Hywel om föreställningen

dramatikern Hywel John om föreställningen rose

My name is Hywel John, I am the author of Rose.

Michaela asked me to say a few words about her production of the play at SvenskaTeatern in Helsinki. I’m extremely happy to do so, as her production was utterly beautiful and revelatory for me as a writer. 

The play has had a complicated history, shifting and changing since it’s original commission in 2010. It had a critically successful run at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011, which I was pleased with, but I knew there was room for further development in the story. I re-worked in over the past few years, but it was only with Michaela’s production at SvenskaTeatern and her nuanced investigation of the text in rehearsal that the play finally got the chance to fully expand and develop.

The final production was a joy for me to watch. The play works on several levels, structurally shifting between different times, and the central relationship between father and daughter is consumed with untold stories and hidden histories. 

The brilliance of Michaela’s production was to create a totally immersive experience: an exquisite balance between heightened theatricality and naturalism; with a set, sound and video design that vividly suggested and supported the unfolding subtextual secrets. She managed to create a theatrical landscape where outer and inner worlds seemed to exist in the same space, but yet where the two wonderful actors clearly felt free to play and explore as the story unfolded. 

/Hywel John, dramatiker