Background
The building blocks of a French farce – interview with translator Reita Lounatvuori
The Helsinki City Theatre has a long tradition as a stage for farce. But how does the farce translate into Finnish? Translator Reita Lounatvuori, who has translated several farces into Finnish, explains how to recognise a farce and what kind of difficulties must be overcome when translating verbal cannon from French into Finnish.
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Today’s princess fairy tale – interview with Sonja Pajunoja and Martti Manninen
The Little Mermaid, a sweetly romantic fairy tale... Or a story about two rebels? Sonja Pajunoja and Martti Manninen, who play the lead roles in the new musical at the Helsinki City Theatre, talk about what it feels like to interpret modern Disney royals together with their own life partner.In the musical The Little Mermaid at the Helsinki City Theatre, Sonja Pajunoja and Martti Manninen play the roles of Mermaid Ariel, who dreams of the world of humans, and her favourite character, Prince Erik, who struggles against the cramped role of the heir to the throne.
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The Colonel’s Tongue, Meänkieli
The title character of the play The Colonel tells the audience his life story in Meänkieli. But is the language form spoken in the Torne Valley a pure dialect or is it really its own, independent language?
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Germans in Finnish Lapland
The play The Colonel is partly set in wartime Lapland. During the Continuation War, there were more Germans than Finns in Lapland, and the local inhabitants had to learn to live their everyday lives side by side with the German soldiers.
Read moreAnnikki Kariniemi, real-life Colonel
The protagonist of the play The Colonel remains anonymous, but he has a role model in reality. Although there are differences in the details of the life stories of the fictional Colonel and the writer Annikki Kariniemi, Kariniemi's eventful life is the basis for the Colonel's story.
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