Political Activism or Handling Trauma? The Civil War Staged in Workers’ Theatres in 1920s Finland
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Abstract
This chapter addresses a wave of political theatre that was crushed by the authorities in 1920s post-Civil War Finland. In a context where the international Proletkult or Proletarian Culture movement stressed the radical democratic character of cultural production, theatre in Finland offered possibilities for political activism on the one hand and for therapeutic facing of trauma on the other. The chapter introduces three Finnish working-class playwrights, Uuno Kekäläinen, Verneri Jokiruoho and Kaarlo Valli, who wrote drama based on their own experiences – and the collective experiences of the working class – during the Civil War. Their revolutionary melodramas bore witness to the trauma of White terror and stressed the idea of commemoration as political action. In the struggle over memory, the Red counter-narrative was considered provocative and interpreted as revolutionary and communist. Between 1922 and 1924, the hegemonic White authorities reacted harshly and criminalized these plays, thus crushing the rising proletarian theatre movement.