to theaters at home and abroad in the past season, which is a 20 percent increase between years.
According to a press release, independent Icelandic performers have been active in staging their shows abroad with considerable success; the theater group Vesturport earned the European Theater Prize in the category New Theatrical Realities in April.
Click here to read more about that story and here for further information about the play in Luzern.
ESA
