Rabbiting around in Helsinki

Posted by Simon Bedford (Marketing & Touring Manager, Hoipolloi)

It's Monday evening and I'm now back home after my trip over to Helsinki with Hugh and Aled. Although international touring is exhausting in its planning, the pay-off of actually travelling out to the final destination is almost always worth the effort.

And Helsinki definitely didn't disappoint, with plenty of interesting stories to share!

The trip commenced on Thursday last week with a very early flight out of Heathrow (we checked in at 6am) with the delightful Finnair. Perhaps the most bizarre part of the flight was the addition of a CCTV camera at the front of the plane, giving us first a pilot's eye and then a bird's eye view of take-off and landing. It's actually quite fun to see the world become minature as the plane climbs up into the clouds but I'm not so sure I wanted to see us zoom down the runway and I definitely didn't enjoy seeing the pilot's (increasingly erratic) attempts to line us up with the runway to prepare for touch-down!

Over in Helsinki, the company were performing at Korjaamo, a new(-ish) theatre in the city. Actually to describe it as a theatre is a complete underestimation of what takes place there - it's actually a converted tram depot, with two gallery spaces, two theatres, a trendy bar, a delicious restaurant, a tram museum and even a TV studio (I think I made it onto Sub, a Finnish TV channel one night - in the background behind a continuity announcement!).

Anyway, I made this little video, which will give you a slightly better sense of the space we were performing in...



I think that Hugh and Aled were really happy with the show. It's always tricky to work out whether people outside the UK will totally understand and respond to the show in the same way but it's always fun/interesting to see what happens!

Our time at Korjaamo was part of their STAGE Festival, which in turn was part of the wider Helsinki Festival. With the city in a truly cultural mood, we found art popping up in lots of random places and on Friday evening, we were entertained by numerous choirs (including a group of Helsinki's policewomen) everywhere we went. They were at Korjaamo and even at a restaurant where we ate that night. The brochure for this mini-festival also provided us with our other entertainment for the evening - reading the different English translations of the copy...

For example, how do you fancy seeing some...

"Elderly young people pull solid rock songs about streetcars amd [sic] booze-vapored moments of enlightment"

or how about...

"The best female vocalists sing their audience into oblivion"

or my favourite...

"Love poems and sounds of liking a special person"

Actually I shouldn't mock too much as Finnish people speak far far better English than my very poor attempts at basic Finnish! I think I managed only to master "thank you" or "kiitos".

And it is a big "kiitos" to Raoul and all the staff at Korjaamo for inviting us over to Helsinki and making us feel so welcome.

Finally, as a way of bringing my trip neatly to a close and in tribute to the tram depot that hosted us for a few days, the final leg of the journey back to my flat in England was made by tram. Although this time sadly from the far less glamorous location of Croydon!

Some Facts

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

Things are pretty quiet in the Hoipolloi office at the moment. Steffi Muller, our Associate Director, is away in Edinburgh performing with our friends Menagerie. (Click here for details of the show, Correspondence.) In fact, I’m the only person I know who isn’t going to the Fringe this year. And in the meantime, whilst everyone else in Theatre-land is busy at the Festival, the phone here is quiet and my inbox is empty.

To pass the time, I’ve been learning about Helsinki. That’s because on Thursday Hugh Hughes and Aled will be flying out to Finland to perform Story of a Rabbit at the Korjaamo Culture Factory. The set and lots of our technical equipment is already on its way and I had a great time rummaging around the Hoipolloi store last week, until Richard, our Production Manager, forced me to stop exploring and do back-breaking labour while we packed up the freight. (The Story of a Rabbit set is really heavy.)

Anyway, before we go into Fun Facts About Finland, I should say a couple of things:

1) I have learned everything I’m about to tell you from the internet and Wikipedia. It may or may not actually be true.

2) A lot of the aforementioned websites preface their facts with the adjective “fun” and, frankly, they don’t deliver. I don’t consider statistics pertaining to population demographics to be fun. Nor is the fact that the country’s dialling code is 358. By contrast, my Finnish Facts will be 100% Funtastic.


FACT 1:
Helsinki? More like HELLsinki. Such was the outrage when “hard rock quintet” Lordi bagged Finland’s first ever Eurovision victory in 2006. The group is fronted by the inimitable Mr. Lordi. Past band members with amusing names include a bassist named G-Stealer. Apparently he was kicked out of the band because he kept stealing all the G’s from the band’s alphabet fridge magnet set.

FACT 2:
There’s a statue of a super-sexy mermaid in the market square in Helsinki. On the 1st of May every year, students gather round the statue to celebrate the arrival of Spring. (And to stare at a sexy mermaid, probably.) The statue hasn’t always been popular though. When it was unveiled in 1908, women’s rights groups protested that it objectified women. Two years previously, women in Finland had been granted the vote: that’s 20 years before the same happened in this country. (Wow, those Scandinavians are progressive.)

FACT 3:
The city’s animal symbol is a squirrel.


Well, I'm sure you all got a lot out of that.

Let's finish with a video of Lordi, performing their song, Would You Love a Monsterman?