Mentalfinland

 

“Theatre as a public sauna” - Interview of Kristian (in front) by KVS dramaturg Ivo Kuyl

This text was originally carried out in Dutch for Etcetera, the  Magazine for Performing Arts, nr. 115, february 2009:
www.e-tcetera.be

Ivo Kuyl
Theatre as a public sauna

An interview with Finnish theatre maker Kristian Smeds

The theatre of Kristian Smeds is strongly embedded in society. It reveals hidden realities and is striking due to its especially powerful and energetic style. He usually writes his pieces himself or radically revises existing texts. He has received just about all the recognition a theatre maker in Finland can, especially since his most recent production Tuntematon Sotilas (Unknown Soldiers). He just founded the Smeds Ensemble, a small nomadic company that is open to international collaboration and that aims to travel in Finland as well as other countries.
 
Smeds is presently also receiving increasing fame abroad. Not only did he make productions in the Estonian Von Krahl Theatre, but he was also active in Lithuania and his guest artist appearances include Norway, Sweden, Hungary, France and Germany. In the meantime he is also a familiar face in Brussels. Here he was the guest of the Royal Flemish Theatre as well as KunstenFestivaldesArts: first with Huutavan ääni korvrssa  (A Cry in the Wilderness) in 2002, later with the intimate Vaeltaja (The Wanderer) in 2005, and finally – in 2006 − with Sad Songs from the Heart of Europe, a monologue based on Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Only after much insistence and reflection was Smeds convinced to make Mental Finland, a black comedy about Finland and Europe in the fictitious context of the year 2069. This work will premiere on 11 February at the Royal Flemish Theatre. It will be an international production with the Smeds Ensemble and the Royal Flemish Theatre, and a co-production with the Finnish National Theatre, Linz Cultural Capital 2009 and Vilnius Cultural Capital 2009.  

 

Ivo Kuyl:  You feel first a writer and then director. How did you get in to directing?

Kristian Smeds: Immediately after my secondary school studies I started at the dramaturgy department of the theatre school in Helsinki. I believe the system there differs considerably from the other schools in Europe. When I was a student, you could choose from the specialisations writing, directing or acting. What was special, however, was that all of these specialisations worked closely together. For example, I chose writing, but we were required to act and direct our pieces and those of others, as well as view them as audience. I know a lot of colleagues who – like me – were able to easily make the leap from writing to directing, and vice versa, based on this experience.

When you look back on this period, how important was it for your education as theatre maker?

I never would have landed in theatre without this school. What’s more, you are completely submerged in an artistic climate for four years. This was also important to me because not much attention had been paid to art and theatre at home and in my circle of friends. I had three significant instructors and they were all very different, which is good. However, I believe my teachers, my best teachers, are all dead: Dostoyevsky for example. In order to write, you have to read a lot. Art is like an enormous sea. This sea can exist with me but also without me. But while you are only a drop, it is still important to understand that you are part of a long history; of all books you have ever read; all the paintings you have ever seen; all the people you have ever met, and so on.

What are the literary and theatrical traditions to which you feel indebted?

Russian literature. Dostoyevsky, as I already said, but also Tolstoy and Chekhov. Plus the Poles Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor. Finnish literature also has a major place in my heart, as well as Finnish theatre makers such as Jouka Turkka and Esa Kirkkopelto. And of course Bertolt Brecht. And then there are specific directors such as the Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekrosius and the German Frank Castorf. For that matter, I believe that the melancholy of the peoples of Northern Europe finds more of an echo in Russian literature than for example in Shakespeare. Long periods of silence and monologues fit us better than smooth dialogues, agility and the clever use of language.

 

You are now around forty. Yet you have already accomplished much. Can you briefly sketch your accomplishments?

The first theatre I founded and directed was the Theatteri Takomo in Helsinki from 1996-2001. I worked there with six actors; we had someone for the office and someone to handle the technical aspects. If we needed additional people, the actors’ file was updated on an ad hoc basis. Despite our success, there were always financial problems, and we never found a permanent home in Helsinki. Yet it was an important phase, because there I laid the foundations for the way in which I now work, for example with long rehearsal periods. It was also an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of the medium. At the end of this period I felt that I had done everything there was to do and that I had nothing more to offer the people. Then I began thinking about what to do next. So I ended up in Kajaani, a small town approximately six hundred kilometres north of Helsinki. It was − and still is today − a poor city, with high unemployment. Globalisation has consequences everywhere, also there. However, in this city in the middle of a forest was a small, proud theatre with fifteen actors, with a total of fifty employees. I became the artistic director and was the chief house director. The closest other theatre was two hundred kilometres away. 

 

Why did you go there?

