KRISTIAN: Yesterday many of us saw Nielsen’s performance about H.C.Andersen and Marius Ivaškevičius’ play Madagascar. Although they were very different I felt that there was one theme that was very similar in both of them. It concerned... how would a say... a concept or a feeling of patriotism or nationalism? How does it feel to be a citizen of a certain country? Well, you already gave us your monologue...

JOHANNA: Sorry... could you tell us something about the performance because not everybody here has seen it?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Well, first there was this not-so-flattering film about this Danish guy who wanted to make it big all over the world and really didn’t have any success at all. At the end of the film he returned home and was greeted by a man - one of the main characters of the absolute right-wing party in Denmark. He says the most incredible things, for example, that the reason why Danish people have so much stress is because they have to carry the burden of all the foreign people who come to live in Denmark from all over the world. He was waving the flag and greeting my main character when he came home... And then I physically come on stage, take off my hat and say to the audience that this is all about the feeling and the emotion that everybody knows, although somebody might say that a national thing doesn’t say anything to them but everybody knows this feeling of “this is my country, this is my land and that... you cannot deny it has a big importance in who you are, which landscapes you grew up in... and which... climate! And culture... but physically too.” There are all these things, but it is very difficult to handle them these days because... how can you - on the one hand - love the place you come from and on the other hand - not exclude anyone? I don’t have a solution. I stage solutions and they are... what I, in a positive way, would call provocations. Because they call for answers - or reactions - from the audience.

JOHANNA: So, did you manage to start a discussion there in Denmark?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Oh yes.

JOHANNA: What kind of reactions did you get?

DAS BECKVÆRK: The first quick reactions from the critics were that at the end of the performance when I came on stage they thought that ah, this is the real Klaus Beck-Nielsen now! Now he speaks from his heart what he really means! They didn’t say it directly but what they meant was that all the things before and around that monologue were merely...

KRISTIAN: Art.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Art. Meaning: nothing or everything.

JOHANNA: So they saw you as a right-wing person?

DAS BECKVÆRK: No - they didn’t know how to put me there because the other things we have done at the Beckvaerk are so far from having anything to do with this mainstream and the right wing, which is very traditionalistic.

KRISTIAN: And then there was Madagascar... I think the play was about... it was a story about the new-born Lithuania. A boy is born. And there’s also a girl. I think it’s like Adam and Eve trying to create new Lithuania. And the way they try to create new Lithuania is to emigrate the whole country. They try to find the Promised Land from Africa and other places from where they could remove all Lithuanians. For me it was a very absurd and intelligent comedy about those very questions the Lithuanian people are thinking about at the very moment.

HEIKKI: I saw it in Latvia and it was the first time they went abroad and they were worried how it would be understood - but it was a huge success.

JOHANNA: I would like to ask our visitors from Moscow about a play that we haven’t seen yet, September.com - because it also comments on the very recent history - in Russia. What was the reaction of the audience to this play that deals with the situation in Chechnya?

MIHAIL: The text of this performance is taken solely from internet discussions so it is very documentary in nature. And they didn’t take any texts from the politics or the military or journalists. Just from ordinary people. And there are texts on what normal people speak about with each other every day. So they are texts you can never hear on TV or radio or read in newspapers. And the reactions to this play... they were very strange. In the premier in Moscow the public was quite aggressive because they felt the play wasn’t nationalistic enough, not “pro-Russia” enough. On the other hand the reaction in Nancy in France - at the theatre festival where there were people from Chechnya - the reaction was quite the opposite. They felt that it was the theatre of the Russian government performing on government’s money. And that kind of two-folded reaction was for me a sign of success.
   
