Annukka Ruuskanen

Theatre network of
democratic distribution

Two years ago, more than five million visits to the theatre were recorded in Finland, more than two million to professional theatres and the rest to amateur theatres. The figures mean that each Finn went to the theatre, on average, once a year. The figure is a large one, but not necessarily very surprising, for despite the country’s sparse habitation theatre is widely on offer in Finland. Each place that considers itself a town has a permanent professional theatre – about 25,000 inhabitants is the magic figure that defines a Finnish theatre town. This network of theatres is complemented by professionally led amateur theatres and countless amateur theatres. There are around 50 professional theatres, funded by law, in Finland, and approximately the same number of other professional theatres.

This sparsely populated country thus has two ‘geographical’ theatre systems. This unofficial division means, in practice, that there is a dense conglomeration of theatre companies around the capital, and a government-funded professional theatre in every town in the rest of Finland. In some of the largest cities, such as Tampere and Turku, the number of theatre companies is greater. Theatre groups and ensembles gathered together for individual productions are, with a few exceptions, located in Helsinki.

The roots of Finnish theatre lie in folk theatre. Finland’s theatre network was not created; rather, it developed in the towns over the turn of the present century as part of the political workers’ movement and bourgeois dramatic society activity. The amateur-based theatre companies of both the workers and the middle classes gradually developed to become more professional and began to merge with one another. After the Second World War these combined theatre companies formed the town theatre network, which has lasted up to this day.

The professional theatres of provincial towns are repertoire theatres. They have salaried staff, in addition to which visiting artists are to some extent employed. The programme as a whole is generally constructed on the buffet principle, to offer something for everyone. The standard of programming in professional theatres is a perennial topic of conversation among Finnish theatre folk; sometimes it is too populist, sometimes too difficult for all local citizens to understand.

Provincial theatres generally have two auditoria, of which the smaller is used as a more ‘experimental’ studio for a more limited audience. The theatres present performances from autumn to spring, and are closed in July and August.

The recession that hit Finland in the early 1990s was also a test for the theatres. Cuts were made in theatre activities funded by central government and the municipalities, particularly because of the straitened economic circumstances of the towns. But not a single theatre in the country was forced to close. Currently the professional theatres are faced with a new situation to deal with. Institutions owned by the municipalities have been privatised, and this development looks as if it is likely to continue in the future. The entire structure and administration of official theatre will also come under thoroughgoing consideration. It is likely that the employment contracts of actors and other staff will be radically revised (at present, for example, actors can if they wish work in the same theatre all their lives in an arrangement known as the tombstone contract), producer-led modes will be developed and workers will be more strongly bound to economic responsibility.

It has also been predicted that in the 21st century the Finnish theatre system will divide in two once more. According to this idea, there would be a commercial, leisure theatre system, which would function entirely according to business principles, and an artistic and experimental theatre system, with public funding. What would this mean for the theatre network in a country where small towns suffer in the accelerating movement south? This will no doubt become clear very quickly with the advent of the new millennium.

Is the typical Finnish theatre
to be found in Kuopio?

In the drive of Kuopio City Theatre stand four charter coaches. In the theatre’s large auditorium, a dramatisation of the best-selling Finnish author Arto Paasilinna’s Onnellinen mies (‘A happy man’) is about to begin. Although Paasilinna’s macabrely funny and very masculine story about a bridge engineer called Jaatinen is very familiar to Finns both from the book and from a television dramatisation, the theatre is completely full.

The performance, with its mockery of municipal bureaucracy and small-town hierarchy, also draws a large number of men. Some of the audience are from Kuopio, but the coachloads have come to the theatre from various parts of Finland. There are Lion’s Club members, women’s institutes, office Christmas parties and parish societies.

The situation is and is not typical of a Saturday before Christmas at a Finnish theatre. Finnish plays and dramatisations of familiar novels draw audiences elsewhere in the country, too. Typical of provincial theatres, too, is that the charter coach audience, which gets cheaper theatre tickets, the outing is an event in itself, and the choice of play is only one factor in its success. On the other hand, Kuopio’s large masculine audience is generally a minority among audiences country-wide.

The theatre is popular. Finnish professional theatre, with its origins in folk theatre, is still primarily a meeting-place for a large and heterogeneous audience. Separation into identifiable target groups occurs for the moment essentially in the capital and other larger places, particularly those with significant student populations.

