The Summer of 2016 is proving to be full of Leftovers remembrances. This time we just touch upon our 2013 show in the beautiful area of Odsherred, Denmark. The performance took place in the surroundings of Odsherred Kulturhistorisk Museum and the setting remains luscious and idyllic. Furthermore it’s great to see the OK festival has evolved into a popular multidisciplinary event: Geopark Festival.
This summer three of the four Leftovers were brought together in Riga and decided to pass our old performance space – Stūra māja.
This space had proved to be the most challenging, yet possibly also the most rewarding experience on the Leftover tour. The dense history of the old KGB house left such huge impressions on all of us.
On arrival at Brīvības Iela we stood silent in amazement. The dark and ominous monument to oppression and terror had been transformed into a welcoming gentrified city house painted in delicate blues and whites.
The museum still exists but the future of the building is as of yet undetermined.
We will be following the process.
Left: The Corner House
Elin with the audience in National Museum of Finland, 2012
National Museum of Finland, 2012
The Corner House, former KGB headquarters of Riga, 2014 -> by Nanni Vapaavuori, by Martins Otto
Dear Stura Maja,
This is is now my fourth attempt to write a blog entry about our performances on your fifth floor in May. I’m not telling you this to evoke your pity, obviously that would be ridiculous and offensive. I’m telling you this to let you know what a profound impact you have. How you have made me speechless.
Granted, I am a worldclass procrastinator, but this was not one of those times where I didn’t make an effort (I can show you two other attempts, but I deleted the first one). Some say that procrastinators are often perfectionists who are unable to do things because they want the result to be so perfect that the task at hand becomes impossible. This is partly true for me, but most of the time I’m just good old fashioned lazy. Let’s call a spade a spade, you know.
However, when it comes to writing about you and our performance, I can’t find the right words, the right tone. I want you to like me and I want to chose my words carefully.
The first time you awed me was in the winter of 2012. We were working on the performance in Riga and Ivo showed you to us. Even from across the street, I stopped in my tracks. Perhaps I was tired, perhaps I was cold (I was) but the mere sight of you seemed to align my cells in a new way, as if you were setting me up to meet you again. I knew I would. I was certain of it. I think you did that to all four of us, you convinced us then and there that we would have to come back, in hindsight I’m sure we did everything to achieve just that. I did it despite being petrified; what could I possibly say in your presence? What could I tell you that was of any importance given all the stories and lives you had seen already?
And somehow we found ourselves (I say “somehow”, but in all fairness Ivo worked relentlessly to make it happen) sitting in your court yard in May 2014, 9 days before we were expected to perform. We had just taken a tour of the rooms that were used a prison cells and torture chambers during the KGB years. The tour left me numb to everything except you. A divider in time. I’ve had other meetings that have left me numb, but not quite in the same way. For days, every idea I had seemed silly and useless. Everything I wrote, I discarded. I couldn’t even chose rooms to tell stories in. In the end I realized what we – honestly- have in common; we both come from middle class backgrounds, and trite as it is, that was what I could talk about in your rooms. Telling the truth about my life as a middle class princess in a room once designed for middle class princesses seemed alright despite the prison a couple of floors down.
In fact, in a strange way I felt like I was carefully blowing at the embers of what the architect Aleksandrs Vanags had once intended. Though, of course, I have absolutely no idea if he would have liked storytelling performance art. Basement rooms that started out storing tools, became rooms packed with prisoners, and now these rooms are empty and viewed by tourists – people who are free to travel and chose to come and go. For the fifth floor we brought in another group, an audience, adding yet another layer: creating intimacy through distance. Rooms that were designed for children to sleep in, became the nightmares of grown men and now we created a dreamscape of our stories in them. Neither good nor bad, just different. An attempt to open the senses to the rooms and making a portal in time; maybe by tellling our stories – as different and unrelated as they are – other stories would emerge. It seemed that they did. I hope they still do.
