Video

The famous Mooms visits Adelaide in Australia. HISTORY: Once upon a time there was a man from Stockholm who didn´t know what he should occupy himself with upon his move to Malmö. For a long time he´d devoted himself to developing a pedagogy for theatre work with people with disabilities. Everybody cheered his excellence, but no one wanted to pay his salary. Instead he was compensated with saved heat money and as a teacher in Egyptian home-language. -I´ll give myself a year to establish myself in Malmö, otherwise I´ll retrain myselt to become a teacher and get June, July and August off, he said to himself. A little bird had whispered in his ear that there were project money for "culture within the care" to be applied for. He tuned his gift for the gab and ran to the office of Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan. Released from the compulsion to find a job at any cost, it was the eighties, he suggested an entirely new approach. -Stake all the money on one group, he said. I don´t have any inclination to continue to run a marathon amongst different groups who needs to be pedagogically educated. One group, solely artistic goals, and then we´ll see where it takes us. Then he for once kept quiet, and waited for a no. He was me, Kjelle. The answer was "Yeees!!!!!!". I laced up my shoes, and started a new marathon. The Moomstheatre. As early as year two I started to make an outline of the Moomstheatre as a full-time theatre, with multiple parallel performances, projects with different aims, guest directors and proffessional methods of working. A theatre which had the ones who did the work as its hub -- the actors. After five years we had reached that point. A first-rate co-operation with Malmö Stad made it possible for the daily sector of the municipality and the project leader at the theatre to offer a place of work for an ensemble of full-time working impaired actors. Everything was escalating. The artistic quality brought us prestigeous awards. The critics made the wave. The audience was lining up. And we were designing new processes which enabled us to produce theatre with professional qualities quicker than our colleagues. But while everybody else had a salary adjusted to the conditions of the market during the time they were employed at the theatre, the ones who generated the money and the success -- our impaired actors -- had disability pension and 26 skr a day. We were asking ourselves: how much better (than a statistically normal) does an impaired actor have to be in order to participate on the same terms? The five actors who´ve reached full professional artistic quality are now employed according to agreement. They´re members of the Theatrical Association, and have academical grades from the Theatrical College in Malmö. They´re with their unique style on the stage and their professional competence carrying a theatre which has lasted for more than 20 years. But we´re not stopping at that point. Even though there´s more of us, the ambitions has grown and we´ve reached a higher quality, it´s a part of the nerve of the theatre to continue to develop. There´s always something more that can be done. We´ve made comedy, satire, musical, children´s theatre and revue. We´ve toured locally and around the world, lectured, co-operated with statistically normal actors, appeared in shows and enriched thousands of educational visitors. And we´ve created a place of work which noone wants to leave. And what does the future bring? Artistically we don´t know, since we´re creating whilst working. But there´ll be more productions, wilder ideas, bigger challenges and developed interfaces. That´s kind of a part of the concept. When it comes to the organization we´re working with the aim to become a cultural institution with national status and financing. It´s not because a couple of impaired persons deserve a pat on the head. It´s in order to enrich the surrounding world with high-quality art and an unique style on the stage. Kjell Stjernholm www.moomsteatern.com