Director’s Word – I Chose You
Time moves us
The events of the play I Chose You begin in 2003. Twenty years is a blink of an eye in the history of mankind. Still, legislation and the general attitude towards sexual minorities have changed in Western countries more than perhaps ever before. It’s like falling asleep in one reality and waking up in another.
Laura Lehtola’s novel I Chose You (Otava 2020) was the first novel I read that dealt with this change up close, in an everyday and recognizable way. While reading the novel, I also saw the generational experience of my adulthood vividly and wistfully: “I’ve experienced that too. There I was, too. I didn’t know that either. That’s where I stayed to some extent.”
While reading, I also experienced a surprising pride that arose from under various experiences of shame and being an outsider. Pride in having dared to act without role models in some matter.
When my first child was born, I didn’t know anyone else who had become a parent in a gay marriage. Maybe I didn’t realize it at the time or wanted to care about it, I just wanted to be an ordinary and normative mother and spouse. Only afterwards, when the norm changes, do you realize how alone you have been, and that you are no more.
Director Milja Sarkola