****
Dear Stura Maja, It has been a month now. It’s been three weeks since this blog was supposed to be written, I had promised.
I still think about you every day, like a lovesick teenager. I miss you, and yet it is terrible to think about you. I can’t write this without feeling melodramatic and clammy. When I was sixteen I wrote an epic love poem and my teacher dismissed it as crap. She gave me a B+ if I remember correctly (being ambitious as I was, B+ felt awful, especially since I for once had decided to be honest. “Write what you know” certainly did not do me any good then. And here I am doing an entire performance based on truth and facts). Writing this blog makes me feel the same as back when I was sixteen having my paper graded. I am trying to be honest about my feelings, but all it amounts to is a garbage heap of words. Should I take my feelings out of it?
*****
Dear Stura Maja,
We were awed and impressed by you and the people who work with you. The audience was amazing and we hope we gave them a good experience. We worked very hard. It was unseasonably warm. It rained. Some days were very tough and others were cold. And most of the time I thought about a lot of stuff. Like life. I miss you. Sincerely, xoxo elin
Since the premiere on Wednesday the shows at the Corner House have been full of audience. It’s the best compliment a performing artist can get. It’s been particularly rewarding to hear feedback saying that the performance brings new life to the building in a right kind of way – cleansing the stuffy air without forgetting it’s past. We are proud that our humble family stories could have such effects.
Fortunately, there’s still one more show to go tomorrow. Riga performances end too soon!
Some photos from the premiere party:
Nina caught unaware by Jurgis
Assistants Elina, Sintija, Rudolfs and Viesturs
Ivo
Elin explaining something in detail to Oliver – who has seen all the versions of Leftovers since Helsinki world premiere
Very happy technical director Nanni
The first drafts of texts were more or less finished by Friday. Over the weekend we started rehearsing in the rooms with our assistants. Sunday we had four hour long marathon during which we presented the results to one another. Afterwards we had an internal evaluation of the texts and scenes. Yesterday, after a night of rewriting, we made corrections and planned the logistics of the tours audience will make around the fifth floor, where most of the performance will take place. Also, the sound, props, lights, furniture and other visual design are under construction. Finding the right things can be time consuming. Like on Friday I spent hours with Nanni to find a travel blindfold with no success – just to find out that Elin had one already! Even the most simple thing can be hard to get, like hair for example…
Yesterday we all had a feeling that we had finally conquered the fifth floor of the Corner House. This week it will be ours. Of course, the past is there with us, and it should be, but we have bulldozed a spiritual space to breath, a space for our family stories in these gloomy rooms. And something weird happens: the part of the house where we reside starts to feel like a normal working place. And I’ve been asking myself is right or is it wrong to feel like that. Yesterday, I went to the prison cell corridor in the first floor to remind myself that this is what happened here.
I think it is important to have these places to remind ourselves, especially for us who have not actually experienced the cruelty of a state oppression machine.
We are having some test audience today!
Janne
On Monday the gorgeous sun welcomes us to Riga and our first visit to the Corner House (Stura Maja) on Brivibas Iela. After taking the spine chilling official tour, studying the rich and information packed exhibitions we are all freezing inside. The history of the house is so compact and painful – where will we find room for our families?
We meet with our hosts from Riga 2014 and Stura Maja and our local creative team – Jurģis Krāsons (set design) and Andris Indāns (sound design) – for an informal chat and initial collective panic attack. And what a calming bunch of people they turn out to be! Helpful, practical and full of confidence.
So now there’s nothing to do but work. Tuesday the house is closed and we meet our 4 lovely assistants, Viesturs Balodis, Rūdolfs Balodis, Elīna Tarasa, Sintija Silova, who bravely embark on this journey with us. Together we go to explore the house and get a rough idea of the rooms we will occupy. It’s not a place you feel comfortable being in alone – or at night for that matter! There are plenty of stories in these walls.
