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Kulturhuset Stadsteatern sets up newly written play

By on April 15, 2019
Clas Bengtsson

De obehöriga by John Ajvide Lindqvist is a newly written piece and a project initiated by Anna Takanen, who also stands for directing. De obehöriga gets its first performance on October 4 at the new playground St Paul, run by the City Mission on Mariatorget.

– In summer 2018, Anna Takanen contacted me and wondered if I wanted to write a play about “The existential health state around Mariatorget”. I said that I did very much. The contemporary human’s existential state has engage me in my later novels, however, I had zero check on Mariatorget, says John Ajvide Lindqvist.

De obehöriga are based on some forty interviews with people who live and work around Mariatorget in Södermalm in Stockholm. The interviews are about life, the spirit of time and identity. With the interviews as the basic material, John Ajvide Lindqvist has written a play that starts in a condominium association meeting.

– When we found St. Paul’s Church and the collaboration with the City Mission became clear, it felt quite right to dig in the local, in what happens around the square with those who live there. The square is a scene. I have worked with interviews many times since the nineties and it is a method that interests me. We started in reality and then John Ajvide created Lindqvist’s world, says director Anna Takanen, theater-scene art director and initiator of the play.

– The condominium association meeting AND the play is very much about concern and insecurity. How people seek concrete solutions to remedy their abstract anxiety. In parallel with the condominium association meeting, a catastrophe of unknown kind is in progress in Stockholm, yes, perhaps all over the world. Something foreign is taking over while the BRF meeting is considering facial recognition to keep the unauthorized away from the gate, says John Ajvide Lindqvist.

– The play is initially about individualism and the fear of the alien to move into a depiction of the emergence of a fragile affinity for collective memories. The BRF members have become a hive in a state where the Children in Bullerbyn have unexpectedly great importance, says John Ajvide Lindqvist.

– It has been a funny piece to write. Despite a dark sound base, there is a comic absurdism in people’s misguided attempts to defend themselves against De Andra, says John Ajvide Lindqvist.

– John Ajvide Lindqvist is a writer I have been following for a long time and I love his selfishness and his tone of voice in the reply. He is also insanely funny, says Anna Takanen.

Helena Olofsson, Culture & Music | Södermalm
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