Unexpected theatre

Today became culturally unexpectedly varied.

A few hours in the morning was used for mixing and editing music for a friend and former neighbour living in Härnösand, where I used to live, in the northern part of Sweden. He plays his own compositions on the guitar and has sent me recordings made with his camera. The recording quality isn't that good but I can at least make it sound better with my mixing app, "Studio One" by Presonus, should anyone wonder. He's now in his late seventies and wants to make a last attempt at producing a record with his music that has gathered through many years. I'm very pleased that I can help him complete his vision.

In the afternoon I was working at the theatre, where a version of Mozarts "The magic flute" was performed live for children with professional musicians and semiprofessional singers in front of an audience of 300 children of various ages and their parents. It was very moving to experience how the children took it all in, it is an opera after all. Some thought the hour was too long and boring, of course, and some were a bit too young and fell asleep but mostly they took it all in with big eyes and ears. I was a bit dubious beforehand because it's difficult to hear the words when they sing in an "opera way" but they seem to have got the basic story and enjoyed it.

While still at work, Karin, a friend from Härnösand called and suggested I'd go to see a theatre on my island, performed by the national touring theatre. The theatre stage master was her sister Ylva, another friend of mine from my time in the north, and she gave me a free ticket. The play was written by the actor herself and was about her own family. During the wars in Finland in the forties, 80000 children was sent to Sweden, to save them from the horrors of war, and to be taken care of by Swedish families. This became a huge trauma for the children but in those days you couldn't even spell the word trauma, let alone understand what the children went through being separated from their parents mostly without any explanation at all. Some children was woken up in the morning and eight hours after breakfast they were in Sweden being picked up by their new parents for an unspecified period of time. The actors father went through this and the play was about that and how she, the daughter, tried to make sense of what had happened to him and his new and old parents during that time. The play was very moving and excellently performed by the actress and an excellent accordion player from Finland. Afterwards there was time for a short question session with the audience, among them several sharing the experience with the actor. For me it was nice to meet Ylva but I was also very moved by the play. My own mother was born in Denmark and moved to Sweden after the war when she was twenty three and I realised during the play that we never talked about what she went through mentally when she first came to Sweden. Too bad it's too late for me to find any answers but the play helped me to connect with her in a new way.
The doll in the blip was cleverly representing the child in the play.