This spring, the Icelandic Theatre Museum and the National Theatre of Iceland signed a collaboration agreement to publish the theatre's playbooks on the website timarit.is. The occasion is the 75th anniversary of the National Theatre of Iceland, which opened its doors on the first day of summer in 1950. Playbooks from the first eighteen years of the theatre have now found their way onto the website. The aim is to publish playbooks from the first fifty years of the theatre this year.

Highlight of the Month is the National Theatre's playbooks, and on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Women's Year, it is appropriate to highlight a play in which women played the main role, in fact all the roles, the play was translated by a woman and the playbook was also edited by the same woman.

The play Læðurnar (The Cats) by the Finnish author Walentin Chorell premiered at the National Theatre of Iceland on January 16, 1964, directed by Baldvin Halldórsson with a set designed by Gunnar Bjarnason. The play was translated by Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who celebrated her 95th birthday earlier this year, and she also edited the play's program. She also writes two columns discussing the Finnish playwright and Finnish theatre.

Alþýðublaðið describes The Cats in the following way in an article published on January 8, 1964: "It can be said that this is a 'women's play' because only women appear in the play" and on the same day the following headline appeared in Þjóðviljinn: "No man – but eleven women on stage". The play takes place "in the autumn in a women's cafeteria in a spinning mill" when the female workers decide to stop work to oust the foreman, Marta Bartsche, from her job. But not everything is as it seems ...

The roles were played by Nína Sveinsdóttir, Margrét Guðmundsdóttir, Helga Valtýsdóttir, Guðbjörg Þorbjarnardóttir, Bryndís Pétursdóttir, Kristbjörg Kjeld, Þóra Friðriksdóttir, Bríet Héðinsdóttir, Jóhanna Norðfjörð, Oktavía Stefánsdóttir and Brynja Benediktsdóttir.

Here you can see the playbook for the play Læðurnar (The Cats) on timarit.is