Poor Theatre, Rich Theatre

Abstract

The article analyzes two Finnish theatre adaptations of Fanny och Alexander, by Ingmar Bergman, and Rauta-aika, by Paavo Haavikko, premiered in 2010 and 2011 respectively. The key question is, how the two works brought the filmic originals’ wealth of material to theatrically manageable proportions, and how the themes of poverty and prosperity were developed by their scenic machineries – a question of theatricality, but also, if you will, of a sort of theatrical exchange: “golden age” to exile or decline in the story-worlds, lavish film to theatrical constraint in production. The first two sections take a specifically economic perspective on the original TV projects and their central storylines; the two final sections address how these storylines were locally woven by the revolving stage and the revolving auditorium used in the theatre productions. On various levels, a playfully “monetary” distinction of metonymy and metaphor is suggested in which metonymic contiguity stands for contextual prosperity (as experience, community, immediacy), metaphoric substitution for relative deprivation (as distance, abstraction, exchange).