In the province of Eastern Finland, to which Kuopio belongs, 37 tickets to professional performances were bought per hundred inhabitants in 1998, a figure which is slightly below the national average. The corresponding statistic for the nation as a whole is 49 per hundred. Performances are most popular in the southernmost part of Finland, where as many as 67 people per hundred went to the theatre. In addition to Kuopio, the province of Eastern Finland has four professional theatres, in Savonlinna, Mikkeli, Varkaus and Joensuu.

Kuopio City Theatre developed in a typically Finnish way: the amateur theatre of the workers’ association, which began around the turn of the century, and the bourgeois amateur theatre, which began a little later, merged in 1940 to form the Kuopio Joint Theatre.

What is known as the ‘new wave’ in Finnish theatre-building, when new theatres were built throughout the country, began in the 1950s. Kuopio’s current theatre building was the result of an architectural competition which was won by Risto-Veikko Luukkonen and Helmer Stenroos. The building was completed in 1963.

Kuopio City Theatre is an institution that enjoys full municipal support, a little larger than average, and is covered by the national legislation on theatres and orchestras that came into force in the early 1990s. There are 414 seats in the large auditorium, and the capacity of the small auditorium is 45.

Avoiding disappointment

The current director of Kuopio City Theatre, Heikki Mäkelä, struggles, like his colleagues in other theatres, simultaneously in the roles of programme problem-solver, director and production penny-pincher. In addition, the director of a fully municipally supported theatre is kept busy with looking after relations with the city. ‘The system is destructive and makes for a hell of a lot of work. Sometimes I feel as if I have to be a bureaucrat with my own people and a dissident in the system of the city.’

Mäkelä, 55, is by background extremely typical of Finnish theatre directors. He graduated as a director from the university section of the Finnish Theatre School (now the Theatre Academy) in Helsinki in 1970. Early in his career he was active in the theatre-group movement that was so influential in Finland in the early 1970s. Mäkelä began his career as a director in 1987. Kuopio is the third theatre he has directed, and this is his third year.

According to Mäkelä, his role as director of an institution supported by public funds is to realise ‘the principle of the democratic distribution of culture and seek to satisfy the needs of society’. He pursues this aim in the same way as in many corresponding institutions, by building his programme into a buffet with plenty of variety.

In addition to Paasilinna’s Onnellinen mies, the Kuopio repertoire has about ten other plays, among them a rock musical Return to the Forbidden Planet, a Finnish folk classic and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a children’s play and a joint production, with a local semi-professional group known as Kuopio National Theatre, that plumbs the depths of Finnish history. In accordance with an unwritten law, professional theatres endeavour to offer productions that will support their finances in their large auditoria. In small auditoria and studios it is possible to run productions for smaller audiences, experiments and artistic risks. ‘I have to admit that during the time of economic discipline, the theatres’ capacity for artistic risk-taking weakened. The director has to assess the public’s taste and make compromises in many directions. At the same time one has to try to offer positive surprises. Finns have an emotional and passionate relationship with the theatre; disappointments are not tolerated. The art of debate and analysis is still lacking in this country, and as a result people will avoid the theatre for a long time after a performance they have found disappointing,’ Mäkelä says.

Mäkelä has a total of 80 staff to pilot. Of these at the moment, around 25 are actors, of which the majority have a professional training. In smaller professional theatres, a large proportion of the theatrical staff have come to the profession without training. In addition to the theatre director, who also directs plays, Kuopio also has as many as two permanent directors and a staff dramaturge. In recent years, the numbers of staff dramaturges and directors in theatres has distinctly declined as a result of the increase in visiting directorships.

One of Mäkelä’s headaches is the age range of the permanent actors, which in many provincial theatres today hovers higher and higher above middle age. The recession of the 1990s put a halt to the former system of actors moving on from one theatre to another, and many actors stay with the same theatre for decades. At present theatres in the north, in particular, have difficulties in acquiring young actors to leave southern Finland, where there is also plenty of freelance work on offer. ‘This situation has its effect on programming, in particular, if even the theatre’s youngest actors are in their thirties,’ Mäkelä comments.

Unlike many other provincial theatres, Kuopio has declined to fish for audiences by recruiting national pop stars for its musicals. According to Mäkelä, it may be possible to save the finances of one production by using a celebrity as a draw, but in the long run it does nothing for the development of the individual theatre – instead, it makes the permanent staff feel like second-class citizens.

Without big names and newsworthy celebrities, provincial theatres run the risk of remaining outside the media circus. ‘The attention of Finland’s only national newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, is important to us too. Positive reviews increase both our general reputation and our colleagues’ respect.’