MANTA musical

Teatteri Korppi

The unmissable and historical musical about Finland's most famous healer of the people, Amanda Jokinen (1853-1922), will premiere on 14.7.2024 in Keikyä, Sastamala.

The story follows Amanda's eventful life from the years of famine to the First World War, based on real events. The healer was an extraordinary powerful woman who ran her own home for the sick in Tyrvää (now Sastamala). She was known abroad. The music was composed by Kyllikki Salo and the musical is directed by her husband, the acclaimed theatre icon Jarmo Salo. This memorable journey through time is starring the wonderful soprano Helena Lehtimäki and tenor Marko Tuupainen. In your youth, you travel with your healer father, Timoteus Vilppala, healing people. In the spring of 1868, dead people are found under a mound of earth, forced by years of famine to beg for food. You adopted your father's teachings, helping those in need. There were plenty of them during the Great Famine, when you got your confession. What else could you have become but Amanda Jokinen, the Tyrwää’s Manta, a healer of the people, famous abroad? The district doctor is demanding you be tried for quackery, you fight. Who else could a statue of a national healer be in the courtyard of the Pirkanmaa Welfare District Hospital parade ground but you?

More than a hundred years later, Antti Nummi collects contemporary information about you and Katri Rinne examines your letters found in the attic. The following year, Kyllikki and Jarmo Salo from Vesilahta move to two old school buildings in Honkola, Sastamala, to make culture in different forms. Kyllikki finds your story and compiles it into a coherent narrative - composing music. Jarmo writes the script, dramatises and directs. They re-enact your remarkable life story of fighting for women, for people. You help and care for a huge number of people in need, orphans, the underprivileged - from abroad. You will continue on the path that Minna Canth had paved.