05.11.2019

TINFO e-News | Theatre News from Finland | Autumn 2019

TINFO ENCOUNTERS

  • What the arts can do
    Satu Herrala talks art and activism, and how a single work of art can have the power to do away with fear.
  • Feeling for facts
    Performance art is tearing open the wounds of climate change and colonialism, says festival director Leena Kela.
  • Towards sustainable networking
    Three quick questions for Katja Sonnemann, freelance producer, mentor and lecturer.
  • Helsinki as a centre?
    Barbara van Lindt, General and Artistic Coordinator of Kaaitheater in Brussels has followed the Finnish performance scene for 15 years.

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What the arts can do

“I didn’t realise something like this was even possible. Now I do.” It’s insights like this and others like it, made possible through art, that drive curator Satu Herrala’s work both on the international scene and as one of the two-strong leadership team heading up Helsinki’s Baltic Circle theatre festival. The PhD thesis she is in the process of writing at the city’s Aalto University on the same topic, the ability of art to make the impossible possible, is nearing completion.

Herrala was appointed artistic director at Baltic Circle in 2015, and this autumn’s festival marks the end of her tenure there. Before her Baltic Circle years, she worked on Make Arts Policy, a collaboration with Eva Neklyaeva, Terike Haapoja and Dana Yahalom, which culminated in the Make Arts Policy Summit in 2014.

I invited Satu Herrala to talk about the arts and the arts’ relationship with activism and to share some highlights from her upcoming thesis.

I’ve realised that activism and influence are always connected to an awareness of the responsibility they entail, and there is an inextricable link to sustainability and inclusion, too. When we experience art, the incomprehensible becomes comprehensible.
 

Baltic Circle is incredibly well connected internationally. I’d be interested to hear whether you’ve come across any policies/structures/systems around the world that you feel really support and sustain the arts, specifically in terms of content? How do you see the relationship between social activism and the arts, and can you give any gold standard examples of it, whether they’re practical case studies or more utopian visions?

I’ve not been myself, but I like the Oslo Biennale concept. The festival runs over five years, everything takes place in the public realm and it’s completely free. You really get this sense that it’s not been set up to cater for the art market, the approach is very much concept and ideas driven, and everything’s done with the local art scene and local residents in mind.

I also like to keep an eye on the Next Wave festival in Melbourne, and I follow many of the emerging artists that have taken part in their mentoring programme. What all these artists have in common is their ability to create artworks that are both relevant and idiosyncratic, and they are continually pursuing new forms of expression. I’ve been incredibly impressed with the strong and generous collegial spirit that defines their practice. That may well be down to the lab-style working processes they use, which see the emerging artists working together for a period of two years. Everyone participating in the programme is also committed to decolonisation and promoting accessibility through their practice.

It can be difficult sometimes to know where art ends and activism begins.

The relationship between social activism and the arts is characterised by its paradoxical nature and remains under constant renegotiation. On the one hand, art can provide a valuable platform for addressing social issues or lending visibility to injustices by channelling, in an activist manner, the resources the sector has at its disposal and the media exposure it commands. It can be difficult sometimes to know where art ends and activism begins.

On the other hand, art can create a sense of agency that will ultimately deliver change. This can happen when new spaces are created that generate new information in a collective way or in a way that is empowering for people and allows them to discover new potential within themselves and others. It goes without saying that art is never an island, that it’s always bound to its own specific social context, but at times it does feel like the debate can feel a bit like a talking shop for industry insiders. Art can easily be appropriated as a tool for populist rhetoric, too; in Finland, for example, the far-right Finns Party like to talk about what they have termed “postmodern pseudo-art”.

At its best, art is located somewhere between the unknown and the emergent and has the power to catch both the viewer and the artist themselves by surprise. “I didn’t realise this was possible. But now I do,” was my response to my most important and powerful encounter with art to date.

Forensic Architecture brings together architects, artists, scientists, technology experts, journalists and lawyers to create both artistic and academic output that is activist in nature. Though their work is frequently exhibited in several different contexts, including museums, theatres, festivals and biennales, it is media outlets and courtrooms that are Forensic Architecture’s most important platforms. The group works together to produce evidence, and they have successfully lent their support to a number of legal cases.
 

 “Would you evoke lifeforms yet unknown? // Would you welcome what you cannot comprehend? // Would you watch gender disappear like a cloud?”

These are some of the questions you posed in the Curator’s Welcome to this year’s Baltic Circle festival. In what way can the festival programme help us face the unknown or understand something we fear or confront something we would rather avoid?

With the festival, we’re trying to create safe spaces for people to explore the unfamiliar and the unknown. Consent matters to us, and we seek it and negotiate it in various different ways. Some of our performances are designed as a sort of hop-on-hop-off events. And if you don’t feel safe, you’re of course welcome to leave any of our performances at any time. We always make sure that performances involving audience participation are clearly flagged as well. There are various degrees of participation, and it’s up to every audience member/participant to decide what’s right for them.

if you don’t feel safe, you’re of course welcome to leave any of our performances at any time.

I hope that the 2019 Baltic Circle festival performances and events will help to make the incomprehensible understandable. In Francesca Grilli’s Sparks, 9–12-year-old children will be doing one-on-one palm readings with adults in the audience to predict their lives and futures.
 

“What is possible in art, that is not possible otherwise?”, the title of your thesis seems to point to the very essence of all artistic endeavour. And in an article on the Goethe Institut website you write about what art is and is not capable of*.  What sort of ideas and observations can we expect from your thesis?

