Artist in Exile… a play about The Other

By Ira Seidenstein

January 15, 2025

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Finally in Sweden long enough I thought I should learn about their famous ‘national’ playwright August Strindberg. I didn’t really understand much of the Swedish language. It may be that Strindberg’s plays are or were done so often throughout the world that in numbers of productions perhaps he was second only to William Shakespeare work’s productions?

I liked that Strindberg lived so close to our time so that there is much more detailed information about him as a person and artist than is known of anyone of Shakespeare’s era. Plus when I read different books about Shakespeare’s life there were very different interpretations about the facts. Not to mention questions pertaining to which facts were facts and which were conjecture.

Of course I read first the then most famous and readily available book in English. That is Strindberg: A Biography by Michael Meyer published in 1985.

“His biography of Strindberg was published in 1985, for which the Swedish Academy awarded him their Gold Medal, the first time it had been given to an Englishman. He did not publish a biography of Strindberg for many years because the prejudices Meyer most objected to in people “would be headed by racism, hysteria, self-pity, malice and vengefulness, and Strindberg possessed all these in full measure.” He resolved “however miserable Strindberg made others, I would keep my antipathy to myself.” (online source).

That book meant I was thrilled about Strindberg the person. I soon felt inspired and began to write a pseudo biographical play about Strindberg. A scenario was imagined. My leaping off point into the abyss of creativity was that his first name, August, is also the title of a type of Clown called an Auguste in the European circus clown tradition. ‘August’ or ‘Auguste’ is from the Latin word augustus, meaning “consecrated” or “venerable,” which in turn is related to the Latin augur, meaning “consecrated by augury” or “auspicious.” In the case of clowning the name is a reversal of fortune. The Auguste clown although a trickster is also often ‘he who gets slapped’ or the ‘bottom of the pecking order’. In some respects although August Strindberg was highly revered, he also seemed to have a huge struggle socially or even in Society. He had difficulty in marriage. He had a period as a young man in Germany when he played guitar socially and was a lively asset to parties. Strindberg studied painting, art, and alchemy in Paris. Also as a young man. He became a gifted and some would say a master painter. I saw an exhibition of his huge works of the outdoors, clouds, and storms. He had mastery over the colors, flow, and most significantly mood or emotion portrayed in Nature. Those are my memories of the exhibition.

As Meyers, who certainly was a scholar of all-things-Strindberg, explained… Strindberg was a complicated person, artist, and soul. A line from a play by Nicky Silver was: “Issues, issues. Your Father has so many issues he can’t get through the door”. Seems that may be a brief pointed summary of Strindberg the man.

I chose, of course the subjects that interested me such as his argumentative nature; his reclusive nature later in life; his issues with women near and far; and his supposed antipathy towards Jewish people. That last part was possibly so in that he already was argumentative and as we Jewish people sometimes enjoy a good healthy argument which we call a discussion. My theatre teacher Carlo loved to explain to us students the meaning of an Italian based word occasionally and with great flourishes of voice and emotion. Argument in English was from Italian and thus Latin and he said ‘argumento’ was not antagonism but was a discussion. And the Italians and others of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean area enjoy theatrical discussions.

Meyers dealt with the Jewish factors around Strindberg and cited one theatre critic who lambasted one of Strindberg’s works. Strindberg by that time was a reputable writer and was able to have a reply printed. In the reply he noted the critic was of Jewish heritage and Strindberg meant to offer a harsh rebuttal but also said that the critic was not typical of his great race.

