You Are Cordially Invited To Attend A Special Lecture

you are cordially invited to attend a special lecture on contemporary finnish drama by pia houni, ph.d lecturer at the helsinki

You Are Cordially Invited to Attend a Special Lecture on
Contemporary Finnish Drama
By
Pia Houni, Ph.D
Lecturer at the Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia, Finland
Docent of theatre and drama research at the University of Tampere
at DAMU
Karlova 26, Prague 1
Hallerův Sál (S201)
12.00
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
The Lecture will be in English with NO translation
Summary
In my presentation I will open my topic with the idea of how
contemporary Finnish drama represents its own landscape thematically
and dramatically way. I will approach this idea from two perspectives:
first the question of generations’ voices and secondly re-opening some
case studies of present dramas. The Finnish Drama in its early stages
was mostly done by women. For this reason I’ll give attention to Minna
Canth (1844-1897), the first important female writer in Finland. The
Finnish Playwright Society, founded in 1921, gave a more professional
sound and attitude for writers. My other case will be Eeva-Liisa
Manner (1921-1995) who was an important writer and opened ‘a new
window” into the art of drama. She was a renowned modernist, who took
influences from ancient mythologies. Her plays seem like dreams, with
flair of lyrical language. My contemporary examples are the play God’s
Lover by Jussi Parviainen, which represents problems of postmodern
human life. Published in 1984, the play strokes an era of strong
reformation in Finnish Drama. My other examples will be Sirkku Peltola
and Juha Jokela, both very famous at the moment. The important themes
in their plays are handled with a little humour. In my presentation I
will be using references of these plays and hopefully some audiovisual
material as well.
In my presentation I hope to introduce some of the late drama
production by students from Helsinki Polytechnic (performing arts
programme).
The plays I will introduce in my presentation:
Minna Canth: Anna-Liisa 1885, Eeva-Liisa Manner: Burnt Orange 1969
Jussi Parviainen: God’s Lover 1984, Sirkku Peltola: Gran’s Wellington
Fox 2002
Juha Jokela: Mobile Horror 2003
Pia Houni is Senior Lecturer at the Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia. She
has done her PhD in theatre and drama at the Theatre Academy Helsinki
(2000). She is also docent of theatre and drama research at the
University of Tampere. She has published numbers of books and articles
and also done some dramaturgies and scripts.