ELENA: The principle in our theatre is - like Fassbinder said - if you can’t change things, you can at least write about them. Our target was not to blame or judge the people whose texts we used but to let them testify. The play is dedicated to what happened in Beslan - and that conflict has very long roots in history. This woman from Dagestan says in our play: “Listen to the Caucasians, don’t believe the Russians. We are nothing for them. I have seen an announcement saying you should not give apartments to the Caucasians, Vietnamese or Chinese. Can you imagine that they are comparing us to those dirty people! But all the decisions are actually made by the dirty little group of Jews in Moscow!” We were not very surprised by these kinds of comments because all these nationalities that are now leaving Moscow have very much pride but also a lot of problems. That was one of the reasons why we made this play. But the left-wing intellectuals in Nancy were very upset about these kinds of comments. This woman whose comments you just heard, she was suffering from the Russian chauvinism - but, at the same time she herself is a very racist and anti-Semitic person. That appears to be difficult for some people to understand. Even though we deal with this very political material, our target is mainly artistic. We are interested in the point at which the victim becomes the aggressor.

ANTTI: Do you have different nationalities in your group?

ELENA: I myself live in Moscow but I have Grusian blood, Ukranian blood and Jewish blood. Moscow is basically a very international city because there are many people who have these mixed backgrounds.

JOHANNA: Can you say when and why this recent racism has begun to grow?

ELENA: Many people here probably know that during the Soviet Union the problems were there but they weren’t talked about. At that time, to be intellectual, it was impossible to be racist. It was simply not accepted. Nowadays this same elite says things that you here would probably be amazed to hear from people that are considered intellectuals. Nowadays, in Moscow when you go and visit your friend you’ll probably hear in the evening that it would be very good to send all the black people out of Moscow. The reason might be that in Moscow and Russia we are going through such big changes that nobody can handle them. In many Russian cities many people have come from the former states of the Soviet Union and those people are also behaving very aggressively. That goes on and all of a sudden something terrible happens. The last conflict was when a girl killed an Armenian taxi driver who tried to rape her in Moscow. There were lots of manifests for her and all the Russian fascists were giving her back-up. One reason for this was that this man who was killed had a very rich family and this family was trying to buy the court. These kinds of things make the society split and you can’t find solutions that would satisfy both sides. Usually after our performances we have discussions and they are very interesting.

JOHANNA: Do you ever have discussions after your performances?

DAS BECKVÆRK: It depends. At a certain point in the performance I say that people from every nationality should gather around their national values to find a good nationality. And having said this, then I sometimes say: “I think all the nationalities should contemplate the idea of good... hate. I think we all have to gather around the certain Danish or Finnish or Russian hate.” And then I go on this way. Because in Denmark we haven’t had a war in a long time and people - they behave politely, and the intellectuals... perhaps like in the Soviet Union where things were strange but somehow stable, you could keep your tie on and in a way tie your nationalism in. And then it takes a long time before people dare to say anything. Afterwards I have had people come to me and say “I think it was really true what you said!” or “I was just about to shout when you said all this bullshit...” “Well why didn’t you shout?” I said... Because you don’t do it in a performance. It might be art!

JOHANNA: And during your performance, our Heikki would have liked to shout so much... 

DAS BECKVÆRK: What would you have liked to shout?

JOHANNA: Go ahead, do it now, Heikki!

HEIKKI: “Call the security man, please!”  I’m relieved to hear you sometimes get bored, saying what you say there, because for me it was so boring, so obvious... you were repeating the same...

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes. It was rhetoric, it was Martin Luther King or...

HEIKKI: Yes. That’s good.

DAS BECKVÆRK: My work is always putting questions to questions to questions and...

HEIKKI: But yesterday you were a little bit careful?

DAS BECKVÆRK: I always try to stop there where you, in the audience, sit there and say to yourselves: “come on, man...” I would like to perform here five times and see what would happen then.

HEIKKI: What I liked in this performance was that... I think it had a glimpse of the future too - a thing I don’t often see: what is going to happen to artists or to the national identity in the future.

ROLF: When you are playing in Denmark - is it true that people are singing this nationalistic song with you in the performance?

DAS BECKVÆRK:  Yes. That was fantastic. This is also rhetoric. Because people, most people... they actually sang the song with me in the end. They liked the song. Or it was nice to sing with other people. Or perhaps they also thought of the true things that were in the speech. Sometimes it’s not nice to wake up every morning in China or Egypt but suddenly be – home. And they were singing and then suddenly this giant flag of Denmark came down on the stage - and it’s really a copyright of the Danish National Party - so when it comes down people suddenly realise “oh what did I sing just now...”

