Congratulations to Copenhagen on its 850th birthday. I feel privileged to live here. Work in the form of an eight-week contract brought me here, but love has kept me here for 27 years.
Love at first site
I met my wife on the first day. Standing in the City Hall Square in my lightweight khaki suit, carrying a guitar in its case on 1 August 1990.
I’d lost my bearings so I asked the first beautiful woman who passed me the way to Skt Peders Stræde. Five days later we met again in Sabine’s Café, coming from different directions to say farewell to an American girl going home to LA. “Haven’t we met before?” we asked. And that’s how it started.
Flash-forward to the present day and we’re still together with two lovely teenage boys. I’m sitting beside her right now on a flight to, of all places, Los Angeles.
Opportunity Knox
There’s a sense of excitement in the air as we’re on our way to the Emmy Awards. She’s a producer at Plus Pictures and has been nominated for best documentary and script for ‘Amanda Knox’, a film about the American student tried for murder in Italy. If you want to see it, check it out on Netflix.
I hope this will merit a mention given the Danish and universal craving for 24-hour news. Most of the news we’re bombarded with seems to me to be bloody, awful, fear-driven and gratuitous. And there’s only so much bad news I can take – I don’t know about you dear reader.
Another thing to consider is whether the news is real or fake? How to tell? Trump tells us that all the criticism of him is ‘fake’. He’s declared war on journalists and might, if he really loses the plot, declare war on North Korea.
Moral leadership
One of the main themes bouncing around the US right now is the facing up to or the denial of the misdemeanours of its past. The recent marches celebrating, preserving or condemning national US heroes is a boil that has been waiting to be burst for generations.
Should our history books be more honest? Most countries in Europe owe their wealth and power to the fact that they at some point did the dirty on another country or people.
Just think for a moment about the slave trade. Would Britain be prepared to take down a statue of one of its biggest advocates, Lord Nelson, from Trafalgar Square in London, for example? Any statue to commemorate Baroness Thatcher would, I personally guarantee, only be up for five minutes …
Germany teaches the gruesome details of the Nazis and their rise to power to its children, thereby showing moral leadership to itself and the rest of the world.
Donald Drumff on the other hand, by not showing zero tolerance to Americans waving swastikas on US streets, is only serving to empower and embolden white supremacist groups.
Another anniversary
2017 also marks the 20th anniversary of That Theatre Company of which I am artistic director. I am very proud of this milestone and hope that you will come in and see both our productions (see that-theatre.com for details) this season, starting with ‘Educating Rita’ from October 25.
