I have no immediate answer to the question Johan Hilton makes in his commentary to the crisis at the royal dramatic theatre a week after the display of the tv-documentary about the Josefin Nilsson (DN 2/4). How is it possible that these abuses have been allowed to continue for several decades? However, I want to believe that there is a small explanation that could serve as a background to what today are regularly called ”culture” or a ”structure”. A convenient way to say nothing.
as far back As I can foresee have the royal dramatic theatre dragged on a self-image that has been a burden both own the house and american theatre in general. The royal dramatic theatre in their own eyes have been finer and thus better than all other Swedish theatres, as if it was a take a step inside on the main stage – the small is also – to omstrålas of a relinquishment of its royalty.
Called the not the Royal Dramatic theatre?
who are allowed to contaminate the artistic reputation. Everyone outside the house knows what I’m talking about and think in most cases bad about it. I want to either generalize or contribute to the perfunctory Dramatenhatet. But wouldn’t it be great to dig a little deeper into the long and rarely challenged myth that without reflection may pass as traditional? An obvious seal of approval?
the Comédie-Française is, so far as I know, the world’s oldest national stage, and has in modern time hardly been annoyed by hubris. It resembles more of a museum gem and has not prevented other companies from taking the command of the French theatre. For example, the so-called Cartel with Louis Jouvet and Georges Pitoëff in the 1920s, or Ariane Mnouchkine and the Théâtre du Soleil in the modern era.
England is an interesting example. Where there is the National theatre on the South bank in London, but it is a paradoxical, modern facility, during its first years, 1963-1977, housed at the Old Vic in Waterloo. There was no national stage in a kingdom where everyone has played Shakespeare in the junior school.
the kindred spirit of sorts in Europe, it is the Burgtheater in Vienna, founded in 1776 by Joseph II, and well into our time, persecuted of his position as the old empire artistic jewel. Although Sweden was once a small unionsrike in the Nordic countries. Question Strindberg.
the royal dramatic theatre now has two tasks. One that should be dealt with speedily and concrete to put an end to the kind of gross negligence that have come to light after the tv documentary, albeit that most of it was previously known. The other should be to seriously discuss the Dramatic self-understanding and the perverse prestige, which created a beautiful place around the business at Nybroplan, a gap between reality and imagination. It would all serve on, from Ystad to Haparanda, which they sing in ”A travelling theatre company”.
of course, We are all a little to blame.
