Finnish drama on a world tour

It seems to be unclear to younger people what acting is all about. It is not about exhibiting yourself, acting is a professional skill, says Hanna Suutela, Professor of Theatre and Drama.

Professor Hanna Suutela enjoys a research sabbatical enabled by a grant from the Foundations’ Professor Pool. Her research topic is the Finnish theatre and she is happy that the changing Finnishness is portrayed especially in Finnish drama. The drama texts depicting Finnishness travel around the world today.

”A lot of the new drama texts look at identities but they no longer concentrate on Finnishness. The playwrights are now writing universal drama that focuses on the human lot in the world. This is one reason why it is easier to export these new texts than some of the earlier texts in our theatre history,” says Suutela.

Theatre changes as the world, Finland and the Finnish language change, but there are still some permanent features.

“The contact between the stage and the audience is a permanent characteristic of all kinds of theatre. Interaction can be regarded as the minimum requirement for having a theatre performance in the first place. Someone stages a performance and someone else watches it.”

In the 19th century, people went to the theatre to show their patriotism. Today a theatre performance can be a festive part of the office Christmas party.

“Why people come to see theatre performances has changed somewhat and watching plays can have different meanings. Basically, everything is connected with the fact that theatre is some sort of a ritual, even in its
more commercial forms.”

Theatre has always been compelled to fight for its space and profitability. Big stages were used for competing with the widescreen cinema and film close-ups brought about small stages where the actors are so close that the audience is able to see their facial expressions.

”Such silent changes take place under the radar. For example, improvisation and stand up have to do with a paradigmatic change. When children were taught essay writing at school one or two generations ago, they were told that they must not start a sentence with the word ‘I’, you weren’t allowed to say ‘I’.  Using the first person is also not very appropriate in the scientific discourse. This denial of the ‘I’ has been very potent. Now we have stand up and everywhere the spectator is addressed in the first person by the performer on the stage. All this has been permitted only now when our attitudes and language have changed,” says Suutela.

Acting is different than performing

Because of the 24/7 celebrity culture, conceptions about the work of an actor have become vague.

”Acting is not the same thing as performing. This has blurred now that actors host television shows and reality television attacks us at every corner. Younger people seem to have less of an idea of what acting is all about. It is not about exhibiting yourself; acting is a professional skill that was created for the purpose of telling about the world and putting one’s soul into fiction.”

”The first and foremost skill of an actor is to get along with the other actors and to stage the performances together. Publicity is a part of another story. However, that, too, has always existed in theatre. Already in the 19th century J.V. Snellman said that a theatre company needs a prima donna. You need a crowd-puller. We don’t live at that time anymore, but we have still got the pressure of gaining visibility, only now from another angle,” says Suutela.

The difficulty of making ends meet was evident in theatres at the time of the recession in the 1990s. Improvisation, something that was familiar to all actors from their training, saved even large city theatres from peril.

”Improvisation theatre groups started and then the repertoire theatres, too, had an aha moment: let’s have an improv night. That was something quite new and fun and no time was needed for rehearsals. Improvisation was already quite familiar to people from television shows. Improvisation was clearly a recession time phenomenon. However, even if some art form is born out of outside pressures, artists will still make art; it doesn’t diminish the artistic value of the performance.”

Two educational paths prevent one-sidedness

Suutela, who researches the Finnish identity and theatre history, says that the strong point of the Finnish actor-training is that actors are also educated in Tampere, not only in Helsinki.

”For the time being, there are quite good numbers of professionally educated actors in the Finnish theatres. It does not matter that Finland is small; an audience of five million people is not a problem whereas too few performances would be a problem. It is not good to teach the small population of Finland to think in just one way.”

Theatre is strongly bound to language and it is a place of memory for the community and the individual. Everyone sits next to someone else, one person cries and the other one laughs.

”In theatre, history is understood through people’s stories. For me, an unforgettable experience was Patriarkka by Juha Jokela that succeeded in mirroring several generations of Finns on stage. You can have very strong feelings of identification at the theatre. At the same time, theatre as a form makes visible that we are all not just alone. You always sit next to someone else in the audience which makes concrete people’s networks and feelings of community.”

Professor Hanna Suutela’s topic at the science event in January is: From Niskavuori to stand up. The lecture (in Finnish) will take place on 26 January 2013 at 14:00 in the Main Auditorium of the Tampere Hall.

Text: Taina Repo
Photograph: Teemu Launis
Translation: Laura Tohka

This story was originally published in Finnish in Aikalainen 17/2012