ROLF: I was really provoked... I was... almost shocked. There was also irony in your play, but in the end I felt no irony at all, and I thought that with the situation in Denmark, with this strong right-wing party, people sitting there, singing that nationalistic song... I was really...

KRISTIAN: For me it was the funniest thing there. The big flag... I’m a little nationalistic myself. Finland is the best country for me and I love the language and if somebody comes I will take a rifle and... defend my country. (Laughter.)
In that sense the character who says these patriotic things and there is all this irony around, throughout the performance... so... you know, a person who says that I love my country is right away ridiculous, nowadays, at least in these Scandinavian countries. 

ERIK: Hearing this about Moscow and comparing this with the riots in Paris - there is suddenly a bigger picture drawn. It is also frightening. This “we-and-those” question is important and I think there’s a big conflict going on...  For example in Finland there is this big division between “we” and “those” so I’m not quite sure if it’s a question of nationality in the end. Because - what we have seen in Moscow and Paris is more a question of white people and dark people.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Social...

ANTTI: Economical...

ERIK: Yes. Socio-economical and I think “we”, sitting around this table, “we” don’t have a common language. We use some kind of crippled English... but anyway it is a kind of “we” here. And I think we, around this table, have more in common with each other than say... me and people from Northern Finland.

JOHANNA: I have a question for you. I think one interesting thing with September.doc and The Last European and National Brand was that they are very contemporary and very political and... The question is if you feel it is possible to make contemporary theatre in Finland or if we are more in the direction of history or in the direction of looking at, for example, male panic problems?

ERIK: I think the problem here is that we can do any kind of theatre we like and whatever we do - it doesn’t have any meaning. For me theatre in Finland at this moment is something so... small, and politically indifferent. You can make any statement and it’s like “all right, whatever...” So... for different reasons I’ve been doing quite a lot of opera lately and... (Laughter.) Well, you laugh! But if you would like to do political theatre, you should do it in opera, really! Because that is where people from the government go to.

KRISTIAN: I think it’s possible here. This festival, for example, is a medicine for that problem. In Finland we, theatre makers, are too traditional in the sense that we stay inside the houses, inside our certain groups and certain opinions. We are just learning to argue. For me it’s about going out of the building... off the stage and then getting it on the stage.

MIKA: Yesterday I saw Madagascar and was very jealous... For me the most important thing there was that you were handling the theme of who you are, at this very moment... what kind of people you are. And the way you used the metaphor of your country and your people. I haven’t seen this kind of a way of handling our country or who we are in Finland. I hope someone wrote this kind of a play here! I think at this moment we are talking about very individual things, for example in my play, Panic, I talk a lot about what kind of problems I have in this society at this moment. I think they did plays that also dealt with the metaphor of the nation here in the 70s. But it was also very political and doesn’t concern our times.

HEIKKI: In Finland in the 70s there were artists who were criticising this “nationality” - mostly left-wing artists. Every time there has been a group that is strongly against something. Nationalists, at the turn and the beginning of the century, were against Russia and their emperor. And the left-wing people were against the right-wingers or the conservatives. And... I think in Finland we still have this kind of a rule that everybody has to agree. We are always afraid to lose the consensus. I think if we now did something, a service to our national feeling, it would be having several opinions, a courage to form an opinion of what is happening here. This is such a little country that those with different opinions are put aside very easily.

JOHANNA: Or silenced.

HEIKKI: We really would need braver directors who could do their own “Finnish flag”.

DAS BECKVÆRK: I think there is, in Denmark, among the artists, a need to do something in this direction because the only way the nationalists have been represented in theatre is that they have been laughed at, made ridiculous. I think that’s a very poor way of making art. Before, in the 20th century, art was staging many utopias, but now - it’s these nationalists that are staging utopias. It might be something very primitive and simple, but if the only reaction is that you react and not produce anything, it is bad - everybody can make a person look ridiculous if the person is not here. In many ways it would be good if the Danish or Finnish flag had no meaning at all because the meaning constantly produces all these problems of the “we-they” thing. And the other problem here is that talking about these issues we often refer to the “original”, like “I’m originally a painter.” As if you were born out of your mother with a paintbrush in your hand!

