Lessons for the Living

Suomen Kansallisteatteri

Written and directed by Akse Pettersson

A slightly optimistic piece about personal stupidity.

Four government workers are tasked with preparing the people for future upheavals. The mission entails endless challenges and a backbreaking amount of effort, invention and testing. Days turn into years. Will they ever make a scientific breakthrough – a true connection with the future, let alone with themselves?

Akse Pettersson and his superb ensemble give us a serious comedy about the experience of existing outside time, about confusion and the difficulty of comprehension – the basic human feeling of being dumb. The stage becomes a standalone world where the familiar blends with the unfamiliar, laughter with melancholy, and the profound with the banal.

”Lessons for the Living is like a gift where each unwrapping reveals another layer of wrapping paper.”
Petra Stolt, kulttuuritoimitus.fi