The Red Riding Hood Diaries

Exploring the feminine hero journey through the Red Riding Hood-narrative

The Red Riding Hood Diaries is a performative exploration of existential periods of my own life - framed through the Red Riding Hood narrative. In these performances, Red Riding Hood steps out of the timelessness of the storybooks to visit the now. She is dressed in her familiar red cloak, and seem to be both as we remember her - and as we do not remember her. Riding Hood is both a girl and a woman, both afraid and fearless, both innocent and guilty. And first and foremost: She is ready to claim the director seat of her own life journey.

Historiefortellings-prosjektet «Hvem er redd for Ulven» var en utforskning av myter og sannheter om det feminine, og også en hyllest til det enorme råmaterialet som finnes i en god historie. I Idas iscenesettelse møtte Rødhette ubevisst seksualitet, passiv aggressive tendenser, hevnmotiver og selvbedrag. Historiefortellingen ble vist på festival St. Dans i Oslo og Festival Franje i Arendal i 2015, og var Idas bidrag til Akamas-prosjektet på Kypros i regi av Eco Art Cyprus 2017.

  • Chapter 1: Breaking he Loop

    For years Riding Hood has tried to follow her mother's well-intentioned advices, avoiding all dark corners of the woods between her mothers and her grandmothers house. But she feels so tired of always running, so tired of always being afraid. The fact that nothing in her life seems to ever really change, leads her to question the point of living. And inside her increasingly stronger forces is pulling towards the dark, towards the unknown. She longs to pause in the woods, and meet The Wolf.

    This chapter was shared the summer of 2015, as part of Festival St. Dans in Oslo. Photo by David Brandt.

  • Chapter 2: Meeting the Wolf

    This chapter was developed in the late summer of 2015, and shared at Festival Franje in Arendal. Photo by Ergenc Korkmazel

  • Chapter 3: Betrayal

    In 2017 I went to Cyprus to participate at the Eco Art Workshop with The Red Riding Hood Diaries. I applied for the project with the aim of using the workshop days to find a meeting point between myself, the Red Riding Hood tale and the story of abandoned village of Androlikou, where the workshop was situated. This proved to be a much more challenging quest than I’d expected, cause Androlikous story of war and abandonment felt very far away from the Riding Hood universe. The solution came the fourth day of the workshop. During an exercise I finally found our meeting point: wound. And so, Red Riding Hoods appearance in Androlikou became an investigation of wounds, and of betrayal. Eventually, Red Riding Hood missed out on the Hunter and got stuck in time. She collapsed in her own narrative, missing the possibility of an end to her story. She stopped, like the village of Androlikou, lonely, still, unable to move or change as the world changed around her.

    Du kan lese essayet Ida utviklet som del av Rødhette-prosjektet her.

    Picture by Ergenz Korcmazel

  • Chapter 4: Life Without the Hunter-Saviour

    Or: Red Riding Hood and the 40s crisis.

    Red Riding Hood entered Grandmas house and recognized the Wolf ‘s games. She fled to hide in the forest, realizing Wolf has eaten Grandma and its all her fault. After some days, she returns to Grandmas house. The Wolf has left, Grandma has gone, and the Hunter never came to their rescue. Riding Hood has rescued herself, but at what consequence? And… what now?

    This chapter is inspired by Italo Calvinos Red Riding Hood-fairytale from the 1960s. It’s also inspired by my present life situation. I’ve spent my 30s saving myself from my partly-conditioned feminine victimhood patterns. But when I’ve got no need for a saviour, how can I find the man of my life?

    This chapter is still in development. Photo from 2015 by David Brandt.

A fairytale is a dream written down

a collective subconscious experience
lifted up from the ocean of forgetfulness
given structure, and made public
The fairytale is a dream at the roots of the collective
tells us something essential about humanity
sharing with us sides and possibilities of being human

But the problem with fairytales
is that by the very act of
Carrying them up
from the darkness of the subconsciousness
Writing them down
Giving them light
We have sticked them to time
Their essence are robbed of the quality of Timelessness
by becoming a story, something fixed.