When the past doesn’t leave you alone
A party is held in a fancy house in the villa town, where four teenage boys are guilty of a brutal act of violence.
Years later, 26-year-old Gusten Grippe learns that his old friend is making a film about their youth, the party they held a long time ago, and the crime that took place there.
Gusten – one of the perpetrators of the crime – is forced to return to his youth and the idyllic Villa Town in his memories.
In Pipsa Longa’s adaptation of the play, Gusten acts as the narrator, and the focus is on her story and the events of her youth. The key solution is that Gusten’s character is divided in two: the young and adult Gusten are played by different people.
“The play is built with the logic of memories, and the solutions are airy lyrical. I was amazed at how well this has been dramatised,” says director Riikka Oksanen .
There may be two different levels of reality on stage at the same time, and the older Gusten can engage in a dialogue with the younger self about what happened in the past and what his own responsibility is for the events.
The play is based on Monika Fagerholm’s novel Vem dödade bambi?, published in 2019. It won the Nordic Council Literature Prize and was nominated for the Finlandia Prize.
Beauty and lightness alongside gloom
Oksanen says that the poetically beautiful narrative and language have had a big impact on the genre of the play. “There will be a lot of abstract solutions here, which are more pictures than situations between people.”
Since the play deals with difficult issues for which there may not even be words, Justus Pienmunne’s choreography will play an important role.
“Human bodies on stage seem to be significant things in relation to the subject, because the act of violence is related to the violation of physical integrity,” Oksanen says.
However, the play is not made violent or very realistic. “The human imagination produces such powerful images that there is no need to show such things,” Oksanen explains.
“The subject matter is dark, and there is no reason to lighten the horror of the events, but the viewer does not have to fear that a violent event would be purposefully reveled. As a counterbalance, the visuals and soundscape aim to seek beauty and lightness,” she continues.
Facing moral questions
In the play, the community of Villa Town ignores the victim and focuses on the culprits, who are the sons of wealthy families. They would like to sweep the whole thing under the carpet so that we can move forward.
“There is nothing fair about how acts of violence are handled in the community and how sentences are handed out. Well-off boys get away with it, which raises big moral questions,” Oksanen says.
Who killed bambi? For example, it makes you think about whose experiences and suffering it is customary to bring up when something terrible happens. Who is allowed to remain silent and who should make their voices heard?
With the theme of inequality, the performance expands from this single tragedy to deal with the structures of society more broadly. “It deals with the structures that exist in our reality and that we can also make fairer if we want to,” Oksanen says.
Another thing that speaks to Oksanen in the play is that it makes you feel pity and empathy for characters you shouldn’t feel empathy for. “The performance constantly asks whether the viewer should give mercy or whether we should be completely merciless and whether we have the right to continue living after bad deeds,” Oksanen says.
In Oksanen’s opinion, theatre is at its best when the performance does not offer a clear statement and things are not reduced to good and bad or right and wrong. Such performances challenge one’s own thinking and stay in the mind for a long time.
“In this age, where there are a lot of black-and-white worldview settings, it is interesting to make theatre that does not give simple answers, but forces you to face your own morality.”
Text by Ida Henritius.