Five actors, the men in the black coats and the women with long skirts and caps that cover their hair, staring into a fire, it sparkles and smokes. You can see that it’s about the people who live in fear?
Hmmm… A bit of fear, cries out to the director Alexander Mørk-Eidem behind the photographer.
the Play ”the great range” the dark roots in history, but everything around it is new and exciting. For the first time ever, has partnered the royal dramatic theatre and the city theatre in a big production, with a record ensemble. Circumstance is unique, the two theaters to be renovated at the same time and teaterhusen is closed.
It is lanseringsfotografierna for the show, which is to be taken. Karin Franz Körlof, Shebly Niavarani, Shanti Roney, Andreas Kundler and Ellen Nyman, may represent the 19 actors from the two opera house to stand on the stage.
the theater director Alexander Mörk Eidem, and a mixed ensemble from the national theatre and the royal dramatic theatre are collaborating for the first time. They do Arthur Miller’s ”Lower”. Photo: Erik Ardelius
, who for thirteen years was attached to the municipal theatre and then three years working at the royal dramatic theatre, is directing the show. Set to premiere on september 14 on the electricity board, Metro-tiled teaterlokal on Linnégatan.
We are in the photographer Clear Granbergs studio that is actually located in a former power station. Outside the demolished industrikvarteret the Peach and the old bus depot; a ruinlandskap of crushed concrete and sprawling rebar shall provide a location for a new city view.
From a clothes rack choose today’s stylist Nina Sandström out costumes from the two theatres stores. On a large table crammed sandwiches, cinnamon buns, coffee, soft drinks, fruit and sweets. At the studio’s dressing table, each actor a easy mask.
written as a historical drama from the late 1600-century witch trials in Massachusetts, an allegory about a shameful period in modern american history. Playwright Arthur Miller based the play on the basis of republican senator Mccarthy’s search of ”the red” during the 1950s. Democrats argued that the communists are on their way to undermine american society and open to the Soviet union.
It was Arthur Miller who also wrote ”A salesman of death”, the first major story about the united states after the second world war. His close friend, the master Elia Kazan, directed the premiere. It was a huge teatersuccé. When he later was called to the interrogation about the ”movie business” chose Kazan to point out colleagues who he felt were communists and who therefore lost their jobs. Miller himself was called a few years after the ”great range”, he, however, refused to name names.
Shanti Roney makeup before the show. Photo: Erik Ardelius
” Yes, it is written as a comment to the McCarthyismen and kommunisthetsen in the united states in the 50’s. So it is already a metaphor, it is difficult and unnecessary to move it to another time.
” Yes, someone must go ahead, says Alexander Mørk-Eidem with a laugh. Not to deconstruct but to reconstruct the theater, a belief in the art of acting. This play feels good to be where it is. Then people can think more freely about what it is really all about.
” Yes, it is polarized and very emotionally controlled, in situations where one probably should be a bit more cold and rational. I saw ”the great range” on film and in the theatre for quite a long time ago and my memory is that almost all seemed a little stupid in the head and that the basic premise – that you live in a highly religious society, and actually believe in witches – was something stupid in and of itself.
” Then miss what it should be about, namely that we all have been in such processes, either directly involved or looked at and not done anything.
John Proctor was the one who questioned the Salem witch trials, the voice of reason. But in a way it is also he who put in the time all. Proctor has a relationship with the family’s young maid, Abigail. His wife throws her out and he promises, penance and repentance.
– the Problem is that Abigail does not, along with a few other girls she goes out in the forest to produce a magical drink and dance to get him to fall in love with her again. Some stuff that teenagers do.
They are detected. In order to protect themselves begins the girls to accuse others of witchcraft. For the first time in his life, discovers Abigail to listen to her. She has a voice and right then, the power.
And everyone in Salem who has a dispute with a neighbor about land and borders, or something else slips in, too. A stone has been set rolling. No one can stop it, though they know that what they are doing is wrong. And they finally trying to put an end do it too late.
, it is not possible to prove that you have seen someone fly over the countryside on a broomstick. The only evidence is people’s testimony. If you confess and point to someone else as promised you freedom…
Trials sentenced nineteen people to death and hanged, and the twentieth, which refuses to answer, are subjected to deadly torture.
Before the movie’s premiere in 1996, writes Miller himself about the piece in the New Yorker. He talks about the fear he felt for Mccarthy’s illegal hunting of leftists. He tells us that the writer Nien Cheng, who spent six years in solitary confinement in China, had a hard time understanding how someone who has not experienced the cultural Revolution able to write ”Lower”.
the Salem witch trials took place in a hierarchical, extremely controlled society. They called themselves puritans, they were religious refugees and immigrants from England, a strict religion and a strict life, no colors, no dancing. A dream of purity.
They had landed on an exposed location on the edge of the endless Atlantic ocean, and behind them stretches the endless forests in which anything can hide.
– The basic feeling is fear. The people are pissrädda all the time.
Karin Franz Körlof in the ”Lower”. Photo: Erik Ardelius
– So well written, down to the smallest role, is the people with their own problems, they are not representatives of the Church or the Woman or the Youth.
– Already then I thought to make the ”Lower”. It has a lot of ”Folkefiende” to do, it was about how fragile our democracy is.
– So now it will be exciting if we managed to get everyone in the ”Lower”, even the most dogmatic, to appear as real people, caught in a machinery that just … rolls on.
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– An incredible asset. It takes time to get to know people and know how to talk with them, what they can. The first three productions at the royal dramatic theatre was almost the only actor I had worked with. So it will be so incredibly fun to collect these two gangs. For it is, after all, different cultures and the atmosphere at these two theatres. By to two theaters going into this, we can fläska with a very large ensemble cast, exciting for both me and the audience. For it is a very small society that fails.
– It is the problem. We believe very strongly in our own thing and condemn those who do not think likewise. Thus, there is no interest or curiosity on the other. If the others do not think as we, so is the evil. The way we get news via the net is very self-reinforcing. We only see a limited part of the spectrum, the opinions we already share with our friends. When you get their own opinion confirmed rather than to challenge it, it leads to a dangerous herd behaviour. And if newspapers, for fear of being left behind in an increasingly furious nyhetstempo, choose to lead the pack instead of questioning it, it can go really bad.
” The important thing in our story is that there is no one who is without sin. There are degrees in hell, but if the audience goes out from the show and think: how nice it is that I am not one of those… then I have not succeeded.
