The Theatre
For more than a century, a palace in uptown Stockholm has been a hub where magic, play and stage art come to life. This is the habitat for some of the country’s most famous actors, obstinate egos, grandiloquent geniuses. This is also where a female director works. She is both celebrated and admired but also disheartened and quite exhausted. She is grieving a dead friend and navigating the relationship with a colleague who may or may not love her. The arrival of the new boss changes the atmosphere altogether. The director feels a distinctive shift – what used to be warmth turns into coldness. She is, however, flattered when the new boss asks if she wants to direct Hamlet on the Main Stage. It is the most extraordinary of assignments. When she accepts, she does not know that it will spell the beginning of the end.
Jenny Andreasson’s debut novel is a fierce, darkly entertaining and tender portrayal of life behind the ornamented façade of a royal theatre. A perceptive glimpse behind the scenes of a mighty cultural institution. About the cost of artistry and what happens when the workplace balance shifts, becomes fluid, turns dangerous. About asking oneself the crucial question: do I want to live or die?
Jenny Andreasson (b. 1973) is a theatre director. She was employed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre between 2010 and 2020. She often directs plays by female playwrights throughout history. The Theatre is her first novel.
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About the book
For more than a century, a palace in uptown Stockholm has been a hub where magic, play and stage art come to life. This is the habitat for some of the country’s most famous actors, obstinate egos, grandiloquent geniuses. This is also where a female director works. She is both celebrated and admired but also disheartened and quite exhausted. She is grieving a dead friend and navigating the relationship with a colleague who may or may not love her. The arrival of the new boss changes the atmosphere altogether. The director feels a distinctive shift – what used to be warmth turns into coldness. She is, however, flattered when the new boss asks if she wants to direct Hamlet on the Main Stage. It is the most extraordinary of assignments. When she accepts, she does not know that it will spell the beginning of the end.
Jenny Andreasson’s debut novel is a fierce, darkly entertaining and tender portrayal of life behind the ornamented façade of a royal theatre. A perceptive glimpse behind the scenes of a mighty cultural institution. About the cost of artistry and what happens when the workplace balance shifts, becomes fluid, turns dangerous. About asking oneself the crucial question: do I want to live or die?
Reviews
The book is Andreasson’s debut and she has an engaging style, lucid and magnetic at the same time, and she does not exclude either the theatre or herself from her own insights.
Those who are very familiar with the Royal Dramatic Theatre will be satisfied with the life behind the stage, but with a few minor exemptions, this is no gossip novel. The Theatre is more profound than that. The book is Andreasson’s debut and she has an engaging style, lucid and magnetic at the same time, and she does not exclude either the theatre or herself from her own insights. “As a director you must often insist on things that nobody else has any faith in”, Andreasson dryly concludes. It takes a lot of strength, but authority and decisiveness are things that the main protagonist cannot muster up in 2015. She is weighed down by grief and exhaustion and is planning for a leave of absence. The Royal Dramatic Theatre is, however, a House that enchants and demands everything from those who are admitted. Those who are offered Hamlet on the Main Stage are chosen for greater things and do not decline. Not even a weary young feminist director such as Jenny Andreasson, who has paved her own path and has successfully relaunched forgotten 19th century female playwrights /… / As a retrospective workplace portrayal The Theatre is fiercely dissuasive but also recognisable for the deteriorating working conditions in society in general.
AftonbladetWhat enhances this literary debut is the portrayal of the inner workings of the theatre.
What enhances this literary debut is the portrayal of the inner workings of the theatre. Everything is allowed to remain anonymous, the name of the theatre remains unknown. The characters are also unnamed. It is a roman à clef and those who have followed the Swedish theatre world of the 2010’s will have no trouble identifying the real names of the characters. There is so much that remains hidden at the theatre, or as Jenny Andreasson puts it: “This theatre is like an iceberg. Only a small part is visible, the rest is under the surface, hidden from most people.” After five years at the theatre, one needs to stick to the top of the iceberg. Underneath there are cubic metres of frozen bitterness, emotional shantytowns and vicious fangs. During the first period with the new boss, the director feels cherished, but it is not long until he asks her to rate the employees at the theatre; the actors, the scenographers, the dramaturges. This makes her feel like an informer. The new boss is striving for total power. New and old theatre managers will have to look out in the wake of Jenny Andreasson’s debut.
Norrländska SocialdemokratenThis is a pretty brilliant debut with a distinct authority
One way to read The Theatre is like a workplace thriller of sorts. Excluding a few shorter chapters, The Theatre is divided into five acts, with a chronological course of events that takes place during 2015. Andreasson writes with lucidity, vigour and reason. The story combines the director’s dialogues with actors and other staff at the theatre with her inner thoughts. She wants to make an adaptation of Hamlet where Ophelia is his shadow and he hers, they both go crazy, fall apart, end up dead, but in different ways. She also wants Ophelia to do the famous To Be or Not to Be monologue. But the actors are not as enthusiastic. The Hamlet production happens to coincide with a transformation at the theatre, the new boss wants to assign himself some of the middle managers’ decisions. At the same time, he slowly but surely begins to make himself unreachable /… / The title, The Theatre, is congenial. In addition to the focal point being a theatre, it also implies what can happen in a workplace when it is turned into a kind of theatre. When one starts asking oneself: Did it really happen? Is it true? Or is just theatre? When one no longer knows if events are for real or just pretense; what happens with trust? /… / Jenny Andreasson’s perception of both subtle master suppression techniques and sophisticated exercises of power is like a natural force. It works well in symbiosis with the dense, coherent style, and results in a crispy, beautiful prose. This is a pretty brilliant debut with a distinct authority.
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