Iben can't help it – Fifth time on Moesgaard's stage

This summer, Moesgaard will once again be transformed into a great fairy tale when the Royal Danish Theatre's large outdoor performance, The Snow Queen, plays from May 22. The play is Kim Fupz Aakeson's retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, which is set up with a revolving stage, electric-powered vehicles, lasers and over 60 local extras on the sloping field facing the bay.

One of them has been there every single time.

Iben is 43, lives in Aarhus, and has been on the large outdoor stage at Moesgaard for all 5 performances. She is the only extra who has been in all the performances.

I call Iben one morning while she's out at Moesgaard getting ready for the premiere. She sounds a little hoarse. It's been weeks in a snowsuit and winter clothes. But the excitement is there immediately and it will also fill the entire conversation.

“I don’t suffer from FOMO in any other part of my life,” she says. “People talk about city trips and everything, and I’m just like, okay, that’s nice. But the thought of not having to go out there, it makes my heart race.”

A little family in a bell jar

It all started with a coincidence. Iben did theater in elementary school and missed the feeling she got from performing and creating something together. Then a post appeared on Facebook, looking for extras for the play Røde Orm, and she went to the casting at Godsbanen along with hundreds of others.

“I didn't think I was getting in. I had no idea what I was getting into.”
Iben came along and the little family they created at the big performances at Moesgaard every other year has been with her ever since.

She compares it to a stay at a college. You live so intensely together for a few months, in a bell jar, and then it's over, and you're left with an emptiness that needs to be chewed on a bit. It's not amateur theater, she emphasizes, it's a holistic production where you get to work side by side with professionals, both on and off stage. The same technicians year after year.

“It's a bit like a drug that you crave. You actually get a bit addicted to it,” she says, laughing.

Nature is a partner

Outdoor theater can do something special, and Iben has a very special story that she remembers clearly. During the performance Ragnarok, thunderstorms threatened to cancel the performance several times. A man stood on the roof of Moesgaard with binoculars and a stopwatch to measure how far away the thunder and lightning were. And just as the thunder god Thor walked on stage, lightning flashed on the horizon.

You don't get that natural effect inside a theater.

“The nature out here at Moesgaard is just a really beautiful and abysmal place to do theater in,” she says. Here you can see far, far out over the bay.

Relationships for life

What draws her back time and time again isn't the roles. It's the people. Iben, as she says, adopts left and right. If she sees someone she likes, she's hooked. She's made a friend she sees as a sister, and has since become an aunt to her children. She has someone she calls her adopted daughter, someone she would never have met anywhere else. Friends aged 25 and 75.

"We would never have gotten into a conversation at a party. We wouldn't have had that common ground, that thing about creating some theater together."

She is filled with gratitude when she thinks back to all those who have walked through her life that way. It is very clear to hear in her voice.

Four roles and four costumes

In this year's The Snow Queen, Iben has four roles and four costumes. That's the most she's had. Some of them are short, so she doesn't have to zoom in on each person, but that's still four shifts and four different people to step into in one evening.

The play is about Gerda, a girl who sets out to find her best friend, and Iben is obsessed with just that. That you are not too small to accomplish something big. The Pippi Longstocking feeling, as she calls it, that the inner child should be allowed to come out and take on the world, because that is where all the good in us lives.

She has a tattoo on her arm, a tribute to the good story, with fairy tale motifs. We need to be able to dream away, she believes, especially in times that can feel bleak. The good story means a better life.

And for anyone who is considering signing up as an extra for the next performance in two years, she is completely clear:
“You never regret having been there. It may have been hard. But you never regret it. If you have even a small desire to do theater or be on stage, you should definitely do it.
Because it's magical.”