JOHANNA: We saw Madagascar, a play you’ve written, yesterday. But we only saw one half of it. How do you feel, as a writer, that they showed us just half of it?

MARIUS: I felt OK. I get used to it. In Lithuania they made only two thirds of Madagascar. Maybe it’s a Lithuanian way of doing theatre. The biggest attention there goes to the director’s work and acting.

JOHANNA: But you still wrote the whole thing and had a story to tell there. How does it end?

MARIUS: Well, I understand that it would have been like five hours long and in Lithuania only Nekrosius can do that long performances. At the end of the play there are many things... the characters go to New York, Hollywood, Madagascar, then they come back home...

DAS BECKVÆRK: No, that’s my story!

(Laughter.)

MARIUS: The main hero and King Kong... in the play, it’s our famous basketball player who played in the NBA before WWII and worked in Hollywood as a technician - and the main hero met him in Hollywood because he needed this... he just wanted to see this big piece of... a Lithuanian! He wanted to bring him home as something very special. But in the end it’s year 1940 when they leave the country with boats and the hero thinks that the whole country follows them with boats and submarines and now the Lithuanians will inhabit the seas because there is not enough land for them - but then they notice that nobody is following them.

JOHANNA: It seems that you are looking at the present situation in Lithuania through history.

MARIUS: Yes. Because it’s so similar. It’s also interesting that today we talk about nationalism. In Lithuania you never say it’s about nationalism. You say it’s about idealism. But when I’m abroad I can admit it’s a little bit about nationalism.

(Laughter.)

JOHANNA: Yesterday you said it’s not political. But for instance the scene in your play where they talk about the moon smashing Russia... we in Finland see that as something quite political.

(Laughter.)

MARIUS: Yes, there can be some parts that are political but I cannot call it “political theatre”.

HEIKKI: In my opinion, in your play The Close City I also think, the Lithuanian society is very much there. People are living in double identities. In the play, a very ordinary Swedish family has quite a weird passion to go from Malmö to Copenhagen. The husband goes there every weekend, and when the bridge is built, the wife, who is afraid of the sea, can also go there. And something very radical happens to her life there. She turns into a prostitute. And somehow this double identity, being in two worlds at the same time... I can feel in Lithuania... something has happened so fast that people have these double identities. And somehow this play is also very acute here in Finland, where Estonia and Tallinn are coming closer and closer all the time. But you know your plays can’t be political because they are so metaphorical!

ERIK: But then again what is a political play?

JUKKA: This Monday we were talking about this international market of art and you were saying that in Europe people want to see this “exotic Lithuanian theatre” - and your plays have been touring in Europe. Do you think there is a danger of becoming a prostitute?

MARIUS: Of course...

JUKKA: So that in a way you must know what people are looking for in Lithuanian plays and performances...

MARIUS: Yes, it really is a danger and even if you can say that you will never do something like that,  for them... but it can come naturally that you just start to think like “them”. With Madagascar I really can’t say that because when I wrote the play and they did the performance, everybody was sure it’s impossible to show it abroad. It’s very local... And all the critics said the same. And then they started to travel with it and now I think the performance has changed – for the worse.

KRISTIAN: Correct me if I’m wrong but I have understood that in Lithuania you have these famous directors and all of them have their own companies and they collect the money from abroad. So the Lithuanian state is also putting money only on that very famous culture.

DIANA: I’m actually working as an actress in this Nekrosius’ theatre who makes these long plays and is famous and everything – as well as in our theatre. Not only with young writers, there is this problem that we don’t have space to play and usually show our plays abroad and only really, really rarely show them in Lithuania. We don’t have a stage and when we want to play we have to rent a stage - and that costs a lot of money.

JOHANNA: Maybe it can also be a problem of finding audience rather than finding space...

MARIUS: No, it is really a problem of space. We have maybe 5% of the theatres you have here in Helsinki. All the space is occupied.

