A Slice of Finnish Drama - World Theatre Day 2021
Friday 26th of March 2021 at 3 pm (EET)
Live stream on YouTube
A Play Reading of Christoffer Mellgren’s
Cutting a Cake: A Play About Justice in Six Uneven Slices
Followed by a discussion on ethical questions posed in current Finnish playwriting with playwright Christoffer Mellgren and Dr. Katri Tanskanen, moderated by Linnea Stara, director of TINFO
In celebration of World Theatre Day – initiated by the International Theatre Institute under UNESCO in 1961 – Theatre Info Finland – TINFO welcomes you to an online reading. In line with UNESCO’s work to reaffirm the humanist mission of the organization, when cultural diversity is under attack and new forms of intolerance, rejection of facts and threats to freedom of expression are prevalent, TINFO presents a bold play about justice written for young audiences.
Christoffer Mellgren’s play Cutting a Cake: A Play About Justice in Six Uneven Slices is a playful rumination on justice, or what it could be. How is a cake to be cut in three slices, without anyone getting the lesser of it? Is it right to sacrifice one of four shipwrecked individuals in order to save the others? And what about the play itself, is it fair if everyone just follows the script? You’ll meet philosophers, ghosts and the legendary Ophelia and Hamlet during the course of the reading.
Christoffer Mellgren (born 1980) is a dramaturg and playwright who has worked for the Swedish Theatre and Viirus Theatre in Helsinki and is currently working as the operational leader at Labbet, a non-profit organisation which promotes new playwriting and new theatre forms within Swedish language theatre in Finland. Mellgren graduated from Stockholm University of the Arts in 2006 and has since then worked in Finland. His most recent play from 2019 named Cutting a Cake - A play about justice in six uneven slices (Att dela en kaka - sex olika stora bitar om rättvisa) is an educational youth play which deals with the theme of equity and fairness. The play won the 2019 Boismanska fonden’s Finnish-Swedish playwright prize. He is also the author of En sida dramatic: Att skriva för teaterscenen (Labbet, 2019) – a guidebook on playwriting for young adults.
Dr. Katri Tanskanen is a theatre researcher whose research interests include drama and dramaturgy. Her doctoral thesis in 2017 explored the dramaturgy of ethics in contemporary Finnish drama, or more specifically, how the presence of the Other can be felt through dramaturgy, and how spectators can be encouraged to reflect on their individual relationship to otherness through contemporary plays. Dr. Tanskanen has written and edited several books on contemporary Finnish performance, drama and theatre history, and worked as a cultural journalist as well as a theatre critic. She teaches theatre studies regularly at the University of Helsinki.
#WorldTheatreDay
Translator: Edward Buffalo Bromberg
Performers:
Boodi Kabbani
Satu Tuuli Karhu
Aleksi Kinnunen (drums)
Irina Pulkka
Matti Ristinen
Miiko Toiviainen
Director:
Hanna Kirjavainen
Stream director:
Jonni Pantzar
Organizers:
Theatre Info Finland TINFO
UNO – New Play Finland
Teatteri Avoimet Ovet – Open Doors Theatre
The event has been supported by Eugène, Elisabeth och Birgit Nygréns Stiftelse
A recording of the performance and the related discussion with closed captions will be available until 8th of April, 2021.
Want to get more information on Finnish plays? Take a look at the following links.
New Plays from Finland