”I’ve Given a Lot of Thought to Weakness”

Director Tuija Kokkonen about her performance Watershed in Kiasma Theatre.

>> What does the word ”experimental” mean to you? Would you use it to describe what you do?

Experimental is a good word, although perhaps a bit overused. I do appreciate the attitude of experimenting, which is embedded deep in human nature. You can see that when watching a small child: it has a cart with two stones and then takes three steps pushing the cart and takes one of the stones away, takes another three steps and adds two stones, takes yet another three steps and then empties the load. This might as well be a scene from a performance you could call experimental, but this is what a human being first begins to do: to study the world, slowly and carefully. Yet the word ‘experimental’ needs a proper wash, for it is also an instrument of mockery. I haven’t used that word to refer to my own works. I have preferred “contemporary theatre” or “contemporary performing arts” instead.

>> What is “contemporary theatre” then?

To me, contemporary theatre is a more comprehensive term than experimentalism. Of course, you might ask if it covers all theatre that is made today – I don’t think it does. Theatre that is more tightly bound to traditions is something different. Contemporary theatre involves the process of seeking something new in terms of subject matter, form or techniques, and a wish to explore today’s world through a new method of analysis.

>> Why do contemporary theatre, isn’t traditional theatre enough for you?

Good for you if it is enough, there’s plenty to see! I don’t base what I do on experimentalism as such, it rises from a need to comprehend our time and life. I have found many performances classified as contemporary theatre or experimental as more insightful and compelling, being connected to today’s world in a more profound way than traditional performances, which as such may be superb and which I sometimes watch with great pleasure.

>> What is the difference between contemporary and traditional theatre?

It’s impossible to put your finger on it exactly. There are many features that may be different or may not. Even after some changes have taken place, the trend could go back to traditions, but when the same thing is placed in a different context altogether, you are dealing with something new. The awareness of the context of performance is stronger in contemporary theatre. It is actually one level of dramaturgy, you might say.

Institution

There are many links between contemporary theatre and contemporary art, but the former lacks the institutional position of the latter. I don’t know about institutions, but production structures are much called for. At the moment, the situation is quite impossible. Contemporary theatre is mostly done outside institutions on a free-lance basis, and the conditions are becoming unbearable, as most creators are getting middle-aged and you can no longer work just for the fun of it without being paid. It is high time some kind of production house was established.

>> Wouldn’t an institution also involve the possibility of dialogue, not just money and facilities?

Yes. And there is a crying need for that. Has the lack of it influenced the reception of contemporary theatre?
It’s the same old story: the larger the institution, the more important its output is valued. Weak, vulnerable production structures – be they deliberately chosen or not – are not considered equal. They just occupy a niche somewhere. Moreover, there is a lack of explanatory, interpreting discourse. In Kiasma, for example, there are a lot of people who are able to produce discourse on contemporary art, but there is no one doing that for contemporary theatre. Even criticism, which might be able to do just that, is getting increasingly slight. This kind of intermediary discourse would be truly necessary.

>> Has the lack of discourse affected what you do?

On a concrete level it has meant that you have to produce that discourse yourself. Of course you can only do that to a certain extent, as you’re fully occupied with the current performance. You can only guess how much that influences how many are in the audience and the reception, I should think it has a lot of influence. I reckon that contemporary theatre is much easier to follow than people tend to think. The attitudes tend to be based on mere preconceptions – and this also applies to professionals in the field. Not many people actually see the performances. The rest merely suppose, assume and harbour preconceptions.

>> What kind of career have you had in theatrics and as a director?

I used to be a playwright. I never consciously began to concentrate on contemporary theatre. In the early ‘80s when I started, I used to think of things like this: what if there was no plot or what if the characters had no character. My ideas came from the world in which I lived. I was often told that you can’t do that. It was impossible to find a Finnish director interested in the same things. I also had a lot of ideas about what the performances should be like, and in rehearsals I found myself advising the director all the time. So I got this idea that perhaps I should step out myself. But it took years before I began to call myself a director. It was a wonderful experience to work with other people.

Watershed

>> What is the origin of the title?

