INTO THE KNOWN, a pathway to dramaturgy

Yesterday's latest tech becomes today's museum pieces.
Stories and narrative structures remain through millennia.
Human experience: now, now, now

   I have worked as a dramaturg and given lectures on it for over 20 years. Originally I come from the film and media field, but my main body of work is from the performing arts including classical drama, contemporary theatre, circus, puppet theater, object theater, dance and crossover projects between different disciplines.

I'm here to figure out why dramaturgy became essential to me.

From format mess to timeless wonder

I can't remember the exact moment, but emotionally it is clear as yesterday when I discussed enthusiastically with my then-fellow student now film director Selma Vilhunen, what a great screenplay means to a project. We felt like the script was a magician's tool and that if the script is good then you as a director with your crew can conjure it to life, but if it's bad you don't have a chance.


I found my deep interest or in better words love for dramaturgy during the turn of the millennium. I wanted to grasp professionally something that would not become useless the next day when a new thing would appear. The digital revolution was around the corner but we were not there yet. I was extremely frustrated with the constant changes and endless talk about formats and upcoming tech that would change everything. I tried to see what persisted, what was that one thing that would not be renewed before I even got the hang of it. I asked myself: is there anything permanent? It didn't take long to land on dramaturgy. At that time I was mostly interested in fiction film though I had started to get more into documentary and performing arts.


I slowly became aware through impactful experiences and also from failed attempts to move the audience that the most valid things can be traced back to the script and structuring of a narrative. It became clear to me how even for example mediocre camerawork and low production value could deliver a meaningful and strong experience if the script and editing were well done and how even the best choices in lighting, sound, acting, set design, etc. didn't help if the structural choices were lacking. This seemed to me to be the case on every level in artistic practice between writing and editing. If for example one felt the need to start boosting expression and felt the need to save and fix things in a film project the problem was usually in the script. On a less conscious level, I started to make these same observations on theater, performance, and dance though  I could not put it into words back then.

I always try to see the structure if, and as it often happens, I experience that in a time-based project, something is lacking. I have also realized that if I have a fulfilling and meaningful experience I rarely notice the structure but if I go back to analyze it the structure is 10 times out of 10 well put together. Note that I do see great moments in many works of art with weak structure but then I tend to think how could the rest of this be lifted to that same level and the peak. Thanks to this perspective of looking at structures or in other words the “bigger picture” I nearly always feel I can find constructive things to offer.
 
I have met plenty of artists who claim in so many words that they want to follow their instinct, that knowing too much about structures takes the  "magic" away. I could not disagree more. I wish to share my point of view and encourage more people to think about how the structures of their projects have been developed or undeveloped.
 
For me, it is nothing less than a timeless wonder when removing, rearranging, or adding content within a time-based project it in a metaphorical sense suddenly draws breath and starts its unique life. In a film, dance piece, performance, song, or stageplay when it happens it does feel like magic.


 

 

Revelations from documentaries


At first, I was not interested in documentary films that much. Escapism was much more compelling to me. I had accepted a concept that when writing and structuring narratives everything would go back to Aristotle's Poetics and Joseph Campel's hero's journey. Now I'm glad that my education included an almost full year of documentary film studies with a lot of alternatively formulated films.

 

One of the early documentarists, Joris Ivens' film Regen / Rain is a wonderful example of how I began to see things outside the classical story structure. I doubt there is any better film on the phenomenon of rain. Its dramaturgy is simple and solid: one whole process of one rain in a city, one single rain from start to finish. Form and content are tightly locked together in this film. It is not a simple recording of rain but a reconstruction of a process. Joris Ivens built it during multiple rainy days investigating how water can be expressed through the medium of moving image. Ivens met reality with his craft and translated a natural phenomenon into film without telling a story with a protagonist. The concept of "rain" had moved from physical reality into the two-dimensional reality of film. Something clicked in me while delving into how Regen was made.

 

When reality is your source material and if you try to be honest, I think it becomes obvious that you should not force narrative structures and preconceptions on it. The point of view that I got from documentarists has stayed with me and helped my artistic processes in every artistic field where I have worked.