I had earlier started to read just a little bit about Jewish persons or communities in Sweden and in Goteborg where at this period I was living. That came about because I received a commission via my employer to create a performance for a large scale retrospective of Sweden’s ‘national’ painter Anders Zorn. That exhibition would be in Stockholm for several months and then be remounted in Goteborg. The gallery wanted a performance that was a reflection or related to the exhibition. I was to create the show with a few of the 26 Actors that I had been training. I want to thank the producers who at that time owned and ran a beautiful shop for children’s books, toys, activities. They also produced physical theatre entertainment for events in the city of Goteborg as well as for private functions. They were great hosts to me and were the first persons to ‘hire’ my Quantum Theatre method. They are: Aleka Karageorgopoulus; and Eva Hartild Karageorgopoulus and Edda Bjarnadottir. Their shop was Commedia Butik. Thanks too go to my friend James McCann who I met coincidently when I saw the Commedia Butik and went in to look around. I heard James speaking English with an American accent and said hello. He introduced me to Aleka, Eva, Edda.

I borrowed some books about Zorn and found he had a significant Jewish connection as his wife was Jewish and her family were a merchant family who loved Art. I’ll enclose a link here that is about Emma Amalia Lamm who married Zorn.

https://skbl.se/en/article/EmmaAmaliaZorn

For the Zorn project I went to Stockholm to see the exhibition and I read what I could find about Zorn in English. It became clear on day one of going to create the show with the Actors that most if not all of that small group actually deeply loathed Zorn’s works and whatever he ‘stood for’ or ‘represented’ as a person. However, we had a commission and we engaged with Zorn’s work and life. Lo and behold… soon the Actors started to see his Art and life in new ways which were inspiring. Like Strindberg, Zorn was criticized of personal weaknesses. Some of which included gender issues. Early on Zorn was criticized for his paintings which included nudity. The regions of Sweden each have a different history, different terrain, different borders with other Countries or regions, and quite different dialects, and therefore they are actually different Cultures. Zorn’s region was more liberal minded, for instance with regards to nude swimming which appeared in some of his paintings.

The period when Strindberg and Zorn lived was ‘revolutionary’ when it came to gender issues, roles, and behavior. It was a fervent period of adjusting Western values. It was immediately preceding, during, and after the Suffragette movement for Women to have equal rights in Voting. That movement was extremely strong in Sweden. That then ushered in many other valuable social changes some of which Sweden became most famous for.

Now follows a description and some text from the final scenes of the play Artist in Exile… requiem for Strindberg. Importantly, when I write or create a play it is done collaboratively. First thanks to the Actors with whom we spent two periods together. First was about 10 days or two weeks. Then perhaps a month or so to fully create the show and tour it to five northern Swedish towns including Kiruna our host for creation and Lulea. Thanks to each Actor – the cast list is later in this blog. I want to thank our colleague and producer Kjell Peder Johanson who ran the Theatre course and was a wonderful colleague!!! Last but not least I want to thank Niclas Abrahamsson who trained with me in Goteborg. He was a musician already and likely a writer. He translated my first parts of the play which I wrote in English. Additionally, the Actors assisted with the text development during the creation and rehearsal.

On that note, my play had three protagonists. Each based on a real person. Each person a very famous male artist. Each of whom not only had great personal conflicts between the genders in their own lives, but, also were leading artists in there notably master works dealing with gender and society. The other two characters in the play were Henrik Ibsen and Ingmar Bergman. Ibsen is Norway’s ‘national’ playwright, and Bergman is Sweden’s greatest film maker. Strindberg, Ibsen, and Bergman are amongst the greatest performance creators of the modern era.

But, I have other interests and I also have my own creative inclinations. Thus the play, Artist in Exile… requiem for Strindberg casts the three protagonists as a trio of Clowns who all want to be Writers and who each has difficulties with women personally, socially, and societally. So opposite the trio were their immediate antagonists a quartet of young women. To set up the conflict I wanted that quartet to be ‘fresh as daisies’ and classically ‘feminine’. In fact I based them on some cafes in Sweden which dressed their waitresses and clerks in beautiful dresses that looked like ‘milk maidens’. A maiden in Sweden is called a jungfru. That can also be a word for virgin. Maiden, jungfru, virgin are interrelated.

The Clown trio was on stage the whole time. Strindberg was played by a wonderful diminutive sized fellow. Whereas Ibsen and Bergman were considerably taller.

