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Note: No longer in repertoire!
Cast: Laura Birn, Heidi Herala, Aku Hirviniemi, Jarkko Lahti,
Jari Pehkonen, Aarno Sulkanen, Martti Suosalo, Jari Virman
Director: Heidi Räsänen
Set and costumes: Karmo Mende
Sound design: Tuomas Fränti
Lights: Teppo Saarinen
Sound: Ari-Pekka Saarikko
Musician: Kiureli Sammallahti
UNLOADING THE BURDEN OF GENERATIONSThe Tampere Theatre has Leea Klemola’s play Kokkola in the repertoire. In the Helsinki City Theatre’s play Heartland , we are also in Kokkola and speak the Kokkola dialect throughout the play.
Read moreKOKKOLA, FOGGY WITH FAITH AND LIQUORKokkola could represent almost any small Finnish place. At the Helsinki City Theatre’s Studio Pasila, it is the setting of Ari-Pekka Lahti’s play Heartland and part of his own history. Sydänmaa had its premiere in mid-September.Humility is a true Finnish virtue that children have been brought up to do by taking away their beliefs at home and at school. This is also the case in Heartland, where people with cerebral palsy are constantly reminded of their disability. And where the future genetics studies of a boy who moves to Helsinki to study are complete nonsense. Where the children are nothing and neither are the wives.The father is frosted by liquor and the mother by faith, which is admittedly shaky and can be applied for one’s own purposes. In the lives of those who grew up in the 1980s, memories come up with both a red Honda Monkey and a tube bag from 1983.The story goes back a long way, from the family’s hundred-year history. About the Civil War. About the execution of the Red. When a brother is forced to watch his brother die of frostbite.
Read moreA new generation’s heartbeat plays in the heartland
Read moreLOST GENERATIONS Suddenly, there is a plethora of exciting, newly written Finnish drama that handles, dissects and deconstructs Finnish life and community life in the theatres of Helsinki. Recently, Pirkko Saisio’s multifaceted interpretation of reification in Today’s Society, Error premiered at the National Theatre. Pasi Lampela’s Tiimi delved into the ego-tripping of the 1980s at the Helsinki City Theatre. Kari Hotakainen’s Punahukka is aktuell på Kom-teatern, Mies kommer – oletko valmi på Forging. And soon there will be the premiere of Mika Myllyaho’s Panic at Ryhmäteatteri. At Q-teatteri, the Four Road will appear up, at Avoimet Ovet Helene and at Teatteri Jurkkas Naisten Drink. A new acquaintance is Ari-Pekka Lahti , who cavalcade, experimental drama Sydänmaa Writes in Finnish drama literature. In a very gloomy, socio-political and critical manner, with elements of irony and parody, Ari-Pekka Lahti addresses the situation of the losers, the the fate of the poor in Kokkola. At the same time, this includes: prejudices and clichés about all things Finnish and Finnishness which is partly deconstructed but also given a tragic relief.The director, Heidi Räsänen , also takes advantage of it ironic-parodic element in his directorial interpretation, where The role holders often step out of their roles, comments events, their own reactions, disappointments and works as a storyteller. The main narrator is the play’s son in the family that is depicted. In addition, the fictitious son, engaged interpreted by Jarkko Lahti, also a playwright. The Son and his sister, in Laura Birn’s strongly integrated interpretation, break out of a stagnant, religiously indoctrinated life in Kokkola and travel to Helsinki, which also does not show considered to be some kind of paradise. The father, in Martti Suosalo’s tragicomic interpretation, has become an alcoholic. Heidi Herala is the mischievous mother, who vacillates between fundamentalist religion and a new man with a mink farm. An Ostrobothnian dialect is spoken in the play, which further marks the overridden affiliation. There is hope in time between everything from the crises of 1918 to The life of a mink farmer during the second half of the 20th century. There is a great-grandfather, a grandfather who belonged to the Reds, intensely chanting priests and soldiers from the White side. Karmo Mendes ‘ ingenious décor, a small log cabin that eventually is getting bigger and bigger, is another ironic element in the tragic family fate that is depicted.
Read moreA PLAY FOR THE WHOLE OF FINLAND An invitation to all those who are able to do so: I’ll go to the Helsinki City Theatre’s studio Pasila to see Heartland. Those who live far away from the capital will hopefully get their chance later, because I wholeheartedly wish this new play a long life all over Finland.Thirty-year-old Ari-Pekka Lahti’s debut text is set in the plains of Northern Ostrobothnia, but speaks to the entire nation. Lahti writes about four generations of men and women and stretches his time span from the years of the Civil War to the option Finland of the new millennium. My grandfather’s father is a preacher, my grandfather is a communist and my father is a drunkard. The boy searches in vain for himself in Helsinki.According to the advertising and the programme leaflet, Heartland appears as a gravely serious drama about the darkest aspects of Finnishness. The undertone is heart-wrenchingly raw, but humour flourishes both in Lahti’s text and in Heidi Räsänen’s inventive direction. Martti Suosalo, Heidi Herala and others seem to enjoy twisting the thick Ostrobothnian dialect.The most unique thing about Heartland is its way of combining new and old. The play is modern and experimental in form, and deeply Finnish in its roots. The writer, who does not shy away from the personal, lives uncomfortably in the present and tries to understand the work of his fathers.
Read morePEOPLE ARE LONGING FAR FROM THE PLAINS OF KOKKOLA At the end of the play Heartland, a brother and a dead sister fumble for the words of a familiar tango. Gradually, the song grows stronger: “Somewhere beyond the open sea there is a land where a wave lapps to the distant shore of happiness.” My throat is choking, because a person’s longing for real life goes deep. Tango is an interpreter of the most sensitive emotions of Finnish longing – as are many other songs. Playwright Ari-Pekka Lahti’s warmth and tenderness are impressive as he weaves his family’s story onto the stage. If a young man under the age of thirty has such compassion and understanding for the troubled journey of past generations, there is no doubt that he will find the meaning of his own life in newspaper interviews.
Read moreIn the heartland from one generation to the next WING BREAKS AROUND THE WORLD Ari-Pekka Lahti from Kokkola has written a very personal play, the story of his own family. It covers four generations, from a great-grandfather who ended up in a Red prison camp to a pair of siblings lost with the present day. The setting is a small town on the outskirts of Kokkola.
Read moreIN THE LAND OF WINGLESS WILLOW GROUSEAri-Pekka Lahti writes Ostrobothnian mythology as a play with the primal power of a preacher Kokkola is becoming a dramatically mythical place, as it has already played the lead role in two new Finnish plays this year. First, Leea Klemola wrote her harrowingly absurd play Kokkola, now the youngest generation dramatist Ari-Pekka Lahti describes the story of his own family in Kokkola and Central Ostrobothnia in his play Sydänmaa. Apart from the Kokkola background, these two works have nothing in common other than talking about the h. Heartland is not really a play at all in the traditional sense of the term. The touching work chains together rough biographies, stories about life in the wilderness from the perspective of different generations. It is like a swelling ballad about wingless “willow grouses” flapping in stubble fields and alder groves, or a revival meeting where devils are driven out of people with the power of a notch casting a spell.
Read moreHEARTLAND IS OUTRAGEOUSLY GOOD! The ghost song was a success. In the auditorium, people laughed and cried with genuine tears. HEARTLAND is something completely different and appealing for the first time in a long time. The premiere of Studio Pasila at the Helsinki City Theatre on 15 September will be remembered even after the applause has subsided.
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