Review: Siegfried
Siegfried, by the students of the Theatre Academy, is thoughtful and thought-provoking performing arts
According to its creators, Helsinki City Theatre’s Siegfried is a work of performing art.
It is not entirely clear from the script whether this work is also a thesis by artists studying at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Of the filmmakers, Mikko Kauppila presented his skills in a variety of ways at the premiere. He danced, played classical music on the piano and acted.
Kauppila made an impression on stage. Of course, I think it was even more important that the production was clearly a work of art made by the community, as is typical of theatre.
The script by Kauppila and director Katariina Havukainen was well thought out and made me think as a viewer as well. The performance raised questions about interaction, emotions and thinking. Where do the self and consciousness actually come from?
Siegfried, which was created in collaboration between Kauppila, Havukainen and Julia Jäntti, who was responsible for the lighting design, presents images and fantasies that are not normative desires: “a queer reading of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which combines autofictional material with historical experiences of skewness.”
Can it be said any clearer!
The fictional characters in the performance are King Louis II of Bavaria, who was a fervent lover of Richard Wagner, and the composer Pyotro Tchaikovsky, whose sexual orientation is still disputed in Russia. The composer, who was one of the great masters of the Romantic era, was gay, but I don’t think it is still possible to say that out loud in the country due to Russia’s gay propaganda laws.
The performance is named after Prince Siegfried of the ballet Jousenlampi. For Kauppila, Sigfried explored the pervert and its possibilities on stage.
Normative classification tends to flatten both phenomena and people. In the definition of phenomena describing human sexuality, the connotations and connotations related to the words become even stronger.
Pervo is certainly a decent equivalent to the English concept of queer.
Normative, or should I say heteronormative talk about aesthetics, is tricky. As a theatre critic, I have undoubtedly been this kind of “talking ass” embarrassingly often. Or at least the way Kauppila and his team describe the phenomenon still makes me laugh.
The queer of the creators was also hilariously mischievous from time to time. For example, Kauppila drowns in the form of Prince Siegfried, who is unhappily in love, in a large aquarium with an air tube, i.e. a snorkel.
Emotions and thinking go hand in hand. Our consciousness is born in the brain. It is the result of processes that take place in the brain. These cognitive processes are the cause and consciousness is the effect.
So-called free will, our sexual orientation and aesthetic preferences follow this marching order. It is not worth putting your own conceptions of beauty on a pedestal of absolute truth, because they are usually not even your own, but learned.
From all of the above, it is probably clear that Siegfried by Havukainen, Jäntti and Kauppila made an impression on me. The Helsinki City Theatre should be recognised for providing a forum and resources for these future pioneers of theatre. Art only develops through experimentation.