top of page
Kristbjörg.jpeg

TYRFINGUR TYRFINGSSON

award winning playwright

Commercial of the Year

TYRFINGUR TYRFINGSSON

Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson's award winning plays have been featured at Festival d'Avignon, La Mousson d'été and during Island, terre de théâtre at Théâtre 13 in Paris, in Chicago, by Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw, in Rome and of course Iceland. Helgi Comes Apart was one of the selected plays by Bureau des Lecteurs de la Comédie-Française in 2021 and was chosen as The Play of the Year at Gríman, The Icelandic Performing Arts Awards in 2020. Seven Fairytales of Shame ran for a year at Þjóðleikhúsið, The National Theatre of Iceland. It received 12 nominations for Gríman, and won 6 of them, including Play of the Year.

 

Descendants, a TV series Tyrfingur co-wrote, was recently nominated for The Nordisk Film & TV fond Prize at the Gothenburg Film festival. Villibráð (Wild Game) just received nine Edda nominations including script of the year.

 

On Now:

The Żeromski Theatre in Poland recently produced Helgi Comes Apart, which is now running in Kielce Poland.

 

Tyrfingur’s newest play, Lúna (English title: The Beauty Show), premiered on the 19th of January 2024 at The Reykjavík City Theatre and is running.

KOM teatteri premiere of Seven Fairytales of Shame 11. September 2024

Coming up:

Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montréal premiers Helgi Comes Apart in April 2025

            Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson was born in 1987 and grew up in the small town of Kópavogur, Iceland, where all his plays take place. He studied at the Iceland University of the Arts, Janáček Academy in Brno, Czech Republic and Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

Tyrfingur's first play Grande was his graduation piece from the Art Academy in 2011, it earned him recognition in Reykjavík and a nomination for Gríman. Two years later Blue Eyes premiered at the Reykjavík City Theatre where Tyrfingur was made a resident playwright. A French translation of Blue Eyes, titled Bleus, was given a staged reading at the Avignon Festival in July 2018. Bleus was also performed at La Mousson d'été in France in August 2019.

 

The Potato Eaters received five-star reviews in Iceland, with critic Jakob S. Jónsson naming Tyrfingur as Iceland's preeminent playwright. The Potato Eaters was featured at Théâtre 13 in Paris during the festival on contemporary playwriting called Island, terre de théâtre in April 2019. In October 2020 The Potato Eaters was performed at the Panorama Roma festival in Rome. And in November 2020 the Drama Theatre of Warsaw (Teatr Dramatyczny) streamed The Potato Eaters on their website. De Nieuwe Toneelbibliotheek in Amsterdam published a Dutch translation of The Potato Eaters made by Vincent van der Valk, De Aardappeleters, in April 2021.
I mangiatori di patate was published by Nowhere Books in the summer of 2022.

 

Helgi Comes Apart had its premiere at The Reykjavík City Theatre in January 2020 to rave reviews: “Chekov is fine and Bulgakov is fine, but they do not raise the audience’s blood pressure. Tyrfingur‘s work does.“ Helgi Comes Apart was featured at the 2020 Nordic Spirit Festival in Chicago. A French translation of the play, Quand Helgi s'est tu, was published by Maison d'Europe et d'Orient in Paris in November 2021. It was one of the selected plays by Bureau des Lecteurs de la Comédie-Française the same year. The Dutch literary magazine Terras published a scene from Helgi Comes Apart in their spring 2021 edition. The play was programmed at Festival Regards Croisés, Troisième Bureau in Grenoble in France in May 2023.

Tyrfingur has received nine Gríman nominations and won the award three times, including Play of the Year for both Helgi Comes Apart and Seven Fairytales of Shame. ​In 2018 The Potato Eaters was nominated for the Cultural Awards. Seven Fairytales of Shame received 12 nominations and won 6 Gríma Awards at Gríman 2022. In February he received his first Edda nomination for the script for Villibráð. Descendants, a TV series Tyrfingur co-wrote was recently nominated for The Nordisk Film & TV fond Prize at the Gothenburg Film festival.

Tyrfingur’s plays have been translated to German, Polish, French, English, Italian and Dutch. 

Villibráð, Tyrfingur's first film script written with director Elsa María Jakobsdóttir and produced by ZikZak and Scanbox premiered in January 2023. It is the highest grossing Icelandic film in the history of film making in Iceland.

He is the co-creator and writer for the TV series Descendants, produced by Lumière in Belgium and Freyja Film Works, Iceland which premiered in November 2023.

Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson lives in Amsterdam.

