Total crisis at Malmö Puppet Theatre.
About the project
In the spring of 2022, Malmö Dockteater presented a theater party in the form of 3 quick theater productions with newly written drama and a foyer filled with art exhibitions and concerts. Two weeks of writing time, two weeks of rehearsal and two actors were the conditions when Elis Monteverde Burrau, Maria Maunsbach and David Wiberg wrote and Frida Röhl, Oskar Thunberg and Erik Holmström directed.
Actors Kajsa Ericsson and Rebecca Plymholt went from French-speaking mimes in A Sketch about Artistic Integrity, to voracious alter-egos of Maria Maunsbach and her Magic Man, where Erik Holmström also jumped into the role of the object itself. David Wiberg and Oskar Thunberg explored texts from their upcoming performance Content, which was to premiere at the Tribunalen later this fall, in the work Sörja. The puppets and interiors in Sörja were borrowed from the performance The New Kingdom, which Malmö Puppet Theatre and Lumor did in collaboration in 2018. An art exhibition was arranged in the foyer in connection with the premieres of each new part in the series, and there were concerts with local Malmö bands.
Neither Elis Monteverde Burrau nor Maria Maunsbach had previously written for the stage and the project inspired them both to continue as screenwriters. Maunsbach's next play will be staged at Folkteatern in Gothenburg in 2023 and Elis Monteverde Burrau has submitted a script to Malmö Dockteater for a new work that we may stage in the future.
Total crisis at Malmö Dockteater also guest-performed at Teater Brunnsgatan Fyra in Stockholm to full houses and it became clear that Malmö Dockteater has an audience outside of Malmö as well.
A sketch about artistic integrity – a small play (a family tragedy) for puppets
By Elis Monte verde Burrau
Malmö Dollteater had the honor of being the first in world history to perform a play by the author, poet and crooner Elis Monteverde Burrau. Burrau was given the task of writing a 20-30 minute play in two weeks that would be performed with puppets.
In a kitchen made of painted cardboard, with coffee makers and flower pots borrowed from Sara Granér’s performance An idiot among us (2018), lives the artist collective Knarkarna. They consist of the male poet, his wife and their child “Gisslan”. They play “un putain de show” about the poet who is offered 100,000 kronor to write a poem for a commercial, his wife who drugs the money and the child Gisslan (a robotic doll in a high chair) who constantly intellectualizes and comments on their various activities and describes in detail his own role as a hostage in the Knarkarna collective.
The text was directly translated into French in Erik Holmström's production and pre-recorded by the actors who then performed the work as mimes with puppet-like movements.
Premiere April 21, 2022
Stockholm premiere August 27, 2022
Participating: Kajsa Ericsson & Rebecca Plymholt
Screenplay: Elis Monteverde Burrau
Direction, set design, sound design: Erik Holmström
Technician, lighting designer, sound design: Adrian Kautsky
Animatronic: Johannes Ekdahl Du Rietz
Sandra Haraldsen: Mask and costume
Production manager, decorator: Ingrid Långström Einarsson
Translation into French: Google company
Pronunciation coach: Google company
Sorrow
by David Wiberg
David Wiberg and Oskar Thunberg have worked together since 2017 when they made Here comes all the emotions at once, which was performed at Unga Dramaten. The sequel Content began to be planned a year later, but then the pandemic intervened. When Malmö Dockteater offered David Wiberg to write something free for the project, he chose to work with parts of the material he had worked on up to Content and create a standalone short play based on it, where Oskar Thunberg was also the director this time.
“Over David Wiberg's melancholic "Sörja" rests a mystery that emerges with the help of retakes and role changes within the small puppet trio on stage. A man arrives by train, and a strange interrogation begins.
Everything is hidden in linguistic fog curtains, but somewhere there is the relationship to a child that the man no longer sees. An overly painful reality is put out of play through strange rituals, and the puppetry brings about a strange re-enchantment of what it means to move and to have a body.”
− Kristina Lindquist, DN
Premiere May 6, 2022
Stockholm premiere August 27, 2022
Participating: Kajsa Ericsson Rebecca Plymholt, Erik Holmström
Director: Oskar Thunberg
Technician, lighting designer: Adrian Kautsky
Production Manager: Ingrid Långström Einarsson
Executive Director, Producer: Agnes Rosenberg
Dollmaker: Jenny Bjärkstedt
and doll clothes made in the studios of the Gävleborg Folk Theatre
A Magical Man
by Maria Maunsbach
When Maria Maunsbach was asked to write a short play in two weeks on the theme of crisis, she chose to write about love. The crisis of love that completely engulfs you, where you explore the other person's body, memories and personality as a kind of data collection. The object in question, the magical man, willingly agrees to be set up, exhibited and objectified. In Frida Röhl's set of no less than two mirrored I's who twist and turn their object and examine it with pleasure. The voices are distorted through the microphones and the movements in this set are also doll-like and stylized.
“In Maria Maunsbach’s “A Magical Man,” it is the theater’s artistic director Erik Holmström who constitutes the puppet itself – an erotic object in Calvin Klein underwear with all eyes on him. A longing girlfriend in two guises serves him ice-cold to the audience, like a piece of cream cake.
This interlude is far too long, and at times quite loose. But Kajsa Ericsson and Rebecca Plymholt, under Frida Röhl's direction, still carry out a wildly entertaining deconstruction of masculinity, as if high on helium. A rumbling and beeping sound filter effectively reinforces the gender charade.”
− Kristina Lindquist, DN
Premiere May 20, 2022
Stockholm premiere August 26, 2022
Participating: Kajsa Ericsson Rebecca Plymholt Erik Holmström
Directed by: Frida Röhl
Technician, lighting designer: Adrian Kautsky
Production Manager: Ingrid Långström Einarsson
Executive Director, Producer: Agnes Rosenberg
Production & communication: Helena Bunker and Adam Potrykus/House of Producers
Thanks to: Folkteatern Gothenburg Sandra Haraldsen
Pictures from the performance.