I wanted to prove that you could also make good theatre that fills auditoriums there, in ‘the middle of nowhere’. We wanted to build a house of light in the darkness of the forest. And we succeeded. Then I travelled east, to the Baltic States, where I worked freelance for approximately three years. I wanted to distance myself a bit from Finland: to know what it is like to work with foreigners. Is that possible? I mean: of course it’s possible, but is it also possible in the deepest meaning of the word? I still don’t have a definitive answer to this question. Can you in fact share something with one another person when you don’t have the same historical background, the same collective unconscious? Histories, after all, differ so much. I note in any case that the themes and topics I now treat have become less private and more universal. But even so, the story you are trying to tell receives various meanings. It is still good that I went in search of a new artistic language, instead of again sharing the same common experience of Finnish history and Finnish society. 

 

Which did not prevent you from returning to Finland.

Yes, but with a different aim. I thought to myself: perhaps I need to assemble people around me again, but it no longer can be that casual group from the beginning and also not an established ensemble. I no longer wanted a fixed space, regular actors, a permanent office. In Helsinki as well as in Kajaani I noted that structure itself is the greatest danger. Before you know it, the institution determines how you must make your theatre. Because the ensemble is there, and all these people with their salaries are there. A good artistic director must see to it that everyone gets a chance. 

 

Meaning that you are no longer free; no longer able to produce without necessity.

That is the problem. Which is why I now want to work in a way in which I first have an artistic idea and only then start to think about the partners: which economic partners, which artistic partners, which spaces, which countries and so forth. I want to use Finland as base of operations to engage in diverse forms of collaboration, both national and international. One of my goals is to bring together Finnish and foreign artists. Perhaps in so doing I can also bring some fresh air to Finnish theatre. But I don’t want to become a freelance director who simply travels throughout Europe to make productions in just any theatre.  

For whom in fact do you make your theatre? 

I have always tried to make theatre that is accessible to all. I feel anything but original, and am concerned with the same things that occupy most people.  Thus my heart goes out to everyday people: men in the pub, women behind the cash register, nurses… I believe that you need not have studied to be able to understand theatre.

 

You make ‘artificial’ theatre, by which I mean that your characters do not manifest themselves as imitations of reality, but as theatrical constructions.

This point of departure must be visible, it must especially be clear in the acting. It must be clear from the beginning that a performance is theatre and not reality. For that matter, it is not only the characters on stage that are fictional. We the people of daily life are also fictional. And this is fortunate, because it gives us the ability to continually rediscover ourselves. There is no permanent core, no definitive truth. In this sense, however, theatre is an imitation of reality. 

You often use the image of your theatre as a public sauna. Can you explain that?

In Finland, the sauna is social therapy par excellence. The stage is also a sauna and I consider myself the large-breasted lady in the Finnish films of the 1940’s and 50’s who washes people, is afraid of nothing, who stands in the middle of the strongest heat and without hesitation dredges up their feelings and meanings. And then we all go for a swim together in the avanto (a hole made in the ice, ik). Just as people sweat in the sauna, things are often said in my theatre that you otherwise would not say, at least not in this way. I try to make things visible that would otherwise remain hidden. Of course, I hope that my productions have a cleansing function not only for my actors, but also for my audience.

 

What does humour mean for you in this regard?

When you reveal what hides under and behind things, they often become funny. Humour, like coffee, must be black and strong, and in any case there must be enough of it. 

 

What themes are explored in these theatrical sauna sessions?

Everything takes place within the triangle: love, death and God. It for example can concern the lack of love or the lack of God. Or longing for death. But also the family, society, sin and the place of the artist in society. My characters are people who try to lead a meaningful life and often feel constrained in the situations in which they must live. Often they are hounded by an obsessive question, such as: why am I alive; how can I fight injustice or where is the God in which I can believe. I never allow one character to be felt as good and the other as bad. I stand behind my characters in their totality. Even the biggest bastard has a good side and vice versa.

 

The metaphor of the theatre as public sauna suggests that theatre builds community. Can you say something about this?

I believe that community no longer exists today. Here I am speaking as a Finn. There is no communal Finland or communal Helsinki or something like it. Everything has disintegrated into thousands of pieces. Yet you can found a temporary community with theatre. At the end of a performance, you sometimes feel like you have experienced something important together; that you have shared the same experiences. I like that feeling; it has a healing effect. Commercialisation, however, destroys everything. The theatre is also expected to flatter people. But I try to counteract this. The theatre must be a wolf and not a sheep. It’s not an economic transaction. It concerns a way of life; a way of existing. You can live your life in different ways. You can be a hero or a fool; a king or a jester; someone who takes on an immense task and is prepared to suffer for this, or someone who wants to amuse the king.

 

The tragic and the comic.

