Helsingin Sanomat 20.11.09

Theatre. Baktruppen Light metal Band in Koko Teatteri


Light metal, heavy things to say

The theme of the Baltic Circle festival is sound.
Maria Säkö

Baltic circle theatre festival started on Wednesday and continues on up to Sunday. Sound is the theme. In the works of the festival, sound and music meet up with theatre and performance.
These shows challenge traditional thinking of what music and sound in a theatre piece is, also the philosophy and psychology of sound is worked on. Who actually is noticed, listened to, in art? Who has a sound people will listen to?
Sound and noice was plenty on Koko theatre scene in the Norwegian Baktruppens robust performance, which truly was worked on with enthusiasm. This group has spread their disturbance since 1986. We heard wonderful kling, scream, and non-tuned play performed with self-made instruments.
When the armors of the Light metal band were inspected more carefully, one could see beer cans, forks, pans etc. The way the group was dressed summed up the whole staging in itself: A lively setting from the backyards of the financial crisis.
Best on the whole package is its lightness, as the name indicates. The costumes were the armors of capitalism, into which people dress up to in everyday life - as our lives are spent on the battlefields of consuming.
The performance is dominated with a thick Kafka-like atmosphere, in which the current economical situation has pushed the world into. Light Metal Band moves on partly with a learning aspect, the logic taken from a fairytale for children. The initial idea was given to them in a visit to a Maltese modern factory manufacturing both coins and armors.
The performance was put together to wonder the origin of value. Most of the value of money is only about the image or conception. The context is understood differently in different cultures, the performance means different things to Germans and Vietnamese. Who’s language is money – or the performance about money – taking? Light metal band would require the airiness of a club with stimulance from the audience to work perfectly. Currently the sum is just right ok.

Maria Säkö