Sjö ævintýri um skömm Finnland.jpeg

SEVEN FAIRYTALES OF SHAME




KOM teatteri, Helsinki

11.  SEPTEMBER 2024

helgi montreal.jpeg

HELGI 

THÉÂTRE DE QUAT'SOUS


MONTRÉAL 

HELGI

April 2025

ŻEROMSKI THEATER, POLAND

Helgi, póllandi.jpeg
Helgi póllandi 2.jpeg
4b5946ec-660d-45a2-82f2-d13da185ccf8_edited.jpg

HELGI, SYN JÓNA

HELGI, SYN JÓNA

HELGI, SYN JÓNA

LÚNA

Premiered 19. January 2024, The Reykjavík City Theatre

Lúna 2.jpeg

RIGHTS & REPRESENTATION

Nordic Drama Corner 

Performing Rights & Interest in Reading the Plays

T: +358 405706570

E: office@dramacorner.fi

www.dramacorner.fi

Henneman Agency

Amsteldijk 39

1074 HV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

T: +31(0)20 6943399

E: info@hennemanagency.nl

Maison Antoine Vitez:

https://www.maisonantoinevitez.com/fr/auteurs-traducteurs/tyrfingsson-1285.html

Thanks for submitting!

20170914-_DSC5360.jpg
_DSC6096.jpg

Interview with Performing Arts Iceland (English)

VILLIBRÁÐ

SEVEN FAIRYTALES OF SHAME

Opening Night: 1. April 2022

Þjóðleikhúsið

The National Theatre of Iceland 

Director: Stefán Jónsson

fokk ofbeldi.jpeg
Flórída.jpeg

SIX GRÍMA AWARDS

Seven Fairytales of Shame won six Gríma awards, including "Play of the Year" at the 2022 Gríma Awards Ceremony. 

helgithor-vefur-05.jpg

HELGI COMES APART

Helgi Comes Apart is a play about a couple of swindlers (a father and son) in the funeral business in the town of Kópavogur and how one day a Greek tragedy starts happening to them.

Director: Stefán Jónsson

The Reykjavík City Theatre

★★★★

(S.B.H. Morgunblaðið) 


"It is bold, haunting and well written  … once again Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson came and conquered.”

(J.S.J. Kjarninn) 

Play of the Year.jpg

THE PLAY OF THE YEAR






Helgi Comes Apart won "Play of the Year" at the Icelandic Theatre awards, Gríma, 16th of June 2020. 

THE POTATO EATERS

21. September 2017

Borgarleikhúsið

The Reykjavík City Theatre

Director: Ólafur Egill Egilsson

20170914-_DSC5360.jpg

JUST PUBLISHED IN THE NETHERLANDS

29. mars 2021






Vincent van der Valk's translation of The Potato Eaters has just been published by de Nieuwe Toneelbibliotheek.

De%2520Aardappeleters_edited_edited.jpg
20170913-_DSC4149_edited.jpg

"Hij voert zijn personages op als gewelddadig, meedogenloos en machteloos, pelt hun onsympathieke buitenkanten zorgvuldig af en toont daarin onmiskenbaar een broze kern. Op die manier toont Tyrfingsson zich een buitengewoon interessant toneelschrijver als het gaat om het ontleden van psychologische kwetsuren. Hij is bikkelhard naar zijn personages, maar geeft ze altijd een reliëf van mededogen mee. Het einde is hoopvol, zij het tegen beter weten in: als zijn personages zich uiteindelijk verzoenen met hun eigen en elkaars onvermogen, gaat de wederzijdse behoefte aan genegenheid die achter al het verzet verscholen ligt, door merg en been.

Tyrfingsson levert hiermee een indrukwekkend stuk af, waarmee hij laat zien in hoeverre geweld en pijn per saldo terug te voeren zijn op liefde en onbeholpenheid."

Sander Janssens, theatre critic NRC

QUAND HELGI S'EST TU/ HELGI COMES APART

"La comédie noire bascule dans un genre qui convoque la tragédie grecque, où le destin funeste des êtres humains se révèle par des présages, des visions. Elle prend une ampleur plus universelle : conscience et responsabilité sont questionnées – la confrontation avec nos lâchetés, avec notre passivité consumériste, à notre endormissement face au désastre écologique annoncé."

       Véronique Hotte, theatre critic 




Published by:

Éditions l'Espace d'un instant 

249376149_4570444286311130_529622439763820576_n.jpg
Kartölfur Pólska.jpg

Kartoflarze/ The Potato Eaters

Teatr Dramatyczny, Warsaw Poland
Photo K. Bąba

20160408-_D3A7781.jpg

COMMERCIAL OF THE YEAR

17. APRIL 2016

The Client shows up at an almost bankrupt advertising agency and asks the desperate Owner and his staff to make the commercial of the year. But for the commercial to work someone needs to die in it. 

