Basking in the afterglow of the Pleasure-Helsinki experience, I got the idea to sum up the years with Pleasure.
The end of the 2023 (that I truly hope was not the finale finali of the piece) was a homecoming and a heartwarming return to Helsinki. The performance went from Christmas feel good to running wild during the six performances in Theater Viirus.
It all started a couple a years ago with the theme, taken from our 5-year strategy that states “pleasure will seep through all aspects of our work in Oblivia and make us stronger and kinder”.
Pleasure was also the last part of the series “Emotions and Politics”, where we look at how emotions and feelings inform power, politics and decision making. Pleasure was therefore an investigation of pleasure as a radical force in decision making and, at the same time, the most individually charged theme in the series. Pleasure as a concept avoided to be grasped as a structural and theoretical entity, instead it slipped between the fingers, and yet was always present, forcing new ways of looking at our lives and decisions.
In the very beginning we asked ourselves what would give us pleasure and decided to bring in friends and colleagues, because working together brings so much pleasure. Meri brought in Stine to crush the loneliness of light- and stage design, Yiran brought in Thilo and Gabi, Timo and me brought in Juha, a generation comrade and an old friend. All guests brought new aspects to the work and lit the universe of the performance with new and bright stars.
For me personally, pleasure showed its dark side, and I learned that all forces come with an amount of darkness and that pleasure is something else than “jouissance”, enjoyment or lust. Perhaps this explains why I am drawn to fantasy books and the vampire series True Blood at the moment.
Our discussions on ideas of “pleasure” was mainly concerned with small and everyday pleasures like my mother smoking a cigarette and doing crosswords, ice bathing, cinnamon rolls, a special sun light. Yet, what opened up at the same time was an underworld. This journey is clearly seen in the performance.
During the process I was forced to rethink how I lived my life. I got ill, first with covid and then with a severe gallbladder infection. I had to stay away from rehearsals, and for the first time in my life, I had to think of how I took care of myself. The realisation that my resources are not endless and that the energy that has fueled me is a finite resource, not infinite as I had carelessly imagined, is still something that I am grappling to come to terms with.
How I live and work is closely connected to my identity or rather to my idea of my identity, so a life-long commitment to care for self is a challenge, first to understand what it means and then live it. Although I have always prioritised myself and what I wanted with a strong will and drive, yet I have not cared for myself. What is needed now is a good old fashioned healthy life style. Good sleep, closeness, and exchange. Rest, family, friends, sports, small amounts of food and drink. Moderation in all. So easy. So many around me are there already. They have changed their life-styles and seen their blood pressure going down and good life going up. Here I am still persisting to resist.
I like change, don’t I? To behave the same and long for change is a contradiction. To treat oneself badly or at least off-handly and talk about pleasure as a radical force for change, is quite off. Although the link between care for self and capitalism is clear, that still does not mean that I have to go on as were I twenty. Self-sabotage is not a good resistance strategy against neo-liberalism. Being dead or ill even less so.
And yes, I always wanted to sing in a punk band. I am happy to do it now rather than then – 40 years ago. I can cope better with the forces it unleashes and perhaps one day unleash some more of these forces.
Doing things in different ways is a pleasure
They say
Doing things in different ways
Throws me out of my way
Who am I
When I am not the one
Doing things how I used to do
Doing things in different ways is a pleasure
(to be continued)
Pleasure has been performed in 2023 in Theater Rampe Stuttgart, ARGEkultur Salzburg, Theater Discounter Berlin, Schwankhalle Bremen, and Theater Viirus Helsinki.
Happy Holidays to everyone!
