Biography - Terje Tveit

“The Norwegian director, Terje Tveit, should not be underestimated, and given its limited resources, Ibsen Stage Company has made significant steps towards making this sometimes metaphorically clunking play into an accessible and bracing piece of theatre - an interesting version of one of Ibsen’s lesser-known dramas.”

London Evening Standard, Little Eyolf

Terje Tveit is a Norwegian/Danish/British director and writer. He graduated from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art with Honours in 1996. His training also includes MA in Comparative Literature (Litteraturvitenskap) from the University of Copenhagen and BA in Theatre Studies (Teatervitenskap) from the University of Bergen with additional studies in Latin and Classical Greek.

He has been the artistic director of the Ibsen Stage Company since its formation in 2000 – a company which has been described as “a wild card of Ibsen productions revealing Ibsen anew". Many of his early productions performed at the London Fringe in North-London with the instrumental support of Cecilia Darker oand Cleo Sylvestre at The Rosemary Branch Theatre. His 2003 production of Little Eyolf caught the attention of UK's leading Ibsen scholar, Inga-Stina Ewbank, and was featured in her published paper Reading Ibsen's Signs: Ambivalence on Page and Stage which was presented at the International Ibsen conference in New York the same year. Following a growing interest in his re-imagined versions of Ibsen’s work, his early productions transferred to larger venues in the UK and guest-performed abroad. His production of A Doll's House guest-performed at the Norwegian National Theatre (Nationaltheatret) in 2004. Two years later his production of Little Eyolf was revived for the opening of the 2006 UK Ibsen celebrations at the Riverside Studios, introduced by Dame Vanessa Redgrave.

In 2012, his production Peer Gynt Recharged was invited to open and guest-perform at the Delhi Ibsen Festival '12 in India. In 2006, he represented the UK at the International Ibsen Conference in Rome, Three-Dimensional Ibsen, presenting his paper Ibsen and the Curse of the Corset.

Following the invitation from the Delhi Ibsen Festival, he started a long-term collaboration with composer Kaja Bjørntvedt, with whom he developed a symbiotic version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Recording Hedda and Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince merging sound and text. He has developed and directed several projects for the Vestfold International Festival and Larvik Barokk Festival including Pergoles’s La Serva Padrona, Mozart’s Bastian & Bastienne and the historical pageant A Promemoria. He has collaborated with composer Andrew Smith, the New York Polyphony, the Bergen National Opera, the Barokksolistene, the Royal Academy of Arts and multi-media designer Momchil Alexiev.

He wrote and directed the dramatic monologue Notes for a Requiem about the life and work of renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo for Svein Tindberg of the Norwegian National Theatre (Det Norske Teatret) which performed at the Vestfold International Festival in 2011. In 2022 he was assistant director of John Ramster's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at Kilden Opera and Theatre. In Sepetember 2023 his production Notes on a Requiem will be revived with the vocal Ensemble Early Voices.

“What is remarkable is the fluid choreography that Tveit has brought to the play. Within a constricted space, the six actors manage to suggest the picture of the house by the fjord, the jetty and the horror of the drowned Eyolf’s eyes staring out from under the water.”

Times Literary Supplement, Little Eyolf

“Terje Tveit, with a perception which give his unconventional Ibsen revivals the revelatory power director Stephen Daldry brought to J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. All the time the surface takes you away from what’s expected, the production draws you to the play’s heart.”

Reviews Gate, Recording Hedda