“My anxiety is like a…
We asked the visiting theatre group Blaue Frau to introduce themselves. It became a work of art and a small essay about anxiety.
When we went to the Theatre Academy, we had to choose a poem during the first semester that we would work with during our recording lessons. One of our fellow students chose one whose first lines are: “My anxiety is like a brushy forest, where bloody birds scream.” This poem became like a mantra for us during our studies, we threw ourselves with the meaning, both when we felt at our worst and when we felt at our best. For me, that line became a way to survive my years at the Theatre Academy, it put words to the unspoken but at the same time could lighten the mood and make the whole group burst out laughing, if someone said the sentence during a particularly pressured or difficult situation.
Anxiety was, in the 90s and even into the 2000s, something that was not talked about in the same way that anxiety and mental illness are talked about and discussed today. In a way, we were pioneering when we, the women at the Theatre Academy, said that we felt bad, that we couldn’t cope, that our anxiety was like a ragged forest. No one cheered when we openly criticized the education and the patriarchal and sexist structures that contributed to our anxiety. It was rather the opposite, we were hard and took up too much space, our anxiety was really a ragged forest, a forest that many people thought we should leave alone and not go into. The bloody birds really screamed, and it wasn’t the world’s funniest chorus of birds.
But we set foot in that forest. We refused to let it be, despite calls from many quarters.
All the artistic works we have since created, first with our Nordic drag king group Subfrau and then with Blaue Frau, have been based on the desire to create. But desire cannot exist if there is no sadness, I think so. For me, the deepest laughter comes from places that also contain sadness and anger, frustration and anger.
When we now enter Nina Hemmingsson’s world for the third time, both Joanna and I have been in therapy for several years, we have talked about anxiety and how we feel, perhaps as much as we have talked about art and theater. Together, we have tried to understand where our anxiety comes from and what we can do once it is in our bodies. We have many days when we don’t feel the anxiety, but then suddenly, for some reason, it’s back. Then Nina Hemmingsson’s world is always a place that provides both calm and laughter. Our anxiety is still a ragged forest, but we don’t walk there alone and it’s no longer just the birds that scream, we scream with them and we laugh with them. Welcome into our and Nina Hemmingsson’s forest. It is full of anxiety but also full of joy.
Text: Sonja Ahlfors – Blaue Frau
PS I: Lyrics by Gunnar Lundkvist are also included in the performance. Gunnar Lundkvist has created the series about Klas Katt, there is also a lot of anxiety, i.e. a strong recommendation from us.
PS II: “My anxiety is like a risig skog” is a poem by Pär Lagerkvist that is part of the collection Anxiety from 1916.