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Finlandia
Presents
Finnish
Musical
Comedy |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen S. Johnson, Executive Director of Communications
Finnish Musical Comedy at Finlandia October 2-5
HANCOCK – Four performances of the play, Herra Puntila and His Man
Matti, will be presented at the Finlandia University Finnish American Heritage Center, Hancock, October 2 to October 5, 2008.
Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, October 2-4. The Sunday, October 5, performance begins at 2:30 p.m. Tickets may be purchased at the door prior to each performance. Tickets are $5.00 per person; Finlandia student are admitted free with their university ID. The play is performed in English.
Herra Puntila and His Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht
Matti) was written in 1941 by German playwright Bertolt
Brecht, in collaboration with Finnish-Estonian playwright Hella
Wuolijoki.
Directed by Finlandia music and drama instructor Melvin
Kangas, the musical comedy tells the story of landowner Puntila and his “Jekyll and Hyde” relationships with his daughter, his servant,
Matti, and the workers on his farm. The play was adapted from a Finnish folk tale and is set in Finland in the 1930s.
The play is one of Brecht’s modern social criticism plays. Its message suggests that genuine equality, not the whims of individual philanthropy, bridges the gap between rich and poor.
However, play director Melvin Kangas said the message is not why he chose to produce the play.
“I like to select plays where I can have a creative hand, especially with the music,” Kangas explained. “This play gave me that opportunity.”
Each of the play’s ten scenes is introduced by a song with music composed by
Kangas.
“Brecht wrote the words for the songs, but not the music,” Kangas said. “So each production of the play is different.”
And to enhance the Finnish ambiance of the play, Kangas has added performances of traditional Finnish dances between each scene. Dancers include Bob and Hester Butler, and Phyllis Fredendall and Hannu
Leppanen.
The play’s cast and crew numbers more than 25 and includes community members and Finlandia students, staff, and faculty.
When Puntila (played by Oren
Tikkanen) is sober, he is a mean-spirited, self-centered capitalist who fires workers with communist sympathies, puts profit before people, and wants to marry his daughter, Eva (Kendra Benson), to a lame-brained diplomat (Jordan
Siegler).
When he is drunk, Puntila is friendly and humane, hiring anyone who needs a job and determined to marry Eva to his chauffeur, Matti
(Pasi
Lautila), who he treats as an equal. Oscillating between these two poles, he plays havoc with his workers, his daughter’s marriage, and the loyalty of his sardonic chauffeur and valet,
Matti.
German playwright, poet, and Marxist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) wrote his first plays in the 1920s. With the composer Kurt Weill he wrote the satirical musical The Threepenny Opera, which was produced as a film in 1931. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany he went into exile, first in Scandinavia (1933-1941), then in the U.S., where he wrote the play Mother Courage and Her Children (1941) and several other popular plays. Harassed in the U.S. for his politics, in 1949 he returned to East Germany, where he established the Berliner Ensemble theatre troupe and staged his own plays.
For additional information, please contact Melvin Kangas at 906-487-7250.
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