The Stockholm Fringe Festival is here to entertain you.
On the way towards the post-pandemic carnivals of the future, we make a stopover at yet another hybrid edition of Stockholm Fringe Festival, aka STOFF.
At a time where the people of Stockholm have been deprived of cultural entertainment of any sort for a year and a half, it’s great to see an event like STOFF, The Stockholm Fringe Festival, go ahead, even if the format has been tweaked a bit compared to pre-pandemic festivals. We’re looking forward to a dynamic programme across several subgenres of performing arts, and so cornered Adam Potrykus and Helena Bunker from the STOFF team to hear about this upcoming explosion of creative energy. Furthermore we wanted to highlight a string of the acts performing, spanning from a dancing robot to black metal.
You’re back. This year with about 60 acts, which I guess is significantly fewer than previous years. Take us through your last 12-15 months of the pandemic, and how this has affected the work around the festival.
Adam: The fringe always finds a way back! It’s not an understatement to say that the pandemic has significantly impacted the global festival calendar. STOFF has obviously not been immune to Covid-19. Last year’s STOFF theme was ‘The Fringe Must Go On’. It was all about the drive to keep presenting work despite the pandemic, and had a somewhat reduced programme. STOFF 2021’s theme is ‘New Work For A New Reality’. In 2021 various travel bans and whatnot still restrict us. Nonetheless, we’ve increased the variety of both IRL and streamed/play on-demand shows. This year’s festival line-up follows our adopted ‘Boutique-Hybrid’’ format.
Let me break that down for you - Boutique: We program fewer, and more unique acts, that promise to take the festival punters on a ride. We also program fewer acts per venue to be more Covid safe, and give each show a little more space to flourish. Hybrid: We fuse the IRL with the digital, not as an emergency solution in response to the pandemic, but as a permanent model moving forward.
What were the best things about last year, and did you learn anything important that you can use now, as we hopefully will move towards more normal times?
Helena: What struck us the most was the artists’ sheer bravery and their immediate creative response to the pandemic. The whole world was on hold, fumbling in the dark, yet art (as art does) moved on, developed, responded, and discovered new ways to inspire. We were also extremely delighted to be in a position where we could complete the festival. The majority of our sister festivals had to be cancelled. Still, due to our production timeline and our decision to stay flexible for as long as we and everyone involved could, we made it happen in a new and urgent way. I mean, the Sanitasia gala summarised the current situation so well. Such genius on the part of the artists. We are also super excited about the development of our digital initiatives. We have had a mission for years to work more digitally, primarily due to our wish to make the festival more accessible. Last year we sort of did a skydive straight in, to kick off, and learned many lessons on how, what and when etc. As a further result, this year we are thrilled to launch our digital performance arts space Arena STOFF, whose goal is to bloom into a full-blown culture house online.
So let’s talk about this year’s edition of the festival. Does it have any overriding themes, and will it look like the usual Fringe festival?
Adam: Yes! ‘New Work For A New Reality’ is our 2021 theme! While no edition of STOFF is like another, some popular modules return each year. We will have a livestreamed launch, a bunch of unruly site-specific acts, and loads of independent talent that brings fresh work to our stages. This year’s edition of the festival brings a multidisciplinary dose of artistry for all tastes and budgets. This year we have a new festival hub at Blivande and Frihamnstorget. It’s possibly the start of something bigger. We would love to see more of a festival area emerge in the coming years. Think of the Garden of Unearthly Delights at our larger international sister festival. An entire park, like Pridepark, with bars and pop-up theatre venues! Check out the visual art and installations in and around Blivande, immerse yourself in unique performances, and maybe grab a bite to eat? Join one of our panel talks, or experience a VR show at Stockholm’s newest stage: Telefonfabriken. We’re curious about new genres and how to elevate ‘remote’ experiences with digital shows that can tickle your imagination, despite their onscreen nature. We cram in hundreds of events with 60-odd creators and groups across ten places and spaces from Fri Scen at Kulturhuset to Arena STOFF, the new digital STOFF initiative that will be active all year round from this fall.
Will Stockholmers’ appetite for entertainment be even greater now after a year in cultural hiding? Do you perhaps see this as a positive?
Helena: I find it hard to see it any other way. What Stockholmer would not love to binge on a cultural buffet after such a culturally and socially compromised year? I certainly look forward to joining every post-pandemic carnival that will happen after this all ends. We have obviously followed this line of discussion closely during the year as it is a crucial topic for everyone in the industry. It is natural for us to assume that the appetite will be greater than ever, but one has to remember that the world also has found new ways in which to access the arts. I’m not saying that the development of digitalisation will reduce the demands for live events. We think it is interesting to witness new kinds of behaviour from our fellow Stockholmers and audiences around the world. It
is with great anticipation that we will monitor this development, and we will be waiting, ready to deliver to all cultural cravers, live, digitally, or in any other form.
