Copenhagen Trilogy
The Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976) knew no bounds. Her autobiographical novels Childhood, Youth, and Dependency are sharp, raw, and intensely personal. These three masterpieces - high points in her body of work - are now brought together on stage in Copenhagen Trilogy. Directed by Eline Arbo and performed by, among others, Maria Kraakman, the production is a powerful portrait of a woman’s journey through class, identity, art, passion, love, and self-destruction.
Run time tba
Genre Theater
Language Dutch
Surtitles English, Thu, Mar 12 & 19
In Gesprek Thu, Mar 12 & Fri, Mar 20
Premiere Sun, Mar
Copenhagen Trilogy
Copenhagen Trilogy presents the painfully honest story of Tove Ditlevsen: an uncompromising writer who became famous for her deeply personal and masterful reflections on her life. She grew up in a poor district of Copenhagen, armed with an ambition far greater than her circumstances allowed. As she grew older and stepped into the public eye, she pushed against the boundaries of her time and faced criticism from a society unprepared for her voice—her determination to resist conformity and chart her own course.
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But her insatiable hunger for life also brought her face to face with its darkest sides. Tove struggled throughout her adult life with addiction and mental health. Her longing for individuality, love, and identity slowly transformed her into someone she no longer recognized. In the end, her yearning and fame proved to be her undoing.
Tove Ditlevsen was a mother, a wife, a writer, and an addict. As dangerous as she was brilliant. An insecure doubter and a shameless brute. Brutally honest. A radical artist.
ELINE ARBO ABOUT COPENHAGEN TRILOGY
“I grew up with the work of Tove Ditlevsen, introduced to it by my mother. Her novels and her life continue to inspire me. Ditlevsen is the protagonist in her own story, constantly walking the line between fiction and reality. She is her own muse and her greatest enemy. That’s why her work is perfect material for theatre, where I also blur the boundaries between fiction and reality and search for moments where the political and personal collide and strengthen each other. I relate to her all-consuming need to create—and how that drive can sometimes be destructive. I see myself in her defiance of societal expectations, in her questions about how systems function and who they serve. I recognize her nerve, her intensity, her shamelessness. She was a radical woman whose voice still resonates generations after her death. Everyone should read her books.”
Tove Ditlevsen | Feminist Avant la Lettre
The work of Danish author Tove Ditlevsen has found renewed popularity in 2025. Her honest, direct, and yet poetic writing style resonates with a new generation that values open dialogue about mental health and the authenticity of lived experience. She gave powerful voice to female perspectives—writing about motherhood, art, marriage, and the tension between personal ambition and social expectation.
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The English translation of Copenhagen Trilogy received glowing reviews in The New York Times and The Guardian, earning Ditlevsen international cult status.
Eline Arbo is Artistic Director at ITA since September 2023. From 2022 she was already linked to ITA as Associate Artistic Director. From January 2023, Arbo was appointed Ibsen Artist in Residence, an initiative of the Philip Loubser Foundation, which gives directors with an international ambition the opportunity to develop themselves artistically.
In season 25|26, she will create Copenhagen Trilogy (Tove Ditlevsen) and her stagings of Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin), The Laws (Connie Palmen), Prima Facie (Suzie Miller), The Wall (Marlen Haushofer) and The End of Eddy (Édouard Louis), will be reprised.
Credits
by Tove Ditlevsen
directed by Eline Arbo
translator Lammie Post-Oostenbrink
music design Thijs van Vuure
scenographer Pascal Leboucq
costume design Rebekka Wörmann
lighting design Varja Klosse
assistant director Daniël 't Hoen
assistant scenography Leanne Vandenbussche
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private producers Jeroen van Ingen & Jaap Kooijman, Bertil van Kaam & Felix van der Heijden, Tineke Boersma & Frans Eusman, Paul Veerman & Marijke van der Duin