My thesis looks at the capacity arts and cultural events have to generate political agency. I’ve chosen to approach my topic through a series of case studies, including the Make Arts Policy Summit and Vuostta¨ álbmogat (First Nations), a programme of works from 2017 curated by Pauliina Feodoroff, which were both organised as part of the Baltic Circle festival.

I’m currently focused on a third case study that relates to the world’s largest pulp mill which the Finnish paper-making giant UPM is building in Paso de Los Toros in Uruguay. I’ve joined forces with Uruguayan artist Tamara Cubas and Jussi Lehtonen, a Finnish academic, theatre director and actor to ask how art can create contexts in which the cultural and social impacts of neo-colonialism, which often remain disguised on the global economic stage, can be made visible.
 


TINFO / Sari Havukainen 24 October 2019

*“I believe one of the most important things art can do is to make visible what is hidden in our society and to give shape to new potential and to change. I’m not suggesting that art in and of itself has the power to change our political reality, but what it can do is help raise awareness and pave the way towards the sort of fundamental shifts in thinking that ultimately will shape the very structures that our societies are built on; the way we educate people, the way our justice system operates, the way we run our economies and the way we govern our lives.”

Feeling for facts

Finland’s third city Turku is home to a thriving international performance art scene. This year’s New Performance Turku Festival focused on new possible futures. The festival’s artistic director, performance artist Leena Kela, says it’s vital we process our emotions around climate change and colonialism and seek words to describe our experience.

“From the outset, we decided we’d approach climate change as a material circumstance rather than as an abstract theme. It felt important to really get to grips with the landscape that we find ourselves in right now. If we’re to think about our possible futures then we really need to address the emotions we’re feeling about the present moment first.”

My performance artwork is intended as a sort of wake-up call

“Addressing these emotions is not about taking a sticking plaster approach to the ecological crisis we face. In fact, what we’re doing is ripping that wound right open and looking straight at it without mollycoddling or talking down to the audience in any way. The programme makes room for uncertainty and confusion and we’re here to confront it, as awkward and difficult as that may be.”
  

Your own production, Space Here We Come, is based on Expedition New Earth, a documentary Stephen Hawking made for the BBC in 2016. In his interview, Hawking talks about how our planet and humankind face an increasingly uncertain future. He says we only have another 100 years left on Planet Earth and after that we will need to find a new planet if we are to survive.

“Our deadline is fast approaching, and the tipping point is drawing ever nearer, but we just don’t see it. I decided to start with a space blanket flag motif, because this isn’t about any one country or nation anymore, the problems affect us all. I started listening to Hawking, and I came across the clip I’ve used in the piece. For him, climate change is just one of the threats facing humankind, alongside asteroids, nuclear war and AI.

My performance artwork is intended as a sort of wake-up call, I’ve got the quote from Hawking playing on a loop. It’s an opportunity for people to really weigh up this notion that upping and leaving is an option for us, to reflect on this utopian idea that we can resolve things by dispatching a delegation of our fellow humans into space. When you’re a theoretical physicist and cosmologist you obviously see the universe from a completely different perspective. For us human beings, leaving the Earth is a dystopian prospect, whereas for Planet Earth it would be salvation.”

“It’s an opportunity for us to briefly share in the melancholy feeling this greatest of all departures creates.”
 

Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s performance art and Leyya Mona Tawil’s character Lime Rickey International invite us to face up to the consequences of colonialism. Both artists are women, but their material realities are very different. How do you see the role of performance art in deconstructing the colonial experience?

“I sensed that there was a dialogue and a real kinship happening between these two works. Throughout her career, Natalie has investigated colonialism and exposed and subjected her body to that experience without the sort of masochism that tends to define body art and without summoning the gaze of others as a witness to the process. This about a pain that’s shared, communal.

Nathalie is from Gabon and weaves the sounds of parrots into her work to invoke the history of her country, which was also colonised by the Germans. The parrots now parrot the words and phrases used by German soldiers stationed there. Nature continues to bear witness to our history through the decades, even giving expression to it through human language.”

“Leyya’s character Lime represents a series of fragmented and dislocated futures. Her piece features characters that briefly appear familiar to us just as they again disappear from our view. The noise music that’s used to create the production’s soundscape drives the fragmentation. A Syrian-Palestinian artist, she has spent her entire life in the United States but is unable to long for her homelands as they have been either stolen or destroyed. The futures she conjures up are unattainable, fragmented and broken.

 

Leena Kela was interviewed by Hanna Helavuori (24 Oct, 2019)

Towards sustainable networking

Katja Sonnemann has agreed to be one of the mentors on TINFO Theatre Info Finland's MOTI programme. Running over three years, the programme aims to generate new models of artistic development to attract new theatre audiences and promote longer production life cycles.

In October 2019, TINFO got in touch with Katja to ask her three quick questions.
 

What’s it like working with Finnish artists/practitioners? 

It was a very good experience working with Oblivia. I cannot compare a lot to many other countries as I mostly work with German artists but in general I would say the main questions and concerns are not so different for artists in other European countries. Perhaps the question of an international network is more urgent in Finland.

Now that you’ve seen your mentees at work and may even have had the chance to explore the Finnish performing arts scene more widely, could you share some of your thoughts and observations with us?

I have the impression that there is a great desire for international networking – which was also the main focus of our work together – but that from a Finnish perspective it may present a greater challenge than for fellow artists in other European countries. The reasons for this are certainly numerous and I can only grasp some of them. But I suppose that on the one hand the geographical location and on the other hand the high costs of labour and living present a challenge for international work.