Director: Bergur Þór Ingólfsson

The Reykjavík City Theatre.

Photos: Grímur Bjarnason

BLÁSKJÁR

14. FEBRUARY 2014

Blue Eyes is a tragicomedy about the love of patriarchy and cruelty, where three adult siblings escape into fairy tales, especially the one about Blue Eyes and the gypsies who kept him captive. 

Director: Vignir Rafn Valþórsson

The Reykjavík City Theatre

Photos: Íris Dögg Einars

Screen Shot 2018-06-26 at 19.41.11.png
_DSC5770.jpg

REVIEWS

Reviews:

★★★★★ 

http://www.dv.is/menning/2017/9/30/kartofluaeturnar/

★★★★1/2 

https://www.mbl.is/folk/frettir/2017/09/26/a_vigvelli_heimilisins_4/

"The family drama The Potato Eaters opened last September and is proving to be both a critical hit and his most popular to date. In the play he returns to the family fold exploring the devastating consequences of love. 

Tyrfingur’s plays deal with people on the fringes of society, gender politics and queerness of all kinds. Thematically, however, they speak to much larger societal ills yet they are somehow hopeful for the future. His writing style is sharp-witted, lyrical and tightly constructed." 

Review of the Potato Eaters

Sigríður Jónsdóttir, theatre critic at Fréttablaðið and contributing writer at The Theatre Times

Screen Shot 2018-04-20 at 10.13.56.png
20160408-_DSC8507.jpg

                                           ★★★★

                                    (M.G., Fréttablaðið)

"In Commercial of the Year the emphasis is not on story or a message and consequently not a storyline or development or characters that are copies of real people and the goal is not to write a play in the traditional meaning of the term. On the contrary. The goal is to construct a performance, a unified experience between actors and audience, where each and every one searches for a personal truth regarding the artistic references of the show. In this particular instance it is the consumer society and its ideology, i.e. the power of commercial persuasion.


Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson shows his power with a text that is both deeply thought out and cruel, intense, full of love or desire but also anger and misanthropy. This work has all of this and more."

From a review of Commercial of the Year

Dagný Kristjánsdóttir, professor of contemporary literature at The University of Iceland, hugras.is

Reviews for Bláskjár

"Wriggling with creativity…" 

Þorgerður E. Sigurðardóttir

Icelandic National Radio - RUV

★★★★

"Here Tyrfingur proves what theatre enthusiasts strongly suspected: He is an inventive

and imaginative playwright who knows how to use theatre and all its tricks to a very high degree."

Friðrika Benónýsdóttir,

Cultural editor at Fréttablaðið

Blaskjar.jpg

INTERVIEW

Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson talks to David Rofé-Sarfati from Tout la Culture

Blaskjar-4.jpg

RIGHTS & REPRESENTATION

Nordic Drama Corner 

Performing Rights & Interest in Reading the Plays

T: +358 405706570

E: office@dramacorner.fi

www.dramacorner.fi

Henneman Agency

Amsteldijk 39

1074 HV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

T: +31(0)20 6943399

E: info@hennemanagency.nl

Maison Antoine Vitez:

https://www.maisonantoinevitez.com/fr/auteurs-traducteurs/tyrfingsson-1285.html

Thanks for submitting!

_DSC6096_edited.jpg
Tyrfingur.SH.jpg
Amma+Tyrfingur_edited.jpg

THE POTATO EATERS

Opening Lines

Lísa               Why aren’t you wearing the shoes I gave you?

Brúna            They’re too small. Why is your voice so hoarse?

Lísa               Because no one talks to me. Do you know how much they cost?

Brúna            It doesn’t matter, they’re too small.

Lísa               64,000 króna

Brúna            They’re still too small.

Lísa               I doubt such shoes are beautiful in very large numbers. Won´t your feet keep growing and growing without shoes to hold them in?

Brúna            My feet haven’t gotten any bigger since puberty. But you were long gone before that happened.

Silence.

Lísa               Are you at work right now? Or do you put on a fleece sweater without getting paid for it?

Brúna            I’m on second shift.

Lísa               Those shoes…

Brúna            Mom, what are you going on about?

Lísa               No, it’s just… Your shoes...

Brúna            I didn’t come to Kópavogur for fashion tips!

Lísa               You're the only one who doesn't want my advice. 

bottom of page