The Nazis' racial ideology led to the others being dehumanized and deprived of their human dignity. Based on Russian prisoners of war's construction of the Nordlandsbanen, Nordland Teater presents a performance about the mentality of violence.
The topics in SONA/ZONA are provoking and comprehensive and have local roots and inspiration.. It will give an insight into a dark part of the history of Mo i Rana and Nordland.

The prison camps between Mo i Rana and Fauske were established to utilize the labor of Russian prisoners of war. Surrounded by the same mountains we look up at today, the prisoners fought to persevere. Gross violence, biting cold and hunger took the lives of many prisoners of war who, according to the Geneva Convention, were entitled to protection. Hitler and the Nazis divided people into masters and subhumans and ranked them by race. This had enormous consequences for how the Germans behaved as occupiers and warriors. It was a desired outcome that the slaves would die. Whether it happened through starvation, mistreatment, outright murder or that they worked themselves to death was less important. They were consumables.
In SONA/ZONA, instructor Terje Skonseng Naudeer takes us to a place where we meet various figures. Both the destructive ones who take lives and the ones who survive against all odds.

About the background of the show
A music video by COIL, A photo book with pictures from Siberia, Nordlandsbanen.
This was the starting point for what has now become the theater performance Sona/Zona. In the Music Video we meet young boys and men imprisoned under extreme conditions in an Eastern European country. The book Zona shows us pictures from Siberian prisons that still exist to this day. And then our own close history: Nordlandsbanen. The suffering of Russian prisoners of war during the Second World War took place here with us. NSB (now Vy)'s collaboration with the German occupiers unfortunately falls right into the theme of this show: what happens when you put human dignity aside?

War Travels
The performance has a new premiere during Bodø2024 in connection with the capital of culture project War Travels, which seeks to dramatize the region's under-communicated and intimate war stories along the Nordlandsbanen.