Finnish theatre is not very present internationally, perhaps it would be necessary to promote a greater international visibility of Finnish theatre artists. Moreover, longer-term structural support of companies would be helpful for sustainable networking.
 

When you’re acting as a mentor, you of course always tailor your approach to the needs of each individual mentee/artist. What would you say are the three most important skills or tools for a mentor working in the performing arts sector?

In my understanding, the most important thing is curiosity. I consider listening and trying to understand to be the decisive qualities of a mentor. Asking questions that challenge the mentee's perspective, methods that make it possible to trace his or her basic values and drives for artistic work are important. In doing so, a mentor can also offer his or her own experiences and thus set new impulses.

 

***

Katja Sonnemann is a freelance producer, mentor, consultant and lecturer.

She studied Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen and worked as head of artistic planning at Schaubühne and at Gorki Theater, was head of artistic production at Theater der Welt 2015 in Stuttgart and freelance producer with Rimini Protokoll.

From 2012 to 2017 she was company manager of andcompany&Co. and since 2013 she is part of the agency Wilson*Borles Arts Management. In 2017, she initiated and conceived the AKADEMIE for Performing Arts Producers of the Alliance of International Production Houses which was implemented for the first time in 2018.

Helsinki as a centre?

Curator and artistic director Barbara Van Lindt answered to TINFO’s question about working with the practitioners on performing arts as she has agreed to be one of the mentors on MOTI programme. Three quick questions:

What’s it like working with Finnish artists/practitioners?

To be honest, their Finnishness is a non-issue in my work relation with Juha (Valkeapää) and Maija (Hirvanen). If I should think of a relevant label, I would use ‘mid career’ and ‘performance’.

Mid-career

The label ‘mature’ seems to point at the beginning of the end, just before the rotting, the decomposition will take over. ‘Established’ is a label much used in marketing: it is meant to suggest that a certain quality or content can be guaranteed. ‘Mid-career’ is more neutral, descriptive and yet it is also open. I have worked a lot with Master students the past years, artists who, after a first phase as professionals want to dive into research and questioning, while being part of a peer group.

Juha and Maija have so much experience as makers and performers, it feels like they have a strong base to start from. Their questioning is not so much existential as in “am I good enough to be an artist?”, rather they allow each other to go deep, to tackle fundamentals in their practice with trust and playfulness. This professional attitude is what I recognise as mid-career.

...Performance (see next question)
 

Now that you’ve seen your mentees at work and may even have had the chance to explore the Finnish performing arts scene more widely, could you share some of your thoughts and observations with us?

I realize that since 15 years I have followed the Finnish performance scene on a more or less regular basis. The Anti Festival in Kuopio, several editions of Baltic Circle with both Eva Neklyaeva and Satu Herrala, Kiasma and its performance program. From a distance I was in awe following the Mad House project unfold from a strong alliance between artists like Juha Valkeapää and Annika Tudeer from Oblivia. Sonja Jokiniemi was a student at DAS (DasArts).

Maija once came to interview me while I was at the helm of DasArts. She was busy with an exploration of the notion of ‘the international’ in cultural policy (if I remember well). I was bothered by the focus on Brussels-Amsterdam-Berlin as the centre and the reference point and asked her as a thought experiment: consider Helsinki as the centre, what would it be the centre of?

Attending Finnish performance events has always generated new perspectives on life, art and politics.

The Finnish performance work felt familiar enough to engage with it, operating in a similar realm where representation is left behind, where there is an appetite for discourse, where practices from visual arts infuse the black box theatre maker.

I guess I was always attracted to those artists who worked with a sense of dry humour, playfulness, dedication and boldness. Less identified as urban and cosmopolitan, the Finnish performance scene seemed prone to connect with cultural traditions and nature, while also charging it politically. Symposium in a sauna. A program co-curated with Sami artist and activist. A sex positivity festival. Maija’s project touring the city in a van.

To me, attending Finnish performance events has always generated new perspectives on life, art and politics.
 

When you’re acting as a mentor, you of course always tailor your approach to the needs of each individual mentee/artist. What would you say are the three most important skills or tools for a mentor working in the performing arts sector?

You don’t – well I certainly don’t – just state “from now on I am a mentor”. It is a role that others imagine you could take on. In that role, I find it important to be available, to listen and observe. Another thing that is hardly a skill one can train, is to have an open channel to experiences of the past, a reservoir of thoughts, observations and insights – also from outside of the arts! - that might be relevant to share in new situations.

Avoiding to make absolute statements, allowing yourself to be vulnerable while not holding back. There, some feedback tools can come in handy. 

 

***

Barbara Van Lindt was the artistic director of STUK (Leuven), Gasthuis (Amsterdam), wp Zimmer (Antwerp), and she worked as curator for the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels before becoming the managing director of DasArts (now DAS Theatre) in 2009, an Amsterdam-based Master’s programme for theatre makers and curators. Since september 2019 she started, in a duo Agnès Quackels, as General and Artistic Coordinator of Kaaitheater in Brussels.

THEATRE NEWS

Give me back my voice!

E.L. Karhu’s new commission for Schauspiel Leipzig gives voice to the voiceless Eriopis who has escaped from her murderous mother to tell her story. But whose words is it we hear?

