Gytis Padegimas

Fredag (Friday), 15:30–16:00, H135b

Affiliering (affiliation): Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre

Abstract

“The Garden of August Strindberg's Plays”

For August Strindberg, the world of plants, just like the whole nature, was both an object of meticulous study and a powerful source of visionary inspiration. On the right-hand side of his work Beach at Kymmendö, II, created during his first painting period, when he painted mostly scenes of nature, we observe a mighty tree with two trunks. Such a tree, I believe, was seen by the author in his youth paradise on the island of Kymmendö (and may still be growing there). Then it is varied differently as a metaphor for the relationship between husband and wife in his plays The Father and Creditors. While in Strindberg’s dramas of his naturalistic period plants exist in definite environments and gain a rather vague metaphorical meaning, in his later symbolistic plays they get transformed into easily recognizable symbols of Western culture. However, for instance, in A DreamPlay, or particularly in The Ghost Sonata, they find their place within a symbol system of Eastern culture – Buddhism. In the encyclopaedic guide The Book of Symbols, which explores archetypal images, it is stated that “in almost all cultures and religions, the garden represents a sacred place, a uniting of the conscious self with its unconscious source [...] Physical or imaginal, gardens are often arranged to reflect designs of wholeness, a quaternary form.”1 From the paradise garden of Jean's childhood adjacent to the master's house in Miss Julie and the virtual future dream garden by Lake Como, to the “hyacinth room” mimicking a garden in the stifling room of The Ghost Sonata, the gardens of Strindberg's plays are simultaneously a concrete, an imaginary, and a psychological space for the characters, a space permeated by their quest for wholeness and the atmosphere of unfulfillment. In my presentation, I would like to examine the plants of these gardens, their specific and symbolic meanings, and their significance in the structure of the plays, starting, for instance, with the lilacs in Miss Julie, the forget-me-nots in Eric XIV, and ending with the bud opening over the castle in A Dream Play or the mandrake worn on the Lady's chest in To Damascus. I would also try to recollect how the plants of the Strindbergian garden have functioned in my own nine productions of his plays.

Om (about): 

Gytis Padegimas is a professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. During his 50-year career in theatre, he has directed 120 productions, including eight plays by August Strindberg.