Augun mín og augun þín

A work about love, loss and the journey through grief, based on the stories of three well-known women poets.

At the dawn of the 19th century, three young poets from the north of Iceland each suffered great heartbreak and responded in very different ways: Guðný frá Klömbrum, Vatnsenda-Rósa and Agnes Magnúsdóttir.

Guðný’s husband could not bear her intelligence and left her. She was overcome by grief and died within a year. Agnes was betrayed by her lover and filled with such rage that she killed him, paying for it with her own life. Rósa loses her first love to another woman but works her way through the grief, regains her strength, educates herself, travels and finally finds love again.

Life is life, and no one gets through it unscathed – but what is within our control?

The idea for the piece is María Ellingsen’s, and she has developed it further with Kevin Kuhlke and Snorri Freyr Hilmarsson. One version was given a staged reading at New York University Abu Dhabi, another at Reykjavík City Theatre, and a third was fully staged at the NYU student theatre in New York. María is now working on a final version to be performed in Iceland.