It’s not every day that a foreign theatre commissions a Finnish playwright to write a play. It’s even more unusual for the writer’s agent to provide a professional editor and reader to comment on the text as it takes shape. And it’s virtually unheard of for the author and translator to work seamlessly together during the creative process. But that is precisely what has happened with E.L. Karhu’s Eriopis – Medea’s daughter survives to tell all (Eriopis – Medeas überlebende Tochter erzählt alles).

“It tells the story of Eriopis, Medea’s daughter who survived, and it’s about empathy and exploitation in the tabloid and true crime media,” the playwright explains.

Karhu has written multiple versions of the play, which is due to open in Leipzig on 6 March 2020. Translator Stefan Moster translated three of them into German to provide the team access to the text and to allow the text to be developed further. Rohwohlt Theaterverlag represents E.L. Karhu in the German-speaking world but also provided editorial support and commentary on the play as it was being written:

”What was special about this process was that my agent, the dramaturge Henrieke Beuthner from Rowohlt commented on two of my earlier versions, much like an editor would,” E.L. Karhu explains.

Two dramaturges are involved in the production, Katja Herlemann from Germany and Pipsa Lonka, Karhu’s fellow author from Finland. As Karhu writes in Finnish, unfinished drafts were translated into German in a bid to mimic a more conventional commissioning process. The cost of the translations was covered by Schauspiel Leipzig.

The play is now complete and has been delivered to the Schauspiel Leipzig team. Georg Mellert is the dramaturge working on the play’s international premiere:

“In my view, Eriopis pushes dramatic language to its limits insofar as the main character is presented as not speaking; the process of re-appropriating her language and Eriopis’s self-empowerment are the central thematic aspects of the text.” 
 
In Eriopis, the main part of the text is assigned to a speaking character who addresses Eriopis in the second person, thus revealing her story. This inverts the classical dramatic situation in an interesting way: a tension is created between the powerful speaker and the mostly silent protagonist. 
 

Rehearsals are due to begin in January, but Georg Mellert was happy to provide a sneak peek of what’s to come:

“There will be lots of music. You will be seeing an opera singer and a composer playing live music on stage. We want to convey a sense of this other language, the language of music, that allows Eriopis to express herself even though she is otherwise silent.”

In the spring, E.L. Karhu has been invited to appear at Schauspiel Leipzig’s Autorin an der Bar meet-the-author event which will coincide with a public rehearsal or performance of her play.

Like Princess Hamlet before it, Eriopis will be performed on the theatre’s Diskothek stage, directed by Anna-Sophie Mahler. Prinzessin Hamlet, too, was translated by Stefan Moster and dramaturge Katja Herlemann played a key role in bringing the text to the theatre. Directed by Lucia Bihler, the production opened in December 2017, less than a year after the play had premiered at Helsinki’s Q-teatteri.

E.L. Karhu’s (previously Emilia Pöyhönen) Breadline Ballad (2008) was turned into a touring production by the French La Metonymie ensemble, translated and directed by Tiina Kaartama and appeared at Munich’s Blaue Maus theatre in 2018, translated by Katja von der Ropp.

 

TINFO / Sari Havukainen, 4 November 2019

Finnish political theatre in Munich

A new production of Okko Leo’s 2006 play The Pitch (Kenttä / Das Feld) is set to open at the Dasvinzenz theatre in Munich on 12 December 2019. The German translation is by Taina Sivonen. Dasvinzenz, previously known as the Blaue Maus, staged E.L. Karhu’s Breadline Ballad (translated by Katja von der Ropp) in 2018.

The Pitch will be brought to the stage by Dasvinzenz artistic director Robert Spitzer, who also directed the Breadline Ballad. Both Finnish plays were originally chosen for the theatre’s programme by dramaturge Barbara Kastner. In an earlier interview with TINFO, Kastner said she had been on the look-out for a political play that would be inventive both in terms of its language and structure. It seems the theatre has now discovered the incisive political commentary they were looking for in Finland.
 

Süddeutche Zeitung’s theatre critic Egbert Toll praised the Breadline Ballad (review, 13 February 2018), noting that it had been an excellent choice by a small theatre keen to ensure its continued survival. Due to go on stage in Munich in December, Okko Leo’s The Pitch steps beyond the main characters Antero and Esa to create an existential portrayal of oppression that transcends the individual, the playwright’s dialogue conjuring up a series of parallel extraneous realities.

Das Feld was previously performed in Germany as a rehearsed drama at Stuttgart’s Theater am Olgaeck in 2014 and earlier at the Ballhaus Ost in Berlin directed by the Mikko Roiha with German surtitles.

A grant for the German translation was provided by TINFO Theatre Info Finland, with Taina Sivonen’s translation proofread by Martina Marti. Okko Leo is represented by Agency North.

In Finland, the Pitch was staged by Linnateatteri in 2011 and it toured several theatres in Finland as a Vapaa Teatteri production, including Korjaamo theatre in Helsinki.

 

TINFO / Sari Havukainen, 1 November 2019

Ruska Ensemble’s Arctic Odyssey to be performed in Hong Kong  

Hong Kong’s World Cultures festival has extended an invitation to Finnish theatre group Ruska Ensemble to appear at this year’s event which takes its theme from the Nordic countries. Ruska Ensemble are set to perform their Arctic Odyssey documentary theatre play, a collaboration between the National Theatres of Finland and Greenland, on 9–10 October.

The festival organisers have also commissioned Ruska Ensemble to deliver a lecture on international creative partnerships and a workshop on the relationship between nature and creativity.

The production has previously visited Greenland’s capital, Nuuk. Kokkola-based Ruska Ensemble is currently working on part three of its Arctic trilogy. The first part, Áillohas – the Son of the Sun, premiered in 2014.