Is there generally a following that you have built up over the years, that come every time? And who do you see as your typical audience member?
Adam: We have a bunch of loyal die-hard fans. There’s no mould to what they look like. It’s more about the universal hunger to experience something fun and venture outside of your comfort zone. Each new edition corrupts a bunch of new unsuspecting Stockholmers. The fringe is like a friendly bug that’s contagious for all the right reasons. People who’ve experienced something that made their heart beat faster tend to come back! We hope to see loads of new faces across our five festival days. A great way to explore the programme is our ‘pathways’ quiz. Our social media officer, Tora, has created various ‘journeys’ one can take through the festival. We’ve been doing this for three years now. The 2021 categories include ‘A World of Bodies’, ‘SFM (Safe For
Mom)’, ‘Sticky Floors’, ‘Conceptual Concepts’, and ‘Never Heard of That Before’.
Do you have any international highlights on this year’s programme that you’re that little bit extra proud of pulling off, considering the covid obstacle?
Helena: When we sent out the artist call, we were obviously aware that restrictions could hinder our plans to invite international acts to Stockholm, even this year. However, with some pandemic experience and new tools in our backpack, we made sure to ask all applicants if they were interested in applying, with Plan A being to perform live in Stockholm, and B being to perform digitally. This option has kept the programming open and flexible all the way to the festival. STOFF is a very keen supporter of site-specific arts, so this year we pressed a bit more to try to find acts that could perform in open, public spaces, a combination of our belief that arts should flourish and be free to experience everywhere, but also a way to meet audience members that perhaps are reluctant to mix with others in venues too soon.
How have the whole family of fringe festivals reacted to Covid? Has it mainly been the same response across the board, or have different festivals struggled more than others?
Adam: Everyone who works in the arts sector has suffered to some degree. Loss of access to audiences, venues on the brink of bankruptcy, and closed box offices have had major implications across the board. Like in other sectors of any given society, there’s loads of resilience and motivation to move forward. Still, it’s heart-breaking to see how the ‘Pandemic Russian Roulette’ hits some of the most extraordinary global events, like the Sydney Fringe Festival 2021. They had to cancel this month due to the current Covid wave in Australia. 400 plus shows scrapped. Imagine the ripple effect.
And has this episode with the pandemic altered your future plans and ambitions?
Helena: STOFF comes from a core passion to find new ways, opportunities, partners, acts, and audiences. The pandemic has not altered our foundations, but it has somewhat inspired us to think differently, and to reach out to different avenues in the cultural fields. It has definitely made us realise that accessibility is still poorly developed, and that opens up new ways of thinking. I don’t think we ever have created as many new projects as we have done this year, but that is a classic artistic development, I guess. The greater the resistance, the greater the power to produce change and positive experiences.
One change in your strategy that I notice is that you will have monthly events year-round now, plus the digital platform for live events outside of the festival week and programme. What’s the thinking behind this?
Adam: Correct! STOFF 2021 sees the launch of Arena STOFF! This new venture has two entities, the digital arena, with various digital content that will surface throughout the year, and an IRL stage for in-person events. There are several motivations for why we wanted this new meeting platform - the most obvious one - we need more Fringe! There are loads of international quality acts who can’t attend STOFF due to scheduling clashes with other festivals. They still want to showcase their work in Stockholm. There’s also a chronic shortage of stages for both local and touring Swedish acts. Our aim is to open up stage hours in various spots for these acts. We start with one Thursday each month at Teater Tre on Södermalm. The goal is to extend the number of stages in the coming years. We got a small ‘pre-study’ grant to explore this notion. Arena STOFF will therefore be a testing ground for what can become a permanent stage in the future. As you can see, it’s never dull in our ‘Stoffice’.
Are you looking forward to doing the Stockholm Fringe Festival, and how long ago was it that an audience could experience one of your shows?
Oh yes, so very much! But the last time before STOFF is actually a couple of weeks beforehand as this piece premieres on September 2 at Norrlandsoperan in Umeå. Virtually of course.
This new show Alone Together goes down the virtual reality route, where the audience experiences the show through a VR headset. Can you explain the idea?
Happily. When the audience arrives, they will be given a VR-headset, with simple instructions on how to navigate the virtual environments of the piece. When they are all settled in, the show will start in VR. Once there the audience will meet the dancers. They will interact and co-exist in real-time as the dancers will take them on an intimate journey. The audience will be able to act and move freely and they will all see each other in VR. I wanted to use VR as a tool to create an intimate, trusting setting in which we all feel a genuine presence through, with and thanks to our embodied avatars.
That intimate connection between the performer and the audience might be a bit different for this show, but normally how would you look at the importance of the presence of an audience when it comes to performing arts?
Oh, it is so essential. That was one of the main points that we are working on now in Alone Together: How can that feeling of presence and connection exist digitally? This question underlies a lot of digital presence today.
