How an idea becomes a reality.

Vladimir Iljich Lenin 100 years ago said that the idea becomes a reality when it seizes the human masses. The ideas of Harald Saetervold, the musician and art director from Hamar, are of course different from Lenin. But his possession , the energy and the impact towards people could be to some extent be compared with the leader of the world proletariat. His musical "Mission MacRell" has been staged in many places of Norway and Russia. But Saetervold's production is not just an “art for art's sake” show. All his project activity developed in cooperation with the Norwegian Society of Handicapped People and with financial support of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat is aimed neither it is a lot of nor a little at a change of our civilization, to make its welfares available for all people regardless of their social or physical status.

The show that with its grotesque form, humor and acute social orientation sometimes resembles the Bertolt Brecht pieces is talking about a boy who has got in his early childhood a “dreadful” diagnosis – the disease of “can opening disability”. The matter is that this child was unable to open a mackerel can, without having splashed his clothes a tomato sauce. Nothing could help the poor boy – neither an intensive physical training nor a strong medicaments treatment. The parents eventually was ready to agree to a surgical operation before it turned out that it is enough just to change the design of the can so all has risen on the places. In general the moral of the piece is very similar to the words of one famous Russian song :”It is not necessary to cave in under the changeable world, let it better cave in under us”. In other words, like Saetervold says, a man becomes a handicapped when he or she feels unable to do something: to read a book, to listen to a music, to come into the bus or to enter the shop etc. We are starting to understand that the infrastructure of human beings settlements is awfully unfair towards the people with physical disabilities: the universal absence of the ramps, public transport unadapted for wheelchairs etc. - all these makes handicapped people to feel offcast and needless. Change this world and thousands of people will stop to feel themselves physically defective.

This idea, Saetervold stresses, children can understand better than adults. They are better receptive and very often feel better feel another's pain. On the other hand, children addressing the ideas of solidarity to the adult world have an enormous force of emotional influence. This is why the performances are made by the children's creative groups. Concurrently in the cities where the spectacles are staged the children and the volunteers carry out the studies of accessibility of the local infrastructure for the handicapped people. The final reports are normally handed over to the representatives of the local executive power after the show.

The first performances of the “Mission MacRell” are made in Kotlas and Arkhangelsk. Harald has visited other cities of Arkhangelsk oblast where probably his spectacles will be soon staged.

-The performance made in Arkhangelsk is probably the best of what I have seen before,- says the author. -But every city where it is staged brings own colors and special features, -he stress.

The show in Arkhangelsk has got a support from the Arkhangelsk Mayor's office and the administration of the district where the premiere was made. The regional society of handicapped people and the city children's library also took an active part in the project activity. The children's art group of the Lomonosovsky Cultural Center has already got the invitations to make this performance before the deputies of the Regional Council and on the opening of the international conference on the alternative communications which is to be held in Arkhangelsk in June.

-We in the Barents have got very good possibilities to build a new level of civilization development and to make a pattern to the rest of the world,- said Harald Saetervold on the premiere. -This level should be measured by the attitude of the society towards the weak and disabled people, demonstration of our solidarity and common activity for equal rights.