Additional information:

Ruska Ensemble / Hinriikka Lindqvist, ruskaensemble(a)gmail.com, +358 (0)40 570 65 70

 

For credits, please see

Death at Work to appear in Moscow
 

Death at Work (Kuolema työssä) premiered at the Baltic Circle festival in 2018 and is now set to go on stage in Moscow as part of the Brusfest documentary theatre festival. The performers are all professionals who encounter death as part of their day-to-day work and include a gravedigger and sacristan, pastor, organist and a professional actor who also works at a funeral director’s and as a sacristan. The production is directed by Semion Aleksandrovsky with set design by Xenia Peretruhina. The script was created in collaboration with the performers.

“In our culture, death and funerals are taboo subjects. We’d prefer not to talk about them or ask about them. Ultimately, our attitudes towards death can teach us something really important about the changes taking place in our society,” Semion Aleksandrovsky says.

The play will appear in Moscow on 8 November 2019. It will be performed in Finnish with simultaneous interpretation into Russian by Anna Voronkova.

This year’s inaugural Brusfest festival is organised in memory of Teatr Praktika’s artistic director, Dmitriy Brusnikin. Teatr Praktika is known for its documentary theatre productions.

Death at Work is a joint production between Baltic Circle and the St Petersburg-based Pop Up Teatr. It has received funding through Theatre Info Finland’s (TINFO) NOKKA project. The visit to Moscow will be organised as part of the Finnish and Russian TAKO project.

 

(TINFO 23.10.2019)

For credits and additional information, please see

St Petersburg festival taking action 

Eve’s Ribs is a cultural festival encompassing art, activism and psychology. Now in its fourth year, the festival will be taking place in St Petersburg in November. Organised with Finnish and Russian support, the programme features theatre productions, performance art and concerts performed by artists from across Finland and Russia. The week-long festival will also encompass lectures and discussion events on a host of topics, including domestic violence faced by disabled women, as well as film screenings and feminist stand-up comedy.

“We will use every means at our disposal to draw attention to the violence and discrimination women face,” explained Anita Parri, a producer at Eve’s Ribs.

The art and other events and activities featured at the festival have all been chosen for their potential to shape public opinion on gender and violence. The creative team believe collaboration and international networking are needed if they are to have a real impact:

“It’s thanks to the ongoing collaboration between Russian and Finnish feminists and human rights activists that our efforts are finally gaining attention.”

Helsinki-based Nopean Toiminnan Naiset has been invited to appear at Eve’s Ribs, where they will perform their 10 Scenes about Sexual Violence on the festival’s opening day, 10 November 2019. Anita Parri has translated the script from Finnish into Russian.

The visit will be supported by Theatre Info Finland’s (TINFO) Finnish-Russian TAKO project. Last year, Amanda Palo and Olga Palo’s Kilari, an account of rape and sexual violence, appeared at the festival. It was translated into Russian by Anna Sidorova.

 

(TINFO 29 October 2019)

Theatre directors gather to celebrate the Big D

Finnish National Theatre’s Touring Stage production of Crime and Punishment has been invited to appear at the Dostoyevsky Festival in Veliky Novgorod on the author’s birthday, 11 November. Director Johanna Freundlich and colleagues Jari Juutinen, Joel Lehtonen, Samuli Reunanen, Tuomo Rämö and Jussi Sorjanen will be making the most of opportunities to network with Russian theatre makers who share their fascination with Dostoyevsky.

“What I’m particularly looking forward to is feedback from our Russian audiences, meetings between Finnish and local theatre directors and having the chance to really immerse myself in Dostoyevsky’s works,” Johanna Freundlich said.

The Finnish-Russian gathering is taking place in anticipation of the 200th anniversary of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s death, in 2021. The author lived in Veliky Novgorod, an ancient city in western Russia that is now home to a Dostoyevsky museum, theatre and festival.

the characters became almost like friends to me

Dostoyevsky Festival’s artistic directors visited Helsinki in 2018. During their stay, they saw several plays, including the National Theatre’s Crime and Punishment. With direction, dramatisation and visuals by Johanna Freundlich, the production went on a tour of Finnish prisons and residential care facilities. The voices of young residents from one of these facilities now feature on the production’s soundtrack. The director says her relationship with the text reached new depths during the creative process:

“Of all the works written by Dostoyevsky, I have the closest relationship with this one. It’s definitely one my top 10 novels of all time. I spent more than a year writing the script, and the characters became almost like friends to me – even the ones I had to cull and now only get a name drop in the play.”

The script has been translated into Russian by Armen Igitian, with Antti Lang, Matti Onnismaa and Elina Reinikka appearing on stage. The visit is supported by Finland’s Consulate General in St Petersburg and TAKO, Theatre Info Finland’s (TINFO) Finnish-Russian project
 

TINFO / Sari Havukainen, 30 Oct 2019

EVENTS

How do we work together (with conflict). Lecture and encounters | 7-10 Nov 2019, Helsinki

Lecture and encounters in Helsinki November 7th -10th hold and facilitated by llse Ghekiere

How do we work together is an open invitation to the performing arts field, to speak about working conditions in an increasingly scattered field where hierarchies shift and people have to fill in different positions.  
 
How to think together about better working conditions within a field suffering from precarious working conditions? How to create a respectful and productive environment even when time, budget, rehearsals capacities and tour dates are limited? How do we voice and react towards possible incidents of abuse of power within productions? How do we develop tools together?

