ARMAGEDDON

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ARMAGEDDON

Armageddon sprawls a wild post-end times garden without inhabitations and plays with apocalyptic and popular, classical and avantgarde. The audience is beckoned into the embrace of imaginative and speculative feminist strength, the infernos of internal and external fires, and mayhem of protagonist-adjacent characters and asteroid showers. This artistic collaboration conjures an infernal show on stage, with diversity and difference ruling divine.

Armageddon is a collaborative work by actor-director Sara Melleri, choreographer-director Sonya Lindfors, and dance artist–music maker Elina Pirinen. Melleri and Lindfors are the creative leads of the production, while Pirinen creates a nested piece within the performance.

Premieres at Espoo City Theatre’s Revontuli Hall on March 9, 2022.

Performance languages Finnish, English
Surtitles in Finnish and in English in mobile app
Duration tba
Tickets 29 / 26 / 20 €

Concept Sonya Lindfors, Sara Melleri ja Elina Pirinen
Direction and choreography Sonya Lindfors, Sara Melleri
Direction and choreography of nested performance Elina Pirinen
Performers Antonia Atarah, Sara Paasikoski, Leila Kourkia, Kreeta Salminen, Sonya Lindfors ja Sara Melleri
Performance dramaturg Louna-Tuuli Luukka
Set design and costumes Virpi Nieminen
Light design Ada Halonen
Sound design Johanna Puuperä

Make-up design: Saara Sarvas

CONTENT WARNINGS

THE BETTY SHOW

We’re wishing on a star, but she may never show up. The long goodbyes of a showgirl! Betty gives her final interview, goes out to party, takes an overdose. She falls down the stairs and sends out a press release. “Somebody to love”. In a sea of sequins we’re moving towards the exit where a champagne orgy awaits. Betty is a cabaret-star and a stay-at-home-mom of a narcocapitalistic age. Betty likes high places. Betty likes high highs and low lows. Betty hides the evidence. She paints herself a cat-eye. She sings a ballad. She makes a mistake.

Betty needs something...she needs something

Betty looks at herself from a video

It’s been a long day and Betty is thirsty!

The Betty Show is a drunken alternative cabarét & exploration of addictions. This is an experimental show with an old-school variety show form.The show has been written together by Delta Venus. The star of the show is Betty, a partly fictional drama queen. She’s based on our own stories and all the fallen drunken angels of showbiz. Betty does a butoh-dance and goes through many intoxicated memories while electric organs play. The Bettys dance & sing & stumble through the stage wanting more, more, more. Betty’s a drunken stay-at-home mom and a movie-star, and she’s ready to party and burst into a song.

Delta Venus:

Asta Honkamaa

Rosanna Kemppi

Sara Melleri

Annika Poijärvi

Kreeta Salminen

Director: Sara Melleri

Text: Delta Venus

Light designer: Julia Jäntti

Costume designer: Auli Turtiainen

Video designer: Jonatan Sundström

Make up designers: Petra Kuntsi ja Minttu Minkkinen

Producer: Hanna Nyman

Sound designer: Olli Valkola

Scenography: Tero Kuitunen

Butoh choreography: Ken Mai

Reviews of The Betty Show:

“The Betty Show brings a never-ending after-party to the Finnish National Theatre. The result is a shameless, sugar-coated drunken cabarèt of Betty’s eternal intoxication” - Demokraatti newspaper

“Divine party-girls Asta Honkamaa, Rosanna Kemppi, Sara Melleri, Annika Poijärvi and Kreeta Salminen of Delta Venus make unusual performance aesthetics. The Betty Show proves the possibility of fantasy on stage. Fantasy and glamour can be a feminist praxis.”

- Hannaleena Helavuori

“The Betty Show is a grotesque trash-rampage!” - Tuomas Rantanen, Voima magazine

“Betty is a both a Hollywood movie star and a Suomi Filmi starlet. From time to time, a contemporary single mother also makes her entrance on stage, mixing her friday wine with anti-anxiety drugs while the children sleep and the TV entertainment program buzzes on. It sounds tragic, and sometimes the performance is, but at the same time, both the text and Sara Melleri's directing manage to bring in a quirky and irresistible humor…(The Betty Show) manages to be grotesquely comic and at the same time empathetic and genuinely gripping.” - Isabella Rothberg, HBL

Let me be your fantasy

Let me be your fantasy was a one-time variety show that took place in the Contemporary Museum Kiasma, in Shoplifter’s (Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir) exhibition. Delta Venus invited a group of artists from different fields to make short performances on the 5th floor of Kiasma. The night was filmed and the video comes out in the Fall of 2019. The show was a part of URB-festival.

