Sunday 20.11.2011

FESTIVAL BRUNCH

Photo: Nikolai Botvinnik

Baltic Circle invites you to the Festival Brunch Sat 19.11. & Sun 20.11. where you can enjoy delicious food and drinks, meet new people and old friends as well as recover from the previous night’s celebrations at Festival Lounge. Buffet and a glass of sparkling wine guarantee a perfect start for the weekend’s festival experience!

During the Festival Brunch you are welcomed to visit Johanna Lecklin’s live-ar t installation Confessions in the lobby of Puoli-Q Theatre where you can reveal your darkest or funniest secrets. After the brunch you can see the performance Build Me a Mountain! by Verk Produksjoner (NO R) at Q-teatteri at 2pm.





Johanna Lecklin (FIN): CONFESSIONS

Would you like to see how the big and small secrets of your life become part of a work of art? Baltic Circle presents the newest work by Johanna Lecklin, where the public is welcomed to confess their secrets. The confessions are recorded on video, showing only a silhouette of the confessor. They combine into a work where the main role is played by real-life stories, from everyday fumbles to tragic events. Reality is often stranger than fiction!

For her previous live-art work Story Cafe, Johanna Lecklin toured several countries collecting people’s stories on video. Story Cafe has been exhibited in festivals of performing arts across the world, such as the Belluard Bollwerk International Festival in Switzerland and the Troubles #5 Festival in Brussels in 2009, along with other biennales and exhibitions. The work was part of It’s a Setup, a compiled exhibition in the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in 2010.

Producer: Baltic Circle

Photos: Johanna Lecklin

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Nya Rampen (FIN): WORSHIP!

Nya Rampen takes hold of the most renowned plays of all time, taking a look at mortal sins trough Shakespeare’s tragedies while wearing panty-hose. What does Nietzsche’s famous quote “God is dead” mean to the modern world that is struggling in a chaos after the humanistic era?

Worship! examines the characteristic human need to believe in and belong to something, be it a religion, an ideology or art. Nya Rampen ponders why fiction such as Shakespeare’s tragedies still reaches audiences. Do we need stories in order to understand reality?

Nya Rampen was founded 12 years ago in Helsinki. The group is led by founding members Elmer Bäck, Rasmus Slätis and Jakob Öhrman together with producer Elin Westerlund. Nya Rampen challenges preconceptions about what theatre should be through seeking new means of expression from other fields of art. Having toured European theatre festivals, the group has achieved international acclaim for their unique and uncompromising expression. Baltic Circle Festival 2010 presented Conte D’Amour, a co-production of Nya Rampen and Swedish theatre group Institutet. The performance won the best off-theatre award at Impulse Theatre Festival in Germany 2011.

Producers: Nya Rampen, Baltic Circle & Nordwind Festival

Supported by: Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, Konstsamfundet, Helsingin Säästöpankkisäätiöt & City of Helsinki Cultural Office

CREDITS

Written by: Shakespeare / Öhrman

Directed by: Jakob Öhrman

Cast: Elmer Bäck, Cris Af Enehielm, Joonas Heikkinen, Iida Kuningas (TeaK), Rasmus Slätis, Sara-Marie Soulié, Marcus Groth

Music: Andreas Catjar

Musicians: Mattias Leo Senada Weiss, Fabiana Striffler

Light: Jens Leeb-Lundberg

Trailer and Films: Marcus Öhrn & Natasja Loutchko

Scenography: Lars Idman (Aalto University)

Costume: Lisa Martelin, Natalia Mustonen

Stagefight instructor: Oula Kitti

Photo: Tomi Nuotsalo

WORLD PREMIERE!

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Verk Produksjoner (NOR): BUILD ME A MOUNTAIN!

During the 1940 peace between Finland and Soviet Union, writers Hella Wuolijoki and Bertolt Brecht who was exiled from Germany were sitting on the terrace of the Marlebäck mansion drinking coffee and discussing world peace. They were optimistic, telling stories to each other and creating a utopia in the midst of Europe that was burning.

Build Me a Mountain! combines documentary material and fiction to bring up the still current issue that was the main question Wuolijoki and Brecht examined: “the art of being human in an inhumane and complicated world.”

Verk Produksjoner is an actors’ collective that was founded in Oslo in 1998. The core of the group consists of freelance actors from the Nordic countries: Fredrik Hannestad (NOR), Saila Hyttinen (FIN) and Anders Mossling (SWE). Since 2003 they have worked closely together with the musician Per Platou and scenographer Signe Becker. Verk is known for their epic and expressive form of acting with satirical and political undertones changing swiftly between storytelling, acting and improvisation. Verk performed in the Baltic Circle Festival for the first time in 2007 with their work Ifigeneia.

