conversations in ten questions 53 : Fredrik Brattberg
The New Text Festival, which has an important place in the field of theater in Turkey by increasing the visibility of new contemporary writers and introducing them to the performing arts sector, had a new section titled Nordic Focus, this year. Fredrik Brattberg, whose play Cantus was performed as staged reading, was among the participants of this section, which was supported by the Danish Embassy, the Danish Cultural Institute, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Danish Ministry of Culture, the Danish Consulate, the Swedish Consulate General, the Swedish Research Institute and the Swedish Arts Council.
Brattberg is no stranger to the New Text Festival and the Istanbul audience. His play The Returning, which was performed as a staged reading at the festival in 2019, is being staged as a theatre production by Kemal Aydoğan in Moda Sahnesi this season. Brattberg, who is also a musician, actively uses music and music theories in many of his plays, which are generally shaped around the absurd and dark nature of life. Receiving the prestigious Ibsen Award for his play The Returning, Brattberg's plays have been translated into more than twenty languages and staged in many important theater companies in France and Germany, such as La Comédie Française, Théâtre du Rond Point, Schauspiel Frankfurt.
What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion?
Every thought starts with a «no», Hegel writes in one of his books. And what he means by that is that if you agree upon what other people says, you have not created any real tough yourself. A good play should in some way break with what already is, it must want something else - that could be concerning the plays form as well as its content.
Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?
Yes. But the effect of it is indirect. Lets say you are dealing with a dilemma and that you for weeks has been thinking: Should I do A or should I do B? One day you walk past a window standing open and out of the window you hear a stereo playing Beethoven, and then… suddenly, you know that you will go for alternative B. A thing here is that Beethoven do not say anything directly about your dilemma, but it still manage to open it up in some ways, or point out a direction for it.
When you are working on a text, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works?
When I write a play it has to be about something that I am personal about. It has to be something I have felt myself. There is often children in my plays, and I notice, looking back at my own writing, that the children in my plays are getting older and older, and in the same tempo as my own children. So I often write about them, in some way. But never directly.
When do you decide to give a title to a work you are working on if it already does not have one?
Either the title comes very early, or it comes so late that at the end of my writing prosess my biggest concern starts to be the title. But then, after concerning my brain with this issue, I always end up with something I am quite satisfied with. My best title, I think, is «The father of the child of the mother» and I remember I came up with that quite late in the prosess, one day I was out running. And I remember I was out of myself with joy.
Are there any writer, artist or person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such a figure, who?
When I write I let my plays build upon each other, that means when I write a new play I keep elements from older plays that I want to develop further. And I also find new elements, so that my plays do not look to much alike. So my big influence is really myself. I do think this is essential for becoming a good playwright. Writing your first play I do think you can, or perhaps should, be inspired by other artist, but then you have to make your own path. You make this path by keeping and developing elements, and after a while your plays become more and more different from other playwrights, ad you have found something that is your own.
When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?
Well, the most important concerning this is, for me, really just to keep making art. Even tough we have seen art successfully used to do wrong - like in Hitlers Germany - I do belive art by itself only can make things better. I want to point back at my answer to question two. When art opens up the dilemma and enlightens alternative B, it does not - of corse - mean that B is the right thing to do. But the person has now made a choice based on a broader way of viewing the world. The world is mostly covered up, it is closed for us. If I wonder what a stone is and want to go directly at the stone, I will find nothing. I can split the stone in two, but there it is just more of the same - more stone. But if you want to know what a stone is, you have to find a way to disclose it. This idea of the world being closed and that it can be reached indirectly, is fundamental to us. Think of Islam or Christianity. Both Allah and God is hidden, but can be reached indirect trough Muhammed and Jesus. A simple thing like a cup of coffee also has the power to disclose the world, it can change the present to become a moment, or the geographical point you are at to become a place. Art has this effect on people, and in a very effective way. The most of us has experienced to attend a funeral without really understand what is going on, before there is music and then we are into the whole situation. Or walking trough the city without really seeing any of the thousand people you pass or notice any buildings, before you later come to a work of art, a statue standing on a square, and then you suddenly see the people and the buildings around it. The people who denied other people the same rights as they want for them selfs, or people who do not care about the future of our planet, does this because the world is mostly hidden for them - and they need things to reveal it.
What are your main concerns when a play of yours is translated into another language?
There is two things that concern me the most, the first is if the rhythm of the language is kept. I spend much time working with the rhythm. And secondly. In my plays I often let the characters speak wrongly, not gramercy perfect, and I use this to make them as human as possible. Often I am concerned that the translator are making the text to perfect.
Do you believe your works resonate more with your local culture/community or more universally?
Many of my plays is quite universal. I do not write directly about political topics. But some plays still resonates more in my culture. That is especially when it comes to the father role. In Norway the father is just as much involved with the children as the mother, and even when the child is a baby. For example, when I had my first child I was home from work six months with the baby while the mother was working, and for my second child I was actually home more months with the baby than the mother.
Your play Cantus was shared with the audience in New Text Festival in Istanbul in the staged reading. How did the idea for this play come about, how did the writing process develop?
Cantus is about about an old man. He has his birth day and his children are having a party for him. Most people will probably recognize the situation where you have a visitor and you share the same energi as the visitor, but then, after the guest has been there for a while, there comes a new guest. The new guest comes in with new energy, but you yourself has lost a little sparkle, since you already had a guest for a while. In Cantus, this continues. The old man is in a one to one relationship with the first guest, but when the next guest comes in with new energy, and he cant put up. A third guest arrives, a fourth, a fifth and so on until the guests - or the old mans children - has tired him out. This form comes originally from music, and is called a kanon. In Norway - or perhaps in Turkey?- we often sing this in school where one group of kids starts singing and another groups starts singing the same songs some measures later, making different voiced sounding together. This was my first idea that made me start the writing process.
Which elements surprised you and which elements were just as you expected in the staged reading of your works by the participant artists of the New Text Festival in Istanbul?
First of all, I thought it was a very good reading. The director was very creative in using few elements to say a lot, and the actors where very good. But one thing surprised me. My play ends with a note to the director saying «continues as you wish». Since the fater at this point it isolated in his bed room, and probably dead, I thought my message to the director only could mean to send in more guests, more actors, to make the party bigger. But here the director used this freedom to changed the meaning of the play. I liked that very much, and that is of course the director full right to do this. But I have never thought of the possibility.
[The Turkish version of this conversation was published in unlimited.]
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