About Halldóra
Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir is an Icelandic actress and theater director with a broad range from drama to comedy. She started out as a saxophone player and singer in a pop-group named Risaeðlan/Reptile and thought music would be her path. But acting became her playground where it is all about telling stories where people can mirror their own experiences. Halldóra graduated form the Icelandic Theater Academy in 1995 and has been a leading actor at the City Theater in Reykjavík ever since, as well as working extensively in film and television. She has been awarded and honoured for her work both in Iceland and internationally.
"A theatre performance is your journey, dear audience. Your reactions are your life, if you are touched it is because you have connected to your own life. The role of those of us who stand on the stage is to go as close to ourselves as we possible can, so that you are granted an opportunity to get closer to yourselves. The mirror neurons of the audience can reach as far as the depth of the performance. Through a long process of rehearsing and creating, theatre makers investigate human beings, society and stories, and in the span of an evening, the audience are given the chance to live this investigation and this journey. A Russian director once taught me that nobody comes to the theatre to look at my everyday self, I don‘t have permission to get up on stage as my everyday self. On stage, I am a conduit for a HIGHER me. And this HIGHER me is US, a collective consciousness. On stage, we find a channel for our mutual knowledge of life and existence, we drag it up to the surface, bringing out what we knew, but often didn‘t know that we knew. Ultimately, what is most important is not what the story sounds like – what matters is what is roused. And we all need to ask ourselves: do I want to be roused?
Dear audience, each of your stories is unique. May the theatre go so close to itself tonight that you get close to yourselves and your inner magic."
- Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir's message on World Theater Day 2015