Characters are built throughout the rehearsal season
Actors are sometimes asked what they do during the day.
“If you didn’t have to rehearse, you could just go and see the light locations before the premiere and decide that this is how I will do this role,” laughs Heidi Herala. “But the work of an actor is interaction, and even though everyone does their own role, the end result is cooperation,” Juhani Laitala adds.
Kultalampi’s rehearsal season has lasted three weeks, and there is still a long time until the premiere. Behind is the analysis phase, which examines what the play contains in terms of roles and the whole.
“In a text like this, the most important thing happens between the lines. You have to find the thought and feeling,
that the author has thought of there, and make his own interpretation of it. It’s interesting and challenging,” Laitala says.
“Lines can be used here. Or they could just be said lightly, but there are interesting things hiding under the lines,” Herala explains.
Both actors say that they like rehearsals, especially the phase when the pieces start to fall into place. Herala noticed that it had happened when Kultalampi’s 20-page scenes, which she had been nervous about beforehand, suddenly started to slip.
“Suddenly, you realise that you are already here, which used to feel like a mountain. Then time passes quickly and some stupid thoughts have disappeared,” Herala says.
“It’s joyful when you find what you’re looking for and you can start enjoying acting,” Laitala continues.
Fighting with words
Herala and Laitala play a married couple, Ethel and Norman, who are spending their 48th summer together at the Kultalampi summer villa. Norman is angry about his own old age and constantly insults his loved ones, even if he doesn’t want to.
“Getting older is hard for all of us – I’m speaking from my own experience – and Norman feels more powerless every day,” Laitala says.
He has realised that the older a person gets, the more important the life they have lived becomes. In Kultalampi Norman and Ethel recap their past, and not all memories are pretty. Norman, for example, has been at odds with his daughter Chelsea for eight years.
“He loves his only daughter, but it seems to be terribly difficult for a stubborn man like Norman to say and admit it,” Laitala says.
Norman also occasionally makes Ethel furious, even though she tries to understand her husband. “Ethel is not a saint either, who knows what stupid things come out of his mouth. In fact, all the characters in the play are verbal monsters who pick on each other,” Herala describes.
When Chelsea arrives for the summer after many years of breakup with her husband and his son, the first thing Norman says is: “Look, our little chubby.” Comedy is created when the characters try to cope with such situations with dignity.
“At first, I started to argue that I’m going to give it back, I’m going to leave here too. I realised that I can’t do it without an actor-to-actor competition,” Herala says.
Characters are sought and built throughout the rehearsal season. Laitala says that he will try to delay the completion of the role for as long as it is possible for the co-actor. You shouldn’t lock things in too early so that you don’t start acting.
“It’s not enough to repeat what you’ve memorized night after night, you have to breathe life into every performance. What the performance will be like also depends a lot on the audience. The actors take the performance in the direction they want, but at its best, it happens with the audience,” Laitala explains.
However, Kultalampi is not a multi-layered drama about a man’s aging and illness.
“What makes the play special is that even though this was written in the 70s, the author gives a long scene to a mother and daughter. They both get to process their lives,” Herala says.
Even Norman becomes more human when he gets to do things with a little boy. She enjoys spending time and exchanging ideas with the child.
Ethel and Chelsea, on the other hand, feel a little jealous that they are not as important to Norman. “I’ve never pretended to be jealous of a child before,” Herala says.
At first, she felt that playing a housewife older than herself felt strange anyway. Herala does not remember playing a role where a person would dust and clean before.
“I don’t know many roles – except for the Colonel – that I would have thought at first that this is not for me or that I don’t know how to do this. I had to go to an area that is not self-evident,” Herala says.
She found something to identify with in a long marriage, which she herself has had behind her. “Observations and sensations were found closer than I thought.”
Although Norman and Ethel are sometimes mean to each other, they still love each other. Otherwise, the relationship wouldn’t have lasted so long. “It has been interesting to look for the places where this love can be seen,” Laitala says.
“There is a dichotomy in all of these characters, which makes the play interesting and certainly relatable to some viewers,” Herala says.
“It’s rare to get to act in such a multi-layered drama at this age, and I’m grateful that I got this opportunity,” Laitala says.
Written in May 2022.
Ida Henritius