Wednesday is Jurģis’ turn to perform, as we visit the Riga Kino Studio area to empty his prop storage space. It’s full of useful stuff and Ivo seems overjoyed to find an old radio like his father’s. And Elin is relieved to have solved a major issue about her grandparent’s story.
Thursday Janne, Nina, Elina and Rudolph visit the New Theatre of Latvia to get bits a pieces for the costumes and the props arrive at the House. We go through the rooms with our technical director, Nanni, and Kristine from the exhibitions to get approval. Otherwise we are writing, writing, writing, writing and writing…
Leftovers from the War is attending the European Capital of Culture Riga 2014.
4 artists meet in the notorious former KGB headquarters, the Corner House, to find ghosts from their personal pasts. Join this special guided tour through the building and encounter Janne’s hard drinking grandfather or Elin’s liberated grandmother, look for Ivo’s father’s grave or discover why Nina just wants to escape.
A travel through history, families and a hunted building. The performances will take place in Corner House in Riga, on 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st of May. Take a peek at the building here, here and here.
Part of the Riga2014 program.
So it has arrived: the opening night in Odsherred Kulturfestival 2013… Full house tonight. There are still plenty of things to go over, check and plan.
Our family stories are ready. Find out why Darth Vader has followed Janne around since 1980, why Ivo is in a dilemma, how the Irma Pige is connected to Elin and how Nina became an escape artist. We will take you on guides tours around the museum to strange and funny places.
We keep checking the weather report – it says 19.00: Thunderstorms, perfect… Here we go! Its time to share our family stories with the Danish audience.
Leftovers will perform 27., 29.-31. July & 1. & 3. August at 19.00 & 2. August at 22.00 at Odsherred Kulturhistorisk Museum, Strædet 1, Nykøbing Sj. Tickets cost 50 DKK and can be purchased on the door or at Odsherred Kulturfestival.
I am sorry, I didn’t write my report of the last week of LOFTW in Helsinki last year. But I tried. Honestly. This is what I found in my computer:
“That was hectic. I don’t really remember this week, my brain is tired and memory is fragmented consisting of many and mostly unconnected words, sounds and pictures like “goos-bumps”, “red-pants”, “awful”, “flat”, “blue-pants”, “run-through”, “vulnerable’, “echo’, “record”, “Reijo”, “Hufvudstadsbladet”, “ferry”, “thank you”, “rakateippi”, “Manala”, “black-out”, “smile”, “chaos”, “mp3”, “sincere”, “why?”, “fairy-tale”, “energy”, “sweat”, “Darth”, “radio”, “oh my guard!”… no need to continue. Probably this is how archeologists reconstruct history – collecting it piece by piece, putting them all together and making a coherent picture. I’ll try to be coherent too…”
That’s it. I couldn’t manage to be coherent. I do not have a pack-shot. I cannot sale my experience. Idiot!
I’ll try once again. This time about LOFTW in Denmark. We are here now and going to tell our stories in OK13 festival. Everything is just perfect here. First of all the weather – just go to the beach or bike around or take beer and think and write and rewrite and stay focused. Easy! Bike everyday about 15km and stay fit. Great!
I doubt I can continue like this, already got bored. So read this and you are allowed to arrange those fragments according to your liking, try to rap (rap is generally spoken to a beat, either with backing music or a Capella; rap is a complex mix of influences, and includes elements of speech, prose, poetry, and song):
Bikes-Nete-Webb-ferry-train-panda-abandoned-smelly-sun-Højsandet-pond-Johannes-wifi?-Martin-museum-Odsherred-only 7,5km-tire-administration-birthdays-Kategatt-Martin-pensioners-Rovrig-Orson Welles-danish cherries-barn-extension-exhibition-pretender-Nanni-Darth-Island’s new old government-amplifier-archive-Thomas-udkand-bearhead-Simon-cannon-Tuuli-damnedmoney-assistants-what for?-love-by heart-diarrhea-premiere-some audience-27. July-19:00-Annebjerg Stræde1-war-leftovers-personal-honest.
leftovers from the war 