Parzival

"You can take the boy out of the wilderness, but not the wilderness out of the boy."

Parzival and his mother live in the forest, far from the world. There she shields him from the world's dangers and temptations - especially from the thought of becoming a knight, like his dead father. Parzival knows absolutely nothing about anything, except how to kill the deer in the forest.

But then a couple of knights ride past and awaken his curiosity. He ventures into the world, equally naive and violent, with no moral compass whatsoever, wearing a fool's cap and carrying weapons. So begins an epic, grotesque, and maximalist tale of King Arthur's knights, the Grail King's tender purse, and the search for meaning in a world of darkness and chaos.

Parzival was written in 2010 by Lukas Bärfuss, based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's mythic heroic epic from the Middle Ages. It shares nothing in common with Wagner's opera except that it is rooted in the same myth.

The director is Marie Nikazm Bakken, artistic director of Turteatern. Her production of Vilhelm Moberg's The Emigrants (2025) was described by critics as "brilliant madness", "a wonderful theatre orgy in misery", and "they burn down the church and piss on the ashes".