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In spring 1998, the English Department of the University of Helsinki organised a course that was to introduce students to mystery plays, i.e. dramatic stories drawn from the Bible, which were performed by trade guilds during Whitsuntide in the 15th and 16th century. The course was organised in cooperation with the History Department, Sibelius Academy and the British Council. Its main goal was to produce two of the Chester cycle plays. "The Fall of Lucifer" told the story of the angel Lucifer as he tried to take God's place and "The Harrowing of Hell" depicted Jesus saving the patriarchs from the depths of hell. Both of these plays involved quite a few people from the current Thespians Anonymous. Chester Plays can, therefore, be mentioned here as a pre-Thespian production and also as one of the main reasons for us getting together and founding Thespians Anonymous.
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After endless talks in bars that no longer are, it was agreed that our new production, to be started in Sept of 1998, would be either Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream or a dramatisation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. What we eventually found ourselves doing, though, was neither of these but another Shakespeare comedy, Twelfth Night. This may well be the production that taught us most about making drama, as only a handful of us had any stage experience apart from the Chester plays. Twelfth Night certainly had its moments, what with Katri staggering onstage with toilet paper clinging to her boots and Perttu smiling in his yellow stockings, but the whole process was not altogether painless. Still, it probably set the tone for our future undertakings. 'A great while ago the world begun with a hey, ho, the wind and the rain', as the clown Feste (Tuuli Tahko) would have it.
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A radio play with mysticism, a little magic, murders and the
occult, starring Russian emigrants, British middle class small
town folk, a counterfeit French clairvoyant and the ubiquitous
Count de Saint-Germain. Everyone thinks they know who the
murderer is, but what happens when the supposed murderer is murdered?
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The Importance of Being Earnest was our first "real" play in the sense that we did it quite independently as an organization, and not just like a bunch of acting- and theater-crazy English students. TA had just that fall registered as an organization, and we were all excited about how everything was going to turn out. We had just gotten our "club room" at LT3 and also found a place close by where to practice and perform the play. True to our proven style, we decided once again to go with 70's fashion and plundered our parents' and relatives' basements and old wardrobes. The famous Marimekko flowers were part of our stage scenery, and curiously became very fashionable in the summer to come… We were also quite proud of the fact that our beloved Dr. Chasuble (Anttu Immonen) wore an authentic Anglican priest's outfit.
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With a body count of 19, Shakespeare in Death is TA's bloodiest production to date. Immortal scenes from Hamlet, Antony & Cleopatra, Macbeth, Othello, Henry VI part 2 and Titus Andronicus were performed in true Finnish "kesäteatteri" spirit. It didn't rain.
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Tea, Cakes and Murders, a parody of a stereotypical murder mystery, was the first of our plays that was partly written by one of us. The plot includes strange temporal jumps, surprising revelations of character relationships and, at times, gets pretty slapstick. It was generally a fun production and, being quite short, we had plenty of time for rehearsing it. The play was sort of a warm up for The Real Inspector Hound. Tom Stoppard's classic 1968 play, which wittily turns the country-house whodunnit on its head, breaking down the wall between stage and audience with a fatal piece of audience participation, was directed by Bettina Saarela. Memorable moments include e.g. Moon's (Katri Meronen) urge "stand-ins of the world, stand up!", Birdboot's (Anttu Immonen) pledge "you are my own fluffy bunny-boo", Simon (Teemu Vass) and Cynthia's (Bodil Knuts) wild embrace and Mrs. Drudge's (Stina Halmetoja) frantic floor-scrubbing. In short, it was "a rattling good evening out"! 2001: Mar 31st - Apr 1st Satu Hlinovsky & Andrew Fearn; |
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Dramanistit To start with, there was the name: Thespians Anonymous. This gave us an absurd idea of a self-help group for theatre-addicted people - and on a wider scale - of drama addiction as a social problem. Some members had been enthusiastic about an expansion to the field of film-making, and drama addiction seemed an exciting subject for a fictitious document. The shooting was carried out in the summer of 2001, including sessions at the Academic Bookstore and the restaurant Elite, as well as street interviews of innocent passers-by. An eight-minute version of the video was entered for an open competition in January of 2002. Alas, we did not win.
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We finally got round to tackling this Shakespeare classic... [click image for more]
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