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Finnish drama on the road to conquering the worldIt is more than likely that Finnish drama will invade international stages on a vast scale in the coming years. Theatres will fight over who gets the rights to the latest play whenever new Finnish drama comes out. Every scene and line will be snatched fresh from the author’s hands. And as soon as the playwright has got a word down on paper, it will be instantly translated into numerous languages and accompanied by chants of joy. In a triumphal procession the Finnish play will be carried to all corners of the world with a smile on its face, since joy shared is always joy doubled. But this world invasion will, by no means, be warlike conquest. On the contrary, because as Finnish texts are ravishing the crowds abroad, there will also be international drama from far and near flooding onto Finnish stages like bright spring streams gleaming in sunlight. “How on earth could we have been so simple” will the abundantly praised and awarded plays say to themselves whilst staring into the sunset in some beautiful corner of Europe, “to have thought that drama is in some way…or in any way could…or even in the least possible way… be confined to any geographical, let alone linguistic boundaries!” There is still some way to go, however, to this serene sunset scenery. We must be brave, yet humble and wipe those airborne castles away for a while. We must start from the very beginning. Juha Jokela’s MOBILE HORROR which gained wide success in Finland is a comedy about a small IT firm’s fight for survival in the world of mergers after the burst of the dot-com bubble. Tuomas Timonen is one of Finnish drama’s freshest and most productive voices in recent years. ELÄMÄNMÄKI is a historical drama about the illnesses and cures of our time. Minna Harjuniemi’s KYMEN TAJU depicts life in a Finnish small town which has a big paper factory, a wide river and which is far from everything, yet closer to America than to Europe. This vanguard of Finnish dramatist will set out on their international conquest from Q-teatteri’s small stage, Puoli-Q, on a most unexpected moment; on Sunday morning at 11 a.m. The public readings of these Finnish plays will, of course, be given in English, since that’s the lingo we all know. And why that is, I wonder?
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