Highlights from the First Press Conference
8.8.2017
Tampere Theatre Festival started yesterday and so did the first from three press conferences of the festival week. We had an opportunity to hear about the performances of the Main Programme, among other things. Here are a few selected quotes:
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Miet Warlop: Fruits of Labor
The Belgian artist Miet Warlop told that she wants to shake the holiness of art with her works. She wants to activate different art forms and bring them to other contexts. For example in Fruits of Labor music is a sculpting material, so the result is a musical sculpture.
”Fruits of Labor is more a place than a piece, where people can think about fear-raising problems, such as terrorism”, Warlop described. According to Warlop the audience lives with the piece – everybody breaths in rhythm with the performance.
Teatterimonttu
Mon 7.8. at 19.00
Tue 8.8. at 16.00
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Sanna Hietala: The Predators
Writer-director Sanna Hietala told that The Predators stems from her own history.
”I’ve a personal touch to the so called white trash. When I tell about my own background, it’s always really hard to do so without beeing seen as a victim. That’s why I wanted to tell about a person living on the outskirts and see, if they could be made human.”
The Predators is Hietala’s first text and it took years to finish it. The performance as a whole came clear to Hietala on the early stages of the writing process, including the esthetics. She also knew she wanted humour to be a great part of the performance, because with it, things can be alienated. Thus the serious subjects in the performance don’t become overwhelming to the viewers.
TTT Eino Salmelainen
Tue 8.8. at 19.00
Wed 9.8. at 16.00
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Kristian Smeds: just filming
Nobody on stage speaks Finnish as their mother tongue in Kristian Smeds’ just filming. The piece acts in a way as a comment to the ongoing globalization of the theatre field. Hungarian Annamária Láng and Estonian Juhán Ulfsak are both well known in their home countries, but newer faces to the Finnish audience. According to Smeds the safety nets are removed from the performance and the actors are at times as astonished as are the viewers of what’s actually happening.
TT Main Stage
Thu 10.8. at 19.00
Fri 11.8. at 17.00
Sat 12.8. at 14.00
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Juha Hurme: Crazy
Writer-director Juha Hurme spent December 2009 in a closed ward of a mental hospital suffering from psychosis. From these experiences he wrote first a novel and from that the theatre performance Crazy.
”The personal angle can’t be dismissed, but it also shouldn’t be emphasized”, Hurme pointed out.
He said his experiences offered information from the closed ward as an institution, which is literally closed from most people. Also his own condition, a breakdown, opened unknown internal visions. He started to break down these things in ways characteristic to himself – through writing and theatre.
According to Hurme, Crazy is made by a theatre collective, and he didn’t have to direct basically at all.
”And that’s the highest level of direction, when there isn’t any”, Hurme captured.
Teatteri Telakka
Thu 10.8. at 19.00
Fri 11.8. at 13.30
Fri 11.8. at 19.00