Abjectified Project – Ouverture

Welcome to a process performance with ABJECTIFIED PROJECT at Oslo Nye - Centralteateret! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ouverture is a visceral performance by Abjectified Project, where theatre, dance and drag art come together to create queer art. This work embraces fascination to challenge ideas about beauty, normality and what the queer body represents.

The abject plays on feelings such as repulsion, shock, fear, disgust and nausea, and problematises what is associated with beauty versus what is considered ugly. Drawing on a heritage from alternative drag tradition, horror film, abject art and affect theory, queer bodies are highlighted in a universe where the aim is to take control over what many in society today consider repulsive: being queer.

Abjectified Project is a newly established drag art company consisting of performers with backgrounds in drag, performance art and a shared fondness for repulsive aesthetics. You are hereby welcome to the process performance with working title Ouverture at Oslo Nye Teater -- Centralteateret on 21 October 2026!

The performance builds on a series of drag performances from 2023-25, and with this project Abjectified is lifted out of the "drag-cabaret format" and into performance art and a more comprehensive scenic dramaturgy. Performers are Åshild Livsdatter Brinchmann Løvvig, Peter David Ramthun, Sofie Bøttger Bratberg and Jens Martin Arvesen Welde-Hartvedt.

Dramaturg and outside eye is Katinka Steensgaard. Tine Semb with Karmaklubb* is co-producer and coordinator for the project.

All those involved have different professional backgrounds: dance, theatre and acting, film theory, nursing and medical studies, screenwriting, pedagogy and linguistics -- disciplines which are brought into the work in various ways to inspire and generate ideas, as well as create an interpretation and theory of our own around the abject as an aesthetic and scenic device in interplay with the performers' practice within queer art and drag. In addition, other guest artists are invited.