You seem to have a keen interest in the meeting between man and the machine, and your shows have included human dancers being replaced by animation or robots. Why this fascination? And Alex the dancing robot is performing in this show too, right?
Yes, I am fascinated by the construction of life, of naturalism. We believe that we are ‘free’, unprogrammed while we consist of so many little programmes acting on us constantly. I love the idea of the Simulacra, the realer than real. I love how characters in computer games and robots fake this natural-ness. Alex has a very, very small part in this show, but they are not essential.
Beginning with religious beliefs and culminating in sexual rituals, The Korpela Movement was a several hundred-member strong doomsday sect in the very north of Sweden that thrived in the 1930s. Is your interest in, and the idea to base a project on, the Korpela movement just a very natural progression from relocating from Malmö and Berlin to the Korpela hotspot of Tornedalen?
Well in a way one could say it’s a natural progression from the relocation of Institutet to Tornedalen. But my interest in the Korpela Movement comes from my own experience. I grew up here in Tornedalen and have heard stories and been fascinated about the movement since I was a little child. And I have for a long time been thinking about how to work with the topic in a performance, and when we moved up here in 2018 I immediately started to work on it.
What does seem a bit surprising is covering the Korpela movement via the form of a black metal band. But you have made a performance incorporating black metal before, so maybe not all that surprising anyway. What is it with black metal that makes you want to return to the genre for this project?
When I started to work on this project, I thought a lot about how and in what form the prophets of the Korpela Movement would appear if they were resurrected today, and then it felt natural that they would return in the form of a black metal band. For me there are a lot of interesting connections, for example that Korpela Movement created a strong uproar against the social norms of Tornedalen in the ’30s, and that they attracted a lot of young people who were tired of the life that they were living. For me as a young person discovering black metal it was the same experience, it made me feel free.
You received about one million SEK as a grant for this project. How was the money spent, and how important are grants like this for artists and arts and culture, to not only thrive, but to actually be able to survive?
Yes, we received a project grant from Kulturbryggan. We have been working on this performance on and off for a year, very much like we do when we create a ‘normal’ performance. We have, for this project, worked with a team of four musicians, a producer, an artistic director, a sound technician, a light tech, an assistant and an animator for the visuals, so mostly the grant has gone to paying salaries to everyone. For me as a black metal lover, it has been especially great to be able to pay real salaries to the black metal musicians, who normally must work full time in other jobs alongside their art.
And how important are festivals like the Stockholm Fringe, in highlighting more alternative works that otherwise would have a harder time reaching an audience? Just how important are they for the cultural scene of the city?
It is of course important for the project to be invited to Stockholm Fringe and to meet a wider audience, and I also think it’s very healthy for the theatre and performance scene in Stockholm to meet black metal. When we have performed up in the north this summer, it’s been clear that we have attracted a new audience that normally doesn’t go to the theatre - the people who love metal music and who normally prefer metal concerts instead of theatre. The interesting thing is also that people who normally go to theatre and not black metal concerts really like the experience and through our project discover and start to like black metal.
As a theatre group, are you beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel after Covid?
We’re cautiously optimistic about the future! But hopefully, with the current restrictions, it won’t be long until we meet the audience live again. Being part of STOFF is a step in the right direction!
What has been the toughest thing during this year and a half?
It’s been challenging not knowing when and if we would be able to perform at all during this pandemic. Not having a particular goal in the form of a premiere date has been hard. It has challenged us to find new ways to be creative. Through primarily digital and a few physical rehearsals, we decided to make a filmed version of the play. A decision we perhaps wouldn’t have thought of before.
Our long-term goal is to take this show on the road IRL as well! Arena STOFF, STOFF’s new all-year-round venture, will possibly be hosting our on-stage performance!
In your new show Say It you are looking into life after sexual assault. It’s about feelings of hate, revenge, guilt and shame.
That’s correct. It’s very common for people who’ve been sexually assaulted to feel shame about the abuse - and to blame themselves instead of the perpetrator. The play also focuses on the recovery and rehabilitation of both the body and soul. How does one become friends with yourself again, and not be held hostage by the trauma?
Could a subject ever be too grim to cover in a show, where it’s almost like a car crash, in that people almost want to look away? Or is that exactly why the subject is so important to cover?
I think that one of the main problems when it comes to sexual assault against women is that too many choose to look away from the subject instead of talking about it. And to use art as a platform, in this case, theatre, to elevate this universal issue, is just one small attempt to keep the conversation current and alive.
In your view, should theatre always highlight issues, or would you be fine with ever doing a light-hearted show for just pure entertainment?
Yes, of course! But I don’t think it’s necessary to make a distinction between tough subjects and, for example, humour. On the contrary, using comic expression to highlight a particular topic has the potential to engage the audience on a deeper level.