01.04.2022
The World on Stage: TINFO embarks on new project
The animals around us have had enough and are saying goodbye to humankind. An undocumented young Moroccan man recounts his years in Europe as he’s being deported. Three women repeat the sentence “There’s nothing wrong with being heterosexual” over and over again. Two people in a village in Eastern Ukraine recount their family histories spanning some forty years. These are some of the stories from Europe that Theatre Info Finland hopes to be able to bring to the stage in Finland soon.
For the next three years, Theatre Info Finland TINFO will be promoting world drama to Finnish theatres and theatre makers. Initiated and supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the World on Stage project has been created to promote plays written in languages other than English.
On March 25, 2022, our advisory board consisting of producer Eeva Bergroth, author Hassan Blasim, director Davide Giovanzana, playwright and translator Elli Salo, author and director Saara Turunen and TINFO director Linnea Stara presented a selection of 25 plays to theatre makers in Finland.
The selected works include five plays written in German, four in Ukrainian and Swedish, three in French, two in Arabic, Norwegian and Catalan, as well as one each written in Russian, Croatian, Spanish and English. All the plays have been written in the 21st century, and none have been previously performed in Finland. Among the playwrights are well-known names such as the Ukrainian Serhiy Zhadan, the Norwegian Arne Lygre, and the German Ferdinand von Schirach.
Theatres can apply for up to 30,000 EUR in funding to have the plays translated and produced within a maximum time period of 30 months.
Prior to the pandemic, Finnish plays and theatre texts were produced twice as often as foreign ones, and only a fifth of the foreign plays performed in Finland were written in countries other than the US and Great Britain. If classical plays by authors such as Molière and Chekhov are excluded, the proportion of translated works drops even further. Against this backdrop, the purpose of the World on Stage project is to ensure that a greater diversity of voices is heard on the Finnish stage.
A database of all 25 selected plays from 2022 can be found on our website https://www.tinfo.fi/fi/Maailma-nayttamolle-naytelmatietokanta
Do you know of a play that you would like to see promoted as part of the World on Stage project?
Please get in touch with linnea.stara (a) tinfo.fi
In the photo above: Saara Turunen, Eeva Bergroth and LInnea Stara. Photo by TINFO / Jenni Ylinentalo