Ann-Christine Snickars

History of dramatist

Joakim Groth in a nutshell

 

 

It is a wonderful world is the name of Joakim Groth’s greatest stage success until now. The play which premiered in the autumn of 1995 at the Swedish Theater in Helsinki, can in many ways be seen as a typical example of his way to work. Groth is not either only a dramatist, he has in fact made himself as well-known as a director, mainly specializing in world drama classics such as Brecht, Beckett, Strindberg, but before all Chekhov, who is a kind of a soulmate. A doctor’s and dramatist’s career appears, according to Groth, to be able to mostly overlap.

Joakim Groth’s critical success as director occurred in 1985 with the performance of Waiting for Godot with the newly established group Teater Mars. It was a boyish but convincing version, which was chosen as the theater event of the year.

The following directing success occurred with Zachary Topelius Tales of a Barber-Surgeon, a historical serial from the middle 1800s, which in the dramatic version by the director was performed at the old Råholm water purification plant in Helsinki. It is as much a historical chronicle as a family drama. In connection with the first night 1989 Joakim Groth said that he had long been playing with the idea of creating an epical/historical play, and that he had originally thought of writing the manuscript himself: "It should contain romance, love, intrigues and war. But when I read the tales of The Barber-Surgeon last summer, I noticed that everything was already there". Groth’s way of directing aroused well-earned attention, the handling of text could be called post-modern. All the characters were also paid equal attention, the rabbit in the woods as well as the hero king. Bringing up the proportions between big and small helped with a playfulness, which held equal amounts of intellect and spontaneous humor. These measures were used by Joakim Groth in all of his production, both in writing and staging.

In the Swedish speaking sector in Finland Joakim Groth, who writes in the minority language, Swedish, is still thought to be young. He made himself first known to the sector around the avantguardist 70s periodical Fågel Fenix (Phoenix Bird). It took itself the right to criticize the square leftist intellectual trend in the cultural life and was seen by all with gentle eyes. He established together with some male collegues from that time also the loosely jointed (but still working) performance group, Pojkgruppen Kain (Boys Group Kain), whose name emerged in opposition to the men’s groups who were right there with the times.

It is a wonderful world - the title refers to the beginning of one of the most beloved and sung hymns in Scandinavia (Fairest Lord Jesus, in England) - could perhaps be taken as a kind of a proof of manhood. The text had a long incubation period, the author directed it himself and the performance received a wide audience. In the Finnish rural theaters where the play had its premier in Finnish, you could see an audience of considerably higher average age than that of the Finland-Swedes. This can be blamed on the interpretation of the theme: the postwar fate of a family.

The war and the postwar social and human recovery are the big motives, almost sacrosanct in Finnish literature, but in Groth’s play you can also see the family, private relationships as prominent material.

Joakim Groth can be seen as an ironical person, mildly ironical if not always warm. A part of the inspiration for It is a wonderful world also came from a more modern colleague than Chekhov, the Swedish dramatist Staffan Göthe, who wrote a series of plays about the fictitious family Cervieng and its fate in the economic changes in Sweden. Göthe does not avoid burlesque, Groth has another attitude towards gesturing. It is often timed with the tempo so that more expressive sequences succeed the elegiacal ones.

Joakim Groth ‘s first major stage play, Shots in Helsinki, which was performed at Lilla Teater in Helsinki in 1983 (directed by Anette Arlander) is on the surface one of the most turbulent ones. It presents some historical and scenic rooms, one of them in the boarding house, where Eugen Schaumann lived before he, when 1900s were still young and restless in the autonomic grand duchy, Finland, shot the Russian governor to death - and became a hero. Another room belonged to Minna Craucher, a political intriguer and femme fatale in Helsinki in the 20s and 30s. She was murdered under mysterious circumstances. The third room is a modern TV studio where a grotesque play is played, "Russian roulette", where you either win a million or lose your life. What Groth means with the play is not at first hand to comment on history writing as such, but to try to extort from it an existential course.

But chance also wields power over peoples’ lives. Or the lack of a pronounced goal. It is not the same thing that people in Groth’s plays would be particularly easy to manoeuver or lacking character. But the overwhelming historical perspective is not automatically topmost for an individual; actually it is perhaps just the lack of a distinguishable perspective, which marks the individual life. Joakim Groth’s most important literary work outside drama, the novel Edi (1987) was written with more focus on intrigue. The timing and setting are bound together and the style is flowing in a peculiar way.

In spite of the sharply detailed description, the novel Edi remains a stranger to the reader. It also seems to be part of the intention. Also the first of his own plays, which Groth let turn around a family was called Strangers. The title is programmatic and was set up at Lilla Teater in 1987 (under the direction of Kristin Olsoni). The plot here is based more on the actors’ lines and attitudes than on the great family events, which are in the play’s framework. Almost all painful family scenes are there, alcoholism, mental illness, homosexuality, suicide. The material itself reminds of what e.g. Lars Norén has adopted, but it is more Muminlike in its flow. You meet a variation of the undecisive Edvard from the novel in this play.

He has the same name here and is mostly the same character. You can call him loyal - but not necessarily faithful. He likes to act as a bodyguard for his uncle, who hunts at night for partners in the city parks. He is a lot less willing to risk anything for his girlfriend.

In the Camera Obscura, put on stage at Lilla Teater in 1993 by his brother Marcus Groth, whose profession is acting, the limits of the room have been driven further. Like a camera the play handles moments; this way it can also afford to be more blatantly funny than Groth’s other plays. It is a kind of a morality play of private life, light and youthful at the same time. Comedy is not a self-evident choice for Joakim Groth, although his play To turn six (premier in 1998) comes dangerously close to it.

In To turn six, the title of which in Swedish is a pun referring to orgies, but which literally means the sixth birthday, thematics from e.g. Camera Obscura and The world according to Edi are repeated.

The fragility of human relationships, the individual’s vulnerability are handled more seriously, but still with a light touch in It is a wonderful world. At the manuscript stage the play had paradoxically "Tyrannosaurus Rex" as the working title, among others on the basis of its volume. Also the stage version, which Joakim Groth directed himself, took its time. Even this play turns around a family, the Victorin family. The family is fictitious, but the generation gaps and atmosphere of the time correspond with the playwright’s own history. And on this spot, which Groth’s own father, who died too early, could have had, the director placed his acting brother Marcus Groth.

This gesture holds not only a private charging, it underlines how generally the war and postwar times were personally touching. War memories are something a number of generations have to share, it is a heavy experience, which is shared by all the countries which were affected. There is an inevitable tragedy in It is a wonderful world - the title of the play is ironically meant - but also a streak of hope and optimism, feelings, which not always care much about wider perspectives, but which are shimmering, floating.

Joakim Groth

Plays:

Skotten I Helsingfors, 1982, Främlinarna, 1987, Camera Obscura, 1993, Härlig är Jorden, 1995, Fylla Sex, 1997.

Dramatisations:

Zacharias Topelius, Fältskärens berättelser (‘Tales of a barber-surgeon’), August Strindberg, En dåres försvarstal.