Yes. In any case, these are two ways of existing that directly counter economic or instrumental thinking. I have plans for a theatre trilogy about the relationship of economy and society. It concerns what you could summarise as: ‘It’s nothing personal, it’s just business’. I want to replace this with something else: ‘It’s nothing personal, it’s just art’.  The type of cruel theatre over which Artaud has written and that emerges from a type of objectivity; from the consciousness of things. Wounds are opened on the stage that in society we glance at only obliquely or whose existence we deny. 

Your theatre has both feet in society. Would you call your theatre ‘political theatre’?

I am suspicious of a concept like ‘political theatre’. It is unclear and unspecific, and no one knows precisely what is intended by it. I am a practical man. Of course I read books and I reflect on all kinds of things. But that is different than day-to-day work. Then you are busy with very concrete, simple things. Because if you put all that knowledge and all of those theories on the table … you become paralysed. 

Here in Belgium there are companies that remain seated around the table up to two weeks before the premiere in order to discuss the text, and only then go on stage. I don’t see that happening with you.

For me, theatre in the first place is doing something together. Proposals are formulated, these are implemented, then a discussion takes place concerning what we have done, and then we do it again. I give my actors a great deal of responsibility. They contribute to creating the production. What they think or feel must be taken seriously. I believe it was Grotowski who once said: ‘Never say no to a proposal by an actor’. This is very true. You can let this happen once, perhaps twice, but after the third time the actor will say: ‘I’ve had enough; I won’t be making any more proposals’. I also try to work in such a way that the actors are able to fully realise their personal capacities and ambitions. That while on stage they don’t feel like a bear performing tricks.

 

What is the most difficult phase in the rehearsal process?

One of the most difficult things is choosing a topic. That is for me a slow and difficult process, in which many factors play a role: for example, the fact that I’m getting older, the changing society, the organisations and structures in which I work, etc. In my productions, I react to what is going on in the world, which is why there are so many parameters. When I have an idea concerning the form and content of a production, I feel like I have caught a fish. The next important moment is the starting phase of the rehearsals. There is always the danger that what I see happening in my head does not work on stage. But, on the other hand, if I think that it will work, I can become lazy. I have to force myself to rehearse for one or two weeks, because of course it is not enough that I am the only one who knows what the production will look like. It must become flesh and blood; the material must be transformed in function of a goal. It takes time for all the details to become clear. It is pure handiwork. The longer you continue to work, the more small discoveries and solutions continue to surface. For this reason I always plan long rehearsal processes.

 

You attach importance to a positive atmosphere during rehearsals.

If the rehearsal process is painful or difficult, this seeps into the production. Thus it is better to avoid unproductive fights or people feeling that they have been silenced. This positive atmosphere is also necessary because in addition to being beautiful, acting is also a hard profession, a sort of crucifixion or sacrifice. Basically, the work of an actor consists of being someone other than who he or she is in daily life. It demands a lot of motivation to sustain this. Actors must play with a full range of new feelings, occurrences and insights. It is heavy and demanding to do this at a high level. It means completely giving yourself in all honesty. This doesn’t always work. But when theatre succeeds in this, the level of ritual is achieved. In good performances, you can sometimes see that an actor is trying to rid himself of all inhibitions and obstacles; that he empties himself totally; tries to eliminate from himself everything that is not in service of his role. It is not easy to speak about these things; before you know it, you are sentimental and kitschy. But people recognise this immediately when it happens. Then something hangs in the air that everyone can feel. That ‘something’ cannot be bought but is very important. 

 

I have always been struck by the enormous vitality that emanates from your actors. 

My characters are passionate figures. They have an urgent need to share their world with the audience. I always try to engage in the most direct possible confrontation with the audience. In a certain sense, the spectators function as antagonists. I try to get them to the point where they are no longer passively lost in thought, but actively take a position. I encourage my actors to use all of their power and intelligence to stimulate the audience to take a position. Emotionally as well as intellectually.

 

How do you view the relationship between the actor and his role on stage?

It is important that an actor breaks open the boundaries between his personality and the role. He may not fit himself inside the skin of his character. I don’t ask an actor to identify with his character, but rather to crawl inside the character’s skin and make him explode from the inside. He must be personally motivated to play the role, which means being able to answer the question: ‘What in heaven’s name am I doing here on stage?’ And if the answer is, ‘I am playing Hamlet’, that appears to me to be an extremely boring answer. I don’t pay someone to see Hamlet being acted; I want to see something extra from him. If there is no other motivation, something is missing.    

 

You just said that theatre is a ritual. I also associate the word ritual with religion.

