Of Other Ice. Ages Arctic Utopias in Leea Klemola’s "Kokkola" Trilogy
Of Other Ice. Ages Arctic Utopias in Leea Klemola’s "Kokkola" Trilogy

Summary/Abstract: Leea Klemola, one of the most original artists in contemporary Finnish theatre, is primarily known abroad as a playwright and actor; however, she is a representative of that trend of theatrical auteurs for whom differentiation among authorial functions is irrelevant, even artificial. Her “Kokkola” trilogy is not just a loose drama cycle, but a series of organically interconnected, site- and actor-specific visions interwoven with weird black humor and a special, grotesque mythology of the cold. Thus, in addition to the fact that the trilogy thematizes (and parodies) the idea of founding a brave new, northernmost, ideal society beyond all inhabitable places, the text itself is also a kind of expedition towards a desired goal, towards an uncompromising textual universe. I will attempt to build up a ’utopology’ of the “Kokkola” trilogy, to identify and point out a series of utopian constructs as grotesque illusions in the drama cycle.

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