Expedition Undergång

I wanted to work with a comedy topic and started seeing an air balloon expedition. I recalled the tragic Andrée Polar Expedition from 1897 that was lost in the Arctic for 33 years and realised that this was a magnificent topic for comedy. As Woody Allen put it ”Comedy is tragedy plus time”. This was my third research into developing Artistic Collaborative Tools. This time the work group of 4 writer/actors had to work with documentary material. We used the extensive log books and diaries from the Expedition that was retrieved at the finding on Hvitön and together worked out the most intriguing sequences that displayed the psychology of the expedition. From these sequences I worked out assignments for the participants to work with and improvise around. I had to take the material one step further into developing a dramatic story out of this. This time I also included the meta-level of the current Covid situation that shaped our possibilities of working. It meant I worked with monologue material as the actors was prohibited from closeness. I also added my own situation as a struggling artist in this time of difficulties and the play interweaves present time and passed time into a web of storytelling disregarding rules of anachronism and truthful reality. This practise rendered a poetic, suggestive and subjective reality of the charismatic fanatic Andrée was as we interpreted him to have been.

Pjäsbeskrivning

Hvitön 1897 oktober, datum osäkert. Strindberg är död och Frenkel har inte synts till på flera dygn. Andrée vågar inte, vill inte gå in i tältet för att se hur det är med honom. Vill inte bekänna att Frenkel också är död men vet att det är så innerst inne. Andrée läser sina anteckningar i loggboken. Spridda osammanhängande tankar uttalade högt. Han söker efter rätt material att packa in loggboken i – en tröja, lite gräs. Den måste bevaras till varje pris. Den ska han lägga vid sin sida och sätta sig på klippavsatsen för att invänta det slutliga mörkret. Innan han dör passerar de senaste händelserna genom hans huvud. Andrée tror sig se Strindbergs och Frenkels vålnader. Han talar med dem. Isbjörnen som bitit av Strindbergs ben kommer och samtalar med Andrée. Hela naturen verkar tala med André och tiden blir något allt annat än linjär.

Dramatikerns kommentar

Pjäsen skapades under brinnande covid och detta präglar pjäsens innehåll. Dels genom den smärtsamma sysslolöshet och hopplöshetskänsla det innebar som scenkonstnär men även på det sätt scenerna byggts. Dessa är vid flera tillfällen monologer då vi ville hålla aktsamhet till restriktionern därutöver är det högst fyra karaktärer på scenen samtidigt även detta för att undvika för stor närkontakt. Det gör att pjäsen kan spelas av en ensemble på fyra personer trots att karaktärerna är fler.

Info

Theatre Play 90 min. Comedy ”Expedition Undergång” (Expedition Doom)
Directing: Anna Maria Joakimsdottir-Hutri
Playwright: Anna Maria Joakimsdottir-Hutri
Folkkulturcentrum, Hjorthagen, Stockholm
Commissioned work: 16 000 skr
https://dramadirekt.se/pjas/expedition-undergang-2/

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