Structuring a mess

Elämää pakkasella (eng. Living Below Zero) documentary project confirmed to me that structure can win over low production quality and a chaotic material. It didn't have a protagonist either.

I worked as a producer helping in many ways and brainstorming with the director Riina Leskelä through this project. The film came out surprisingly touching and clear formulated in the end. The national broadcasting company bought it after a struggle about the picture quality. The film was built on varied recording formats, different shooting style and also amateur homevideos. In the end it was bought thanks to its emotional power which came to be in editing. I have difficulties to remember how the process went.


A translation from Finnish filma archive Elonet:

Release year: 2000

Directed by Riina Leskelä

Production: Turku University of Applied Sciences / Academy of Arts

Country Finland

Documentary

Duration 31min


"It is the last night of 1999 and Finland, along with the rest of the world, is preparing to welcome the new millennium. The night train from Kemijärvi to Helsinki leaves as before, a family from Kotka tunes up its rocket arsenal, and somewhere in the hinterlands of Jyväskylä, a bearded constable drives thoughtfully through the countryside. People of different ages and appearances also celebrate in other towns around Finland. What are the moods and thoughts on the dark, freezing night on the eve of an event advertised as historic? And what happens when the h-moment finally arrives? Life in the Cold is a small research trip through Finland that takes place on the millennium night 2000. Part of the footage is made up of home videos, which were collected through newspaper ads around the country in January 2000. The other half of the footage is filmed by communication students from Turku, Helsinki, and Tampere Universities of Applied sciences. Each camera group was free to decide its target, the only condition was that it had to be in motion on New Year's Eve 1999/2000. The film was cut together without any pre-existing script."

 

An introduction for the next discussion (4min)

 

 

A discussion about "Elämää pakkasella" documentary with the director Riina Leskelä (30min)


MOVING ON TO THEATER CONVINCED
Working on the Elämää pakkasella documentary was a confirming experience that no matter what the material it is possible to construct something impactful. I see great potential in this approach in the age of eko-catastrophy.
 
I believe there was a seed planted for this train of thought in the early 90s when I saw an art exhibition where everything was drawn with a ballpoint pen. It became clear to me that one can use the most common everyday pen and create stunning work with it. I believe that it was one of the defining moments in my artistic thinking.

After my studies in film school and having been teaching film making I started my theater career completely tired of technology. This led me to study and follow the thoughts of the Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski who is well known among other things for his concept of "poor theater".
 
"Ludwik Flaszen describes the fundamental characteristics of Grotowski’s performances beginning with Akropolis. Its most basic definition appeared in Flaszen’s commentary on this performance:
The poor theatre: using the smallest amount of fixed elements to obtain maximum results using the magical transformation of objects,  through the props’ multifunctional ‘acting’. To create complete worlds using only the things at hand. […] This is a theatre in an embryonic form, in the process of being born, when the awakened instinct of acting spontaneously selects appropriate tools for magical transformation. The driving force behind it is certainly a living being, the actor." - quote from grotowski.net

 

I don't find acting magical. I am not in awe of actors as such. To me, an actor's performance is one element of the whole, even if it is a solo. I do appreciate and respect the actor's craft.

Eventually, I started to combine freely all the available things that I found somehow inviting on stage. I founded a theater company focusing on well-structured performances both on black-box stages and also outside conventional theater spaces. I stopped avoiding technology, but with every new project asked: why are we using this or that tech? The anchor was always in dramaturgy.

Clown Janna Haavisto and actor Jaakko Ohtonen in Hamlet, produced by Grus Grus Teatteri

 
After adapting Hamlet in 2016 in a medieval castle I felt empty in a positive way as director and started rethinking my artistic career.

The Dramaturg's Guide (to Reality and Beyond)
   After 15 years of commitment, I left the company I had founded. As a director, I felt I had done everything I wanted, but as dramaturg, everything was just as inspiring as ever. I started my MA studies at Stockholm University of Art in The Art of Impact program where I focused on making this artistic research and creating an online tool for storytelling and narrative world-building.

I recorded the process in the form of a video diary which can be found on Stockholm Uniarts DiVA with the name: "Finding a Digital Mask to Free Me"