How do we work together proposes a space to reflect collectively on the obstacles and challenges that might occur during rehearsal processes. We’d like to think around notions of fragilities, responsibilities, care, communication and transparency, and work towards finding tools that may lead to more egalitarian ways of working.  
 
How can we know to which kind of process are we signing up for? What are the expectations in a working process towards the others? What are the different responsibilities one has (as choreographer/director or dancer/performer) towards each other, the group and oneself?

Lecture Thursday 7.11. at 18h

Theatre Academy, Auditorio 1 (Haapaniemenkatu 6)

Focus group encounters:

Performers/actors, Friday 8.11. 13h-15h | Kiasma Seminar Room (Mannerheiminaukio 2)
Makers/ persons in charge, Saturday 9.11. 11h-13h | Mad House (Työpajankatu 2a, Teurastamo, building nr 4)
Everybody, Sunday 10.11. 11h-13h | Eskus (Kaasutehtaankatu 1/33, Suvilahti,  Puhdistamo building nr 6, 2nd floor)

The encounters are open for everybody to participate. You do not need to sign up or apply. Looking forward meeting and sharing with you.

llse Ghekiere, a performer, writer and activist. She studied dance at the Conservatory of Antwerp and art history at The Free University of Brussels. In 2017 she received a grant from the Flemish government to research sexism in the Belgian dance scene. Since the publication of her article #Wetoo: What Dancers Talk About When They Talk About Sexism in the fall of 2017, Ghekiere has continued to work with projects related to issues around abuse of power in the arts.  
 
Ghekiere is also the initiator of ENGAGEMENT, an artist-led movement tackling sexual harassment, sexism and power abuse in the Belgian arts field. Ghekiere lives and works in Oslo and Brussels.

llse Ghekieres visit in Helsinki, the lecture and encounters are arranged with the support and in collaboration with: Arts Management Helsinki, Baltic Circle, Eskus, Kiasma Theatre, Mad House, Moving in November, Theatre Academy/University of the Arts Helsinki, TINFO - Theatre Info Finland, Union of Dance and Circus Artists Finland/ Teme and Zodiak - Center for New Dance

All the best,
Kerstin Schroth and Isabel Gonzalez

kerstin (a) liikkeellamarraskussa.fi
Tel. +33 613886073

Isabel (a) liikkeellamarraskuussa.fi
Tel. +358 407627377

Encounters in Art III 2019 | 28-30 Nov 2019, Joensuu

Encounters in Art III – Art and the Body in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts

Joensuu, 28–30 November 2019
Joensuu City Theatre, Great Stage / Art Center Ahjo

We wish you warmly welcome to the third national Encounters in Art seminar (suomenkielinen ohjelma täällä). Our theme this year is the body in multilingual and multicultural contexts, especially community arts and language education. Art as a line on paper, the movement of dance, or the rhythm of music is the product of embodied action. It gives an opportunity to deal with subjective feelings, observations and sensations free from the rules of rational thinking and reflective knowledge. At its best, art offers new ways of connecting with the self, with other people and the world.

Our invited speakers on Friday are professor of dance pedagogy and leader of the Arts@School research group of the ArtsEqual project Eeva Anttila from the University of the Arts Helsinki, and leader of the project Crossing Borders, professor of applied linguistics Sari Pöyhönen from the University of Jyväskylä. On Saturday, the program continues with talks, interactive posters and workshops by scholars and artists.

The seminar will be conducted bilingually in Finnish and English. It is open to the public and aimed especially for community artists, researchers, and actors in the arts, culture, wellbeing and education in the public and third sectors. Please register for the seminar by filling in the form below!

Program

Panel discussion about art, artists and disability | 11 Dec 2019, Helsinki

Time: Wednesday 11.12. at 15.00-16.30

Place: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Seminaari room, 1st floor. Address: Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki.

We will discuss for example about the following topics:

How do art zines, disability and feminism connect to each other? What are the opportunities for disabled or Deaf people to become artists or work as artists? How could art residencies be made accessible for all? 

The panelists are dancer, performer and writer Maija Karhunen, and Jemina Lindholm, Taru Perälä and Outi Salonlahti, who have studied the intersection of arts and disability in their recent theses. The discussion is moderated by Sanni Purhonen, who is Communications Officer of The Threshold Association and poet.

The panel discussion is organised by Culture for All Service and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. The discussion is part of DiDa festival. More information about DiDa.

The discussion is in Finnish.

INTERNATIONAL THEATREFESTIVALS IN FINLAND

Turku International Puppetry Festival TIP -Fest | 6-10 Nov 2019, Turku

The festival celebrates the 10th anniversary and the development of the professional puppetry arts scene in Finland. Finnish puppetry scene has grown and secured its status with diverse and strong collaboration between all the artists.

This year’s TIP-Fest aknowledges this voluminous development and presents different stories and fairytales on growth. The programme showcases productions from Russia, France, Austria and Czech Republic as well as Finland. Works presented at the festival offer a wide range of material and techniques of contemporary puppetry and visual theatre – paper theatre, shadow puppet theatre, humanettes, hand puppets and object manipulation, to name a few.

Festival’s opening performance will be Anna Ivanova’s spectacle Daleko Daleko (“Far away”) with 14 performers from Russia. Ivanova has held a remarkable role in the development of puppetry art scene in Finland – as a teacher of the Turku Arts Academy’s puppetry programme and also as the artistic director of the first organized TIP-Fest 10  years ago.