It was pouring down in Helsinki when I began to plan the series. One of the roads caved in and basements were flooded. I read somewhere that this was because the city was completely paved and the water couldn’t be absorbed. It was a shock to realise that I was living on a piece of paved land. I thought that this applied to everything: what comes in should be able to go out. The machinery is so delicate. First, I found the watershed to be a fascinating metaphor – in the Hamlet of the first version I treated the family as a watershed: the places that pour and those that take in and those which give nothing out. In the second memo it was the actual subject.

>> Tell us about the history of Watershed. I’d rather tell something about Maus & Orlovski.

I planned that in 1995 and 1996, when we started rehearsing. I thought that it would be a good idea to rehearse a performance longer than the usual two months in a theatre. You can’t get anywhere in that time, especially when it comes to physical exercises and ex-plorations. Then we launched a research project Maus & Orlovski – memos on love. The project we did was so large that it would have been sad to let it go to waste. With regard to performing, I was searching for a way to make a memorandum format – I love notebooks. In visual arts that is an easy format. I hate it that you can’t turn pages in theatre! I was interested in lightening up the structure of the performance. I was on the lookout for both production methods and light, responsive forms of performance.

After the first series, with performances all around Helsinki, I began planning Watershed with the same group. Yet I found that the first M&O series went too far from theatre, I wondered if it was still recognisable and called theatre. Was my act of naming potent enough, was it credible? I felt that in order to continue I had to return to the nucleus of power. To choose verbal drama and the most canonised play, Hamlet, was a conscious strategy. Kiasma was ideal for this plan, as this is the centre of artistic power – true, for visual arts, but here theatre becomes visible in a different way. And it was the only venue suitable for us in the theatre field, we weren’t exactly offered a stage by the National Theatre – not that we asked for one!

We aimed at a “work in progress”, working with the same people, contents, means of expression and materials for a longer period. I was interested in finding an intermediate form between eternity, forming a group, that is, and a one-time thing. It is a waste to throw away a performance. I think that we should consciously test what continues and what is interesting to develop.

The first memo on freedom dealt with Hamlet through a conscious frame story. It studied weakness and strength and what that means in a play: strong principal characters and men or weak minor characters and women, strong soliloquies and trivial remarks, and repeating this structure in our culture. Our play ended when the main characters exited, there were no more soliloquies. I realised that it was the minor characters in the band of players that were interesting, those who Hamlet called spaniels, because they were so inactive, standing there in their wigs, saying nothing. I remembered them, I liked their company, they were magical. I liked their modesty. They had class C or D roles – in theatre you would be paid by this classification.
One object of research in Watershed was what kind of subject or operator different structures produce – an Aristotelian machinery like Hamlet produces a certain type – and what happens when the authority is broken, as in the first performance. What can happen after that? I was interested in knowing what these minor characters might do and if you can make a performance that does not focus on interpersonal relations, without actors on an ego trip. What could freedom of egocentrism, or even human-centredness, be?

Then I wrote a text on the watershed of the Vantaa river. The form was that of a concert, but the music mostly involved rhythms, speech was approached through music, and the instruments were the rustle of a weeping fig, breathing, stomping and such. What happens if you deliberately diminish things? What happens to minor characters, whose reflective surface and authority has been broken? After the initial terror you may find a soft, yet unnamed area. In my opinion the second part was this area. It was left weak and fragile for a purpose. It had no meta structure, and it took some effort to leave that out! This gave rise to another set of interesting questions.

It was interesting to follow how the weakness was received – by becoming touched, by kicking and discussing, among other things.

I’ve given a lot of thought to weakness. I am continuously interested in lightening up and diminishing, and in the deliberate process of making yourself weak as an aesthetic, ethical and political choice. I think weakness is what we should pay attention to right now. Social divisions are becoming deeper all the time. Weakness is what we most fear and loathe. But if you don’t want to speak on the behalf of the weak, or others in general, how can you speak about it? One method is making yourself deliberately weak. I have done that for a long time, but recently I’ve become more aware of how you can present that as a conscious choice. I’m interested in creating a performance playing on the borderline of whether it is even a performance and how long it can remain a performance. A performance so weak that you can hardly call it a performance.

>> And we’ll see that in the third part?

I should certainly hope so. Unless it dissolves in the air before that!

Kaija Kaitavuori
Educational curator, Kiasma