Production: VERK

Co-Production: Baltic Circle & Black Box Theatre

Supported by: Arts Council Norway, Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Finnish-Norwegian Culture Institute & Nordisk Kulturfond

CREDITS

Written by: Daniel Wedel and Verk Produksjoner

Directed by: Fredrik Hannestad

Cast: Saila Hyttinen, Anders Mossling, Håkon Vassvik

Scenographer: Signe Becker

Music/sound: Per Platou

Light: Tilo Hahn

Photos: Verk Produksjoner

WORLD PREMIERE!

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Teatr.doc (RUS): TWO IN YOUR HOUSE

Photo: Vladimir Lupovskoy

Belarus. A former Soviet republic crushed between Russia and Europe. Under the totalitarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko prosecution of opposition activists, torture in prison and shameless propaganda in media became an everyday  reality.

The documentary performance Two in Your House is based on a real story. In the violent post-election crackdown on opposition, the Belarusian KGB has placed poet and opposition politician Vladimir Neklyaev under house arrest, where he was kept under constant surveillance by security agents placed in his house.

The performance focuses on the house arrest that lasted several months. The breach of private space, turning a home into a prison and constant surveillance by KGB functionaries was what interested the artists from Teatr.doc the most. As time passes, the situation becomes more and more dramatic; the tension in the apartment is rising. The playwrights carried out a number of interviews in Belarus, on which they have based their script.

Teatr.doc is an independent theatre from Moscow which has been founded in 2001 by playwrights of the young generation. Teatr.doc focuses on documentary theatre, resolving to make socially relevant theatre, a theatre talking about current, actual issues that, according to them, call for artistic reworking. “The goal of Teatr.doc is to provide an objective image of reality”. To this goal they are still true; doing their best to give a voice to the people they meet.

Producers: Teatr.doc, Baltic Circle, Krakow Theatrical Reminiscences, Spielart Festival, Kanuti Gildi Saal, brut Wien, Archa Theatre & Festival Divadelna Nitra

Supported by: Kultur Kontakt Austria & Estonian Ministry of Foreign affairs

CREDITS

Text: Elena Gremina

Background research and interviews: Ekaterina Bondarenko, Talgat Batalov, Aleksandr Rodionov

Artistic Director: Mikhail Ugarov

Director: Talgat Batalov

Choreography: Aleksander Andriyashkin

Video: Andrey Stadnikov

Set design: Vladimir Bagramov

Director’s Assistant: Ksenia Osipova

Light and Sound: Anton Taishihin

English translation: Maria Kozlovskaya

Music compositions by: Johannes Burström, Zoya Garina

Performers: Maxim Kurochkin, Irina Savitskova, Oleg Kamenschikov, Aleksey Maslodudov, Sergey Ovchinnikov

WORLD PREMIERE!

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Katariina Numminen / Reality Research Center (FIN): DRAMA RELOADED: YERMA

The project Drama Reloaded: Yerma studies the relationship between drama and reality. The material for the project is Yerma, a play written by Federico García Lorca in 1934. It tells the story of a woman driven to insanity by childlessness. In this project by Katariina Numminen, García Lorca’s tragic poem comes face to face with everyday reality. A team studies the play in different contexts and with different people – people who are touched by, or have a special relationship to infertility. This process gives rise to a performance that brings drama off stage and into the midst of everyday life.

Katariina Numminen is a dramatist and director from Helsinki, in whose work sound, memory, reality and documents play an important role. She works amongst others in Vyborg Artistic Theatre and Reality Research Center. Drama Reloaded: Yerma is a part of the RRC Reloaded program of Reality Research Center.

Producers: Reality Research Center & Baltic Circle

CREDITS

On stage: Niina Hosiasluoma, Antti Jaakola and Kaisa Niemi

Dramaturgy and direction: Katariina Numminen

Assistant director: Venla Korja

Set design and costumes: Paula Koivunen

Light design: Max Wikström

Photos: Jack Balance

WORLD PREMIERE!

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Susiklubi (FIN): HUKKAHUONE


Susiklubi will create a party installation for Baltic Circle Festival Lounge. The Susiklubi collective has refused to share any information about the event. Come anyway.

Susiklubi has been making genre-crossing club events in Helsinki, and once in Hanko, since 2009. The audience is occasionally rewarded, occasionally punished. Sometimes they get to choose between the two.

Photos: Otto Donner

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Theatre Venus & Co (FIN): KUDOSKLUBI

Come enjoy the festival’s final evening in the Baltic Circle Lounge, where the most peculiar cultures meet. Theatre Venus & Co create imaginary modern tribes and utopias of the possibilities of multicultural living and partying together side by side.

Cast: Max Bremer, Paul Holländer, Juha Sääski, Marja Silde

Photos: Jukka Rusanen

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