ELINA: When we met Lauris Gundars in Riga, he told us that exactly the same problems exist in Latvia, in Riga: no space and hard to get actors.

ERIK: Yes, we have lots of theatres, lots of theatre-makers but hardly ever anybody goes abroad. Why?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Part of the answer is that there where the money is, are the more stable countries, in Western Europe. There is this international fine-stage-art society who co-produces for example plays by Nekrosius for these different festivals. The reason why they don’t take the Finnish is that... what they want are the conflicts. The very traditional novelists from Belgrad, for example, can also be very popular because they deal with conflict.

HEIKKI: I agree that that can also be a reason. But... I met this Lithuanian woman... she was very drunk but she said that in Lithuania some directors are doing performances especially for the festivals, not for the local public.

TORKIL: I think the situation here in Finland and in Norway looks similar. People get their salaries from the city theatres. There’s no need to go abroad. We eat enough. The need to go abroad, the need to attract new audiences - is not present.

KRISTIAN: Those things are also true but one thing is also that Finland is so expensive. We have the legislation for actors’ salaries and so on. And the schedules are so tight. Not even the Finnish state, although they have this project at high level that “we will invest in taking the Finnish culture abroad!” When the real situation comes - nothing happens.

JOHANNA: Do you travel a lot?

DAS BECKVÆRK: In Denmark we write our theatre’s name ”Das Beckvaerk” but now on 1.1.2006 we’ll fuse with an international company and become ”Das Beckwerk” - as in German. Like any company - that’s the market logic - we have to grow! I think that the market has been saturated with our products and we need to go abroad. The cultural money is - in the Western countries - in this one circle of international festivals and theatres that buy your products... like AOL, Warner, or Universal. In the theatre world you also have this one big international company that includes Theatre Garasjen and... like any company we’ll also start producing cups. International cups that can be used by anyone.

ERIK: In Finland the government invests a lot of money in exporting music. That’s a fact - and almost nothing in exporting theatre. And if we think sort of... strategically, we should think why that is and what we should do.

KRISTIAN: Yes, it’s very important... I was leading a house in Kajaani for almost four years. And during these four years we made three or four trips abroad. The first time we got an invitation, so we went - and came back. I really could see that the self-confidence of our people was growing because they handled the situation abroad... in English or in German or whatever. So I think it was very good for the theatre makers there in Kajaani because I think they got some new power for their everyday work there.

DAS BECKVÆRK: And perhaps it was also good for the content and the forms?

KRISTIAN: Yes, yes.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Of course it is important for us to be here because there are always new ways of people not applauding...

HEIKKI: In the field of the city theatres in Finland, this kind of an act that the theatre moves to an international festival - it’s a miracle. It happens so rarely. It happened in Kajaani three times and in Tampere and Oulu once, but it’s really rare. In a normal Finnish city theatre the schedules are so tight.

ELINA: Correct me if I’m wrong but I think it’s also the festivals. There are often one-man or one-woman shows, or shows with two or three actors - and I think it’s just because of this fact that you can’t travel with a big group.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes there is of course this material reason. But it also has to do with this fact that has been mentioned that the Finnish are dealing with the individual and not like... society. 

HEIKKI: One reason why the Finnish theatre doesn’t travel much is because it’s so much based on the text. Lithuanian theatre for example is more movable because your directors are using visual things and metaphors.

ERIK: What I’m interested in is the widening of our concept of this “we” - so that it would also include our neighbours. 

DAS BECKVÆRK: It would be much easier to produce this effect if there was an earthquake or flood or... than it is from the will...

ERIK: Of course...

DAS BECKVÆRK: And that’s a pity.

KRISTIAN: I also see this discussion and these festivals that we have here and in Riga and Tallinn so that we are creating these working relationships by meeting people, not by money only. The first thing is not the money. The first thing you put on the table is you. Your face. Your silly crippled English. Not the wallet. I mean it could be you (Das Beckvaerk) coming here to do opera.

ERIK: Just be careful.

(Laughter.)

KRISTIAN: This is what I understand as the broadening of “we”.

ERIK: Yes. Exactly. Exactly that. Yes.