Okay guys, here’s part II in my triology about the great Epidemic of Art in Göteborg. Today I give you Fia Adler Sandblad, who together with director Sören Larsson is in charge of larsson&ADAS theatre at Konstepidemin.

You have even several theater plays running and you have shown these
plays in other countries. Where did you go and what play did you bring?

-Most of our audience is from everywhere, really. People
in small villages in the Nordic countries to the art

consuming audience in New York and Washington DC are touched by our
performances and feel they have got “something special” from seeing
it. We like to think it is because of our way of working, our
specific attention to profound work grounded in ourselves, in the
material we are working with, and the pleasure in stage presence and
scenic communication with the audience: to be there and share. We
performed in Marrakech, Morocco, last autumn, where people speak
French if not Arabic, but it was not a problem. It is ambience of
sharing. I performed a monologue, 75 minutes, in English. It felt
amazing.

I would also like to ask about your new play. Can you please
describe the core idea behind your newest play and why we should see it?

-Actually, there is not one single idea behind this play. “BERTHA –
the other love story” is a harrowing story about love. It is in a way
a testimony, a very hard story about life with a love that is not at
all loving and warm, but full of abuse-like situations treated and
handled as “normal”. In the performance, we meet Bertha Mason, “the
mad woman in the attic” from Charlotte Bronte’s 19th century novel
Jane Eyre. In the novel Bertha dies, but in our performance she
appears alive and tells her incomprehensible, passionate story taking
place at the same time as the romantic novel. This is a new
interpretation of a classic story about love, contempt and a life in
total alienation but lived with spirit and pride. The text was
written specifically for me by author Malin Lindroth. The performance immediately draws attention to its strong content and the way the story is acted.

How long have you been working at Konstepidemin and who are you?

-I have been here since 1991. I am an actor, playwright and artistic
director and I am burning for theatre as an art form: theatre as a
space where you might investigate yourself as a human being, your
relations to yourself, to others and to society around, to try to
make sense and to grasp something. I know there is something in life
which we tend to mystify. I don’t think it is mystic, it is very
concrete and it might be communicated.

Where can we see more of you 2010?

-We will work with research and rehearsals for a couple of new
projects home at Konstepidemin 2010, but we will also go to a theatre
festival in Istanbul. Actually, we are also invited to work with a
theatre company in Istanbul so we will see them as well. We are also
invited to Buffalo in USA, but that might happen 2011.

Read more about Konstepidemin here!