Most performances are directed for adult audiences  but the programme also includes performances for adolescents, kids and even for babies.

All performances with all the information here

Fall 2019 in Mad House Helsinki

15. & 16.11 Juha Valkeapää ja Biitsi: Juha Biitsillä  

Juha Biitsillä is a piece produced by an artist, Juha Valkeapää, and a producer duo, Biitsi. It is an hour-long presentation of pictures, sounds, and gestures of everything we receive and convey, whether we like it or not.

The Biitsi duo makes music and performances. Hei Pykäri mikä meininki?! performance at G Live Lab caused a lot of confusion last year. Juha Valkeapää is a sound artist and performer whose works have been widely performed in Finland and abroad for over two decades.

 
28. & 30.11 Tellervo Kalleinen: For this dance, I will take the lead | PREMIERE

An audience gathers on a floor, ready for a dance evening. Each of the songs has been chosen by a different person, who will also lead the dance. They are people, whose experience in life is that they are too often led by other people. During this one song, the situation is different.

Tellervo Kalleinen is a contemporary artist working interdisciplinary. In many cases her work stems from creative collaborations with other artists and participators. Her work has been presented internationally, for instance, in Mori Art Museumissa (Tokio), P.S.1 (New York), KUMU (Tallin), KIASMA (Helsinki) ja Ars Electronica Cente (Linz). She works in close collaboration with Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. The artist duo was awarded Ars Fennica and AVEK Award for media arts.

12.-13. & 15.12 Ana Teo Ala-Ruona: toxinosexofuturecummings

toxinosexofuturecummings is a bodyfiction about pleasurable sex on a polluted planet. It’s a performance of a body creating itself through language. In the performance, sex is seen as an evolutionary and developmental process. It opens up a world in which materials and multispecies bodies infiltrate each other, giving and receiving pleasure. The world is thoroughly polluted, but possible, queer and trans.

The piece deals with environmental toxins, pollution, hormones and transition. The speech also includes sexual and pornographic content.

3.-5. and 8.12 & 16.-21.12 European Theatre Collective: Drivers | PREMIERE

Drivers discusses the experiences and the societal positions of immigrants in Finland through documentary theatre and fictional storytelling. The piece searches for possibilities to normalize the lived experiences of culturally marginalized people in Finland. It focuses on work and professional identity, which are considered important in Finnish society.

Drivers is the second part of the "Invisible Finland" trilogy produced by the European Theatre Collective, who seeks to foster the role of immigrants in Finnish culture and the art scene.

Read more

CulturaFest | 6 – 15 Nov 2019, Helsinki

CulturaFest will take place in several locations in Helsinki and will offer audiences the latest in photography, animation, street art and contemporary poetry.

culturafest.fi/

XS – Festival for New Dance and Performance | 27-30 Nov 2019, Turku

Ehkä-production’s annual Festival for New Dance and Performance, XS brings light to November! The festival has been organized at Kutomo already since 2009. This year you can experience the XS at Kutomo and Titanik Gallery from Wednesday to Saturday 27-30 November 2019. 

Festival programme: 

Fri 29.11. at 7 pm | Kutomo
W A U H A U S: Fluids

Tickets per performance evening: 15/10¤ | Free entry to the performance at Titanik.

The festival is supported by the Regional Dance Centre of Western Finland.

Bravo International Theatre Festival for Young Audiences | 14–22 March 2020 

The next Bravo! Festival will take place on March 2020 at the cultural centres of the Helsinki Metropolitan area. The festival programme is aimed for children, youth and families.

The programme is released by the end of the year 2019. 

www.bravofestivaali.fi

OPEN CALLS

Art & Science Residency Climate Whirl, Finland  | Deadline 18 Nov 2019

Are you an artist or part of an artist group? Are you interested in multi-disciplinary research related to forests and the atmosphere? The Climate Whirl art programme at the University of Helsinki offers artists an opportunity to work at a scientific research station and related measuring stations in dialogue with researchers and utilising the research infrastructure and data of the station. The residency will be realized in 2020.

The artist-in-residence will live in either a log building or the course centre with a shared kitchen and sanitary facilities. The station area includes historical log buildings from the early 1900s, which can be used for accommodation from May to September. Shared flats in the more modern course centre are used for winter accommodation.

The artist(s)-in-residence are selected by an expert jury comprising representatives from the worlds of science and the arts.

Conditions of the residency

  • A fee of ¤3,000 will be paid to the selected artist or group of artists.  
  • Max. ¤3,000 will be contributed towards the production costs of the new work of art.                                                                                                   
  • The residency covers the accommodation costs.                                                                                                                                         
  • Reasonable travel costs to the station from Finland or Europe will be covered to a maximum amount of ¤500. The organisers encourage applicants to travel to Hyytiälä by land or water!

The artist-in-residence or group of artists may stay at the station for a maximum of six weeks during 2020. In the case of a group, the residency must be agreed according to the accommodation capacity of the station.  

Deadline: 18 November 2019

Read more

JoJo – Oulu Dance Centre guest performances and OuDance Festival | Deadline 24 Nov 2019

JoJo – Oulu Dance Centre opened call for applications for production and guest performances for 2021 and OuDance Festival 2020! The applications are invited on 14th October – 24th November 2019.

JoJo is looking for interesting dance performances based on different dance forms, performance ideas and guest performances, performances in theatre venues, in public spaces and audience work ideas. Please note that applying to the production and guest performance is done by using separate forms.

