Quite lot of attention from media and concerned taxpayers has been on the budget of our mental finnish brand shining jorney. Fear not! Yours truly will now put some light on the hot subject.
So why is it that all this cost over half million euros? Is it all the special effects and stunts? Are we eating some special expensive bananas? Are we now super rich? Answer for all this is unfortunately no. Simply put: we have employed almost 20 freelancers (actors, dancers, designers .etc) for about 5 moths, full time, full salary. So there you have it. Most of the money spent! Then add travel for 11 people from Finland to Brussels and back for 2 times plus accommodation. We have created jobs for finnish and international artists, and their salaries will soon return back to the capital flow via heavy personal consumption (nahkatakki, anyone?).
Is this really the most expensive stage production in Finland, ever? No it is not. It is big and expensive, yes, especially for an “outlaw” independent production, but depending how you calculate it any major production on National theatre or Helsinki city theatre mains stages easily exceed this sum.
…And for the concerned Finnish taxpayers: Finnish part of the budget is most kindly primarily funded from Suomen Kulttuurirahasto and Aflred Kordelin foundation - two private foundations mostly handing out profit from Nokia stocks, and OPM, ministry of education, which gives out earnings from the national lottery. On top of that comes a sum from City of Helsinki and co-production from the Finnish national theatre, both of them indeed do get their money mostly of your back skin. But that’s just about 10% of the total budget. There. Kiss kiss puss puss and thanks for everybody one more time.
Additional comment on the subject by mr. Smeds himself