And Then Comes the Chorus

In the high-octane essay And Then Comes the Chorus, Jon Refsdal Moe pursues the imagination of theatre opened up by Alfred Jarry when he slipped an 'r' into a profanity as he exclaimed 'Merdre!' on stage. 'What matters is that the words became flesh and that this flesh exploded right in the world's face. What matters is that literature stood up at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre on December 10, 1896 and cried FUCK! and all hell broke loose and the world has never been the same since.'

Jon Refsdal Moe is a writer and dramaturg from Oslo. He has written two novels, one doctoral dissertation, several essays and a lot of criticism. He was artistic director of Black Box teater in Oslo from 2009 to 2016 and is now professor of dramaturgy at Stockholm University of the Arts.

Varamo Press is an artist-run, independent publishing house founded in 2018 by Mette Edvardsen and Jeroen Peeters. It takes inspiration from César Aira's character Varamo, a clerk whose chance encounter with a trio of publishers in a bar inspires an unlikely collaboration that yields a masterpiece of experimental literature.

In 2022 Varamo Press launched the series Gestures, small format books that come with a grey cover and a unified design. The series experiments with the essay genre and provides a platform for shorter texts we'd like to make available for wider readership and unexpected encounters. Gestures include commissioned essays as well as translations, reformulations and yet other alternative editions of existing material.