For more information:

14th – 18th Oct and 28th Oct – 7th Nov and 22nd Nov
Helena Lindqvist, Managing Director
helena.lindqvist (a) jojo.fi /  +358 (0) 50 46 44 880

Read more and apply!

Residency at Our Festival 2020 | Deadline 1 Dec 2019

Globe Art Point and Meidän Festivaali – Our Festival are opening a joint call for a residency at Our Festival 2020, 26.7.–1.8.2020. We are seeking for a group of people of 3 to 6 persons where both Finnish and non-Finnish-born artists are represented. You can answer the call as an already formed group or as an individual willing to collaborate in a group. The call is part of the Globe Art Point program G.A.P. Lab Program, a project supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Applicants are called from any artistic discipline. Your background could be in anything from music, poetry, visual arts, circus, performance arts, or any form or shape of art that can fit the description of chamber art: intimate and within-touch arts experience. We welcome cross-disciplinary artistic ideas and are open to unforeseen concepts. 

The outcome of the residency includes one or more public representations of your work as a part of Our Festival 2020 program and could include also the opening of the process that leads to the final outcome to Our Festival audience (for example in the form of open rehearsals). The representation could be anything from a full concert event to half a concert or side program at festival venues.

The Festival provides full accommodation and catering for an agreed time period to create the work in residency during the Festival week 26th July to 1st August 2020 and prior to the Festival if needed. The Festival provides needed materials, PA, lighting, tech, backline and production-comms and covers mutually agreed travel costs. Globe Art Point provides a fee that’s agreed upon in the later stage as the final form and scope of the project is settled.

Read more

Further information:

Petra Piiroinen
Executive Director, Our Festival
petra.piiroinen(a)meidanfestivaali.fi

Jaana Simula
Managing Director, Globe Art Point
jaana.simula(a)globeartpoint.fi

The Festival of Instant Choreography | Deadline 12 Dec 2019

The Festival of Instant Choreography has opened a call for applications to their program in 2020. The festival will be held on 17.-19.4.2020 at Höyhentämö, Helsinki. The aim of the festival is to present new aspects of performance dramaturgy and ways of making and thinking choreography. Your proposal may be a light-structured performance, a demo, a workshop or an innovative audience-participatory concept. The festival offers a venue, technical resources and payments for performances and leading a workshop or a concept.

NOTE! As you are making your application, please pay attention to Höyhentämö’s spatial and technical restrictions. Proposals for spaces outside of Höyhentämö will be accepted gladly as well.

The performance application must include the following information:

  • Title and maker(s) of the piece/workshop
  • Description of the piece/workshop
  • Number of people attending the festival and their job descriptions
  • The artist’s/working group’s CV(s)
  • Duration of the performance/workshop
  • Technical needs
  • Estimation of the set up and unloading times
  • A link to the documentation if a piece
  • Other material (trailers, pictures, texts)
  • Workshop proposal, duration and content
  • Anything else worth mentioning
  • Contact person’s information (name, email, phone number)

Please send your application by email to ficfestival at hoyhentamo.fi by Thursday 12.12.2019.

Read more

More information: ficfestival(a)hoyhentamo.fi

For technical questions, please turn to:
Juha Sääski juha.saaski at hoyhentamo.fi
+358 415116867

TINFO AT YOUR SERVICE

TINFO Grant. The last round for year 2019.

Theatre Info Finland (TINFO) awards grants for translations of Finnish plays. In year 2018 TINFO Grant can even be applied for the translation of subtitles.

Grant decisions are made four times a year. Deadline for the next round is 10 Nov 2019.

Grants for published works or anthologies can be applied for from FILI - Finnish Literature Exchange.

Have a look at a selection of new plays: New Plays from Finland.

TINFO Grant total amount is 25 000 euro in year 2018.

Read more about the criteria and view the application form 
 
Recent translations of Finnish plays supported by TINFO Grant 
 
www.tinfo.fi/en/TINFO_Grant

On Stage in Finland Now!

What’s going on in Finnish theatre at the moment? Here you’ll find a selection of current projects, including a brief introduction and a link to further information on the theatre company’s website.  

Each year, professional theatres in Finland stage about 400 opening nights. There is also an active amateur theatre scene, which produces another 400 or so new performances every year.  

In Finland our summer days are long and light-filled, and so theatre moves outside, too: summer theatre attracts audiences of about a million in the land of nightless nights. All in all, Finns are enthusiastic theatre-goers: three million theatre tickets are sold every year. 

On Stage Now

New Plays from Finland

Take a look at New Plays from Finland.

www.tinfo.fi/newplays

Recent translations of Finnish plays

Recent translations of Finnish plays supported by TINFO Grant or drama agencies with links to the drama agencies for performing rights.

Recent translations of Finnish plays

Toolkit for Theatre Production and Mobility 

The website gives theatre professionals practical advice on producing a stage play and taking a show on the road. The toolkit includes budget examples, sample contracts, tips for distribution of duties and other essential production tools. 

Case: Theatre Group W (TGW), run by a non-profit cultural organization, exempted from paying the value-added tax (VAT). TGW starts to produce a stage production and they want to tour with it after the domestic run of the show. Where and how will TGW find the resources (people, time, spaces, funding, etc.) to put together a stage production? Where to perform and how to expand the performance season? How to plan and manage a tour or a guest performance abroad? 

www.tinfo.fi/en/Toolkit_for_Theatre_Production_and_Mobility

Touring Performances

Finnish performances available for touring. 

www.tinfo.fi/touring-performances

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