The Maidens had four scenes. They entered happily and had a song to perform for each entrance. The trio were ‘macho’ and said some condescending comments. Although in the first scene the Maidens giggled at the comments the structure was that the women had a progressively much stronger response chronologically. The men had the reverse journey going from macho to withdrawal. The comments from the men followed the performance of each song. Although I began to write the play in Goteborg a very southern city, it happened that I was hired to work in the very far north of Sweden. First in Lulea about 100 km south of the Arctic Circle to then work in Kiruna that is about 100 km north of the Arctic Circle and it was there that I was hired to do a theatre project for a theatre course within Kiruna Folkhogskolan. Something like a community college in the USA or a TAFE in Australia.

The Maidens though had a ‘shadow’ quartet of the counter image of women. They were a coven of witches. A witch often was a healer. A woman who knew about herbs, and poultices, and birthing, and women’s business. For this quartet we had the Hecuba or Queen of the witches to be like the singer/composer Madonna who was enormously famous and successful in this period of the production i.e. mid to late 1990’s. She was a tall actress and her costume was Madonna-like i.e. stylish and seductive. Then there was a Bag Lady; and a Punk; and a classic witch in a black cloak and I think she had a pointy black hat?

Each time the Maidens entered and sang, they sang a folk tune from a different regional Culture. As we were working in the far north, Norbotten region that is also called Lappland which borders Norway and Finland thus one song was from each region/nation/culture i.e. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Lapp. Each song was sung in the connected language: Swedish, Norwegian, Finish, Lapp.

The first one was a folk song I heard occasionally. It is one that every Swede knew. “Jänta å ja’ is a folksong from Värmland, published by Fredrik August Dahlgren. It is a common Round dance around the Christmas tree and the Midsummerpole in Sweden. The song was recorded in 1904, and has also been recorded with lyrics in English, using titles like “My Girl and I”, “Me and My Gal”, and “Midsummer Eve”.

Though not from our show, here is a fine recording of the song. (Thanks Caspar Schjelbred).

When I came up to Kiruna to create the project/play and I asked if the Maidens knew and could sing the song. Yes. But after that first time there was some talking around the whole group and quite ribald laughter. I had no idea what was going on. Finally someone, actually I am pretty sure it was the Black Witch – (Camilla Johansson?). As she was perhaps a little older but quite bold at any rate. She asked if I knew that there was another version of that song. Of course I didn’t know. My naivety caused some more laughter. It was then explained to me that there was an equally famous version that was explicitly sexual. So the Actors sang and laughed and sang and finally translated.

So I had the idea that each time the Maidens exit then the Witches (in Swedish hexorna) would immediately enter singing. Singing the ribald explicitly sexual and very funny song. The Hexorna were like a gaggle of Clowns and they entered with a clown-like dance while singing. Hecuba would then ask them who would they like to curse. Each of their four entrances they sang the same ribald song and entered the same way and at the end of each of their scenes they exited the same way i.e. singing and dancing in a chain holding hands between their legs i.e. like a link of clowns. Each Hexorna scene involved cursing a different group including politicians in one and bureaucrats in another etc.

Besides the trio, and the two quartets there were three individual characters each of whom had their own scene encountering the trio.

Those three were: Henry Bergman (Chaplin’s close friend and colleague who was Chaplin’s gag master; and Assistant; and who acted in 30 of Chaplin’s movies including most famously as the Old Clown in Chaplin’s film The Circus); and the Writer/Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Lastly in the final scenes there is an audience member who Strindberg suddenly notices. Strindberg had just lost another argument so he was looking for a scapegoat upon whom to take revenge. In that antagonistic mood he notices and unusual man in the audience. The man is in a suit and has a beard. Strindberg calls out to him.

The English script of that last part of the play is below. Thanks for helping translate Michaela Lind! I finally found the original English version for the last page of the main text. But I needed your translation still for the closing Ritual’s poem. All is below.