Power struggle, thirst for freedom and sibling love in the Theater Academy's graduation production

The Theatre Academy's final-year students stage “Bernarda's House” as their graduation performance – a play about control, confinement, sibling love and rivalry, directed by Julia Marko-Nord.

The House of Benarda is about a matriarch who rules her family with with draconian sternness. The family consists of five daughters and two employees. The mother keeps her daughters locked up and restricts their lives, especially their love lives.

“The original play is set in rural Spain at the beginning of the 20th century, but we wanted to adapt it so that it feels closer to the here and now,” says playwright Tora von Platen, who adapted Federico García Lorca's play together with Julia Marko-Nord.

They were inspired by various environments where young people are physically and/or mentally imprisoned today, such as asylums, religious sects and controlling love or family relationships. However, the adaptation is not an explicit depiction of any of these, and students and future audiences are free to associate and relate to what happens in the play.

Trapped young people

“We wanted to explore what happens to young people who want to be out in the world but instead become trapped and oppressed. Where is that hopelessness channeled? And what is it that keeps them from just walking out the door and leaving the controlling environment?” says Tora von Platen.

The actors will be trapped, literally. The entire stage space has been filled with a box whose only open side faces the audience. Since the backstage is blocked, all the actors will be on stage during the entire performance, which means great demands on being present and not going out of character.

The reality of the play is about domination, hierarchies and control. But as a director, Julia Marko-Nord wants to tear down the hierarchies. She is an actor at heart and has approached directing from that perspective. As an actor, she has certainly learned a lot from the "Masters" and "Geniuses", self-imposed epithets that were perhaps more common in the past than now, but that is not how she wants to work.

- "Theater is a collective art form and that's why I love it. Solitary art forms, like photography or writing, where you control everything yourself, don't suit me. I grew up in collectives and I became a director because I wanted to create a collective space where the actors' knowledge and experience is utilized; this is something we do together.

She emphasizes that it can be comfortable to be accompanied. Her non-hierarchical approach is far from undemanding; the actors must actively participate in the development process if it is to be successful.

- "It's fun to work with students who are at the beginning of their career and still hungry. When they give it their all, I am moved.

A play about longing for freedom

Two of the actors are Ludvig Stynsberg and Lilly Sundberg.

- "It feels like Julia is here as a director, not a teacher. We are colleagues who are aiming in the same direction. With her manner, she expresses: "I see that you can do a little more. Come and let's dare together." She creates a safe space where there is a high ceiling and where you dare to fall hard, says Lilly Sundberg.

The play is about more than an authoritarian environment. It is possible to relate parts of it to what it is like to be a student at the Theater Academy, says Lilly Sundberg.

- The play is also about group dynamics. "During these years we have worked a lot in groups. We are one kind of group when we are all eight and a completely different one when one of us is away. The group dynamics change all the time.

For Ludvig Stynsberg, the play is very much about longing to leave, but also about the fact that what keeps the characters in the box of the stage is not just submission and dominance.

- It is also love and community that keeps them in there. And safety. Why don't they go outside? Because the world outside is characterized by uncertainty.

Bernarda's house premieres on May 9 on stage 2 at Norrbottensteatern. The Theatre Academy will tour the play May 29 - June 1, at d

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