Some audience members have told me that they have experienced religious feelings or thoughts due to my productions, while they never go to church and even hate the church. But I would rather talk of spirituality than religion, because that is a more open concept, without institutional baggage. It concerns what happens on the inside of the person: in his or her solitude. It concerns questions such as: why am I alive, who am I, is there life after death, why should I lead a good life, and how can I do that. You sometimes hear it said that God is no longer possible in our era of thoroughgoing commercialism. But I believe the people will always continue to ask these sorts of questions. It has to do with a basic human need: an intense desire for meaning. The concept ‘God’ refers to this, even if you are unsure whether an object answers this desire. 

 

Do you consider yourself a believer?

Yes, I believe that every person was created with a purpose. I try to listen to what is going on inside me, at an intuitive level. And what I hear there I call ‘the will of God’, even though I know it is me; that it is my brain speaking these words, without me being able to state in a scientific way that God exists. I have simply taken the decision to believe in God. At the same time I doubt, I curse, I don’t respect the people and the world around me, and I am afraid. We are simply imperfect beings. 

 

If you look at the situation in the world, you would be more inclined to think that God is absent from it.

It’s true that God is not very interested in humans. Why should he be? Thus, for that matter, we have no excuse for shifting the responsibility to God when we mess things up ourselves. I don’t agree that people relinquish their own responsibility as soon as they believe in God. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Perhaps you can only genuinely take up your responsibility from the moment that you believe. In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky said: Only when you feel responsibility for your life will you begin to learn something and to love people and things. In my work, I am responsible for the actors, for the audience; I must see to it that people are not wasting their time when they come to my productions.

If religion is so important to you, do you see the artistic calling as a sort of vocation? 

My thoughts on the profession of artist are somewhat traditional. Whenever I read interviews with artists, not only in Finland but also elsewhere in Europe, it always strikes me that the artistic calling is increasingly seen as a ‘normal’ profession. I believe, however, that the artistic calling is a completely abnormal profession. I’m not saying that it is better or worse than other professions, but that it is totally different. If you look back in history, you see that in each community the artist was always ‘the other’: someone with a different position, but also someone who saw things from a different perspective; who pointed to the existence of other possible worlds. 

 

The artist as incarnation of ‘the other’ or of a certain type of contact with the other in the community.

Yes, even though that differs greatly from artist to artist. Kafka, for example, had a ‘nine-to-five’ job, while Artaud led a somewhat exceptional life and often transgressed the limits of madness. But both were true artists, people who opposed the status quo and coloured outside the lines, but who also caused people to dream. But today art is often associated with personal development, ‘lifestyle’ or ‘quality time’. In the animal world you have the albino. Normally animals with a handicap, or that deviate greatly in some way, are killed. But albinos are never killed, because white is the colour of death. Thus albinos are radically different, but they are still respected. Something similar also applies to the artist. The artistic calling is not an individual, but rather a collective concept. As artist you are not working for yourself, but for the others. It is not about a sort of individual trip.

 

To conclude, I would like once again to touch on Mental Finland, the project that will premiere soon in Brussels. Can you say something about how the project came to be?

I was somewhat sceptical about working in Brussels. I have nothing − and I mean nothing − in common with the Central European mentality. I asked myself: What can I offer these people whose backgrounds I know nothing of? Add to this the fact that, in Finland, Brussels is the most hated city in Europe. This of course has nothing to do with the people of Brussels, but rather with the European Union. In Finland, the European Union is seen as a bureaucratic bulwark that forces us to adapt to modern Europe. We have the feeling that we are losing our independence: all the major decisions are taken in Brussels. 

 

What won you over then?

Several things. First, the change in course that I realised with the Smeds Ensemble. Plus the fact that Brussels has something surrealistic and is one of the most important dance cities in Europe. And is a comic strip city. I am very fond of comic strips. And combining all of these elements, I arrived at the idea of something Star Wars-like, of a European army that ensures the correct observance of all the rules issued by Europe: that keeps everything and everyone in its grasp. But there is one people that stubbornly resists: the Finns. It is something like Asterix and Obelix versus the Romans; a metaphor for small versus big. Belgium for that matter is also a small country. The Finns are played by a cast of five Finnish and two Estonian actors. For the selection of the seven dancers who together constitute the European army, auditions were held in Brussels and Linz.

 

Isn’t that a bit dualistic, thinking in terms of good versus evil? Don’t you run the risk of demonising Europe and idealising Finland?

For me there is no more unpleasant topic to make theatre about than Europe. But that is precisely what stimulates me. How can I make an exciting production about a boring topic? How can you use theatre to meaningfully speak about these types of complicated matters? That is only possible with humour. Black humour. And irony is also a part of this: the fact that we Finns speak about ourselves and our relationship to Europe with full self-irony.

Translated by Dan Frett 

Mental Finland, KVS, 11-22 February
This text was originally carried out in Dutch for Etcetera, the  Magazine for Performing Arts, nr. 115, february 2009:
www.e-tcetera.be

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