The artists in the show:

Amanda & Lydia, Sophia Wekesa, Glen Odhiambo, Adasha Moore, Meriam Trabelsi

Emmanuel Culkin, Caroline Suinner, Sini Henttu, Aino Tervo, Illuminatrix, echo+seashell

Hanna-Kaisa Tiainen, Lady Laverna (Lidia Bäck), Sirkka Rukoilija by Marika Peura

Glitcher (Josefine Fri & Emelie Zilliacus), Meidän Poika (Aleksi Holkko & Antti Autio)

Helena Lindgren & guitarist Timo Seppänen,

Slutartists (Milla-Mari Pylkkänen, Alvi Haapamäki, Camilla Rantanen)

Hosts: Liv & Claudia Versace (Sara Melleri and Markku Haussila from Delta Venus)

Filming by: Ina Niemelä

Meriam Trabelsi, Aino Tervo, Caroline Suinner, Adasha Moore, Glen Odhiambo, Angel in a piece directed by Sophia Wekesa

echo+seashell wearing designs by Kati Määttä

Father Fucker

FATHER FUCKER is a piece by the HYPE collective, combining music, visual arts, theatre and stage poetry. It tells the story of two teenage girls, who cope with the emerging passing of their father by escaping to imaginary worlds of play where the lead characters are top models Liv and Claudia Versace. The events are staged inside the dying body of the girls’ father. The performance is based on the fictional magazines Sara Melleri wrote in her youth.

In collaboration with Cirko - Center for New Cirkus.

FATHER FUCKER

Direction and performance
SARA MELLERI

Text
SARA MELLERI and the working group

Dramaturgy
JOHANNES EKHOLM

Performance and choreography
MARKKU HAUSSILA

Saxophone and composition
LINDA FREDRIKSSON

Sound design and composition
JUSSI ÖSTERMAN

Lighting design
JULIA JÄNTTI

Stage design
CORINNA HELENELUND

Costume design
MINTTU VESALA

Video design and dramaturgical support
JAAKKO PALLASVUO

Supported by
Kone Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation,
Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation

Production
Baltic Circle, HYPE

Thanks to
Esitystaiteen Keskus - Performance Center, Kutomo

Plastic Bride

PLASTIC BRIDE

PLASTIC BRIDE is an alternative cabarèt and a cosmic wedding ball where anything can happen. You will witness super-singers Emma Salokoski and Heidi Kirves dancing on tables with the unbelievable choir. Welcome to the universe of love and have some cake. Every night comes with a new surprise guest that represents emancipation and a new ideal of love for us. You can even get married to yourself, if you will! Welcome to the tunnel of stars. Everybody's free!

The performance was supported by
Svenska Kulturfonden, Kone Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation
and the Kari Mattila Säätiö.

PLASTIC BRIDE

Direction and choreography
SARA MELLERI

Choir leader and arrangement of the songs
EMMA SALOKOSKI

Sound designer and backing tracks
MATTI AHOPELTO

Light designer
JULIA JÄNTTI

On stage:
Heidi Kirves, Emma Salokoski and Emma Salokoski Voices- choir
+ special guests Asta Honkamaa, Makla Krès Laine as Yoko Ou Nou Gato and
newlyweds Noora Halme and Kaisa Laaksonen

Bakery sponsor: Frangipani Bakery

PLASTIC BRIDE REVIEW:

" When you enter the room, you are greeted by a new age choir in 1960's hippie-psychedelia. The angels throw rice on the audience. The overall experience is like being at a wedding of an LSD- tripping amazonian-cult. "

- "One night in the theatre"- blog

Pop Slut

POP SLUT is a club and it's a pop spectacle starring Octavia, Madonna, Beyoncè, Rihanna and Britney.

POP SLUT is an alternative cabarét filled with wild dancing and musical numbers. The performance also explores gender and sexual identity. The show proposes a question, is this about sexual freedom or exploitation?

POP SLUT

Concept of the show and direction
SARA MELLERI

Dramaturg
IIDA HÄMEEN-ANTTILA

Stage-design
AINO KOSKI

Costume- design
HENNA-RIIKKA TASKINEN

Sound-design
JUSSI ÖSTERMAN

Choreography
MARKKU HAUSSILA

Backing tracks
VISA MERTANEN

Make-up design
MARI VAALASRANTA

Light design
JERE KOLEHMAINEN

Musical practice
TUOMAS HAUTALA

Vocal teachers
RIITTA KERÄNEN & TIMO KÄRKKÄINEN

Voguing workshop
ANNELI "Ninja" KANNINEN

Producer
JENNI ASIKAINEN

The show is produced together with
Koko Teatteri and with the support of Jenny ja Antti Wihurin rahasto,
Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Uudemaan kulttuurirahasto, Helsingin Kulttuurikeskus

POP SLUT Review:

"The show works when there's a feel of genius slutwalk 4th wave feminism. When actor Iina Kuustonen, playing Britney Spears, asks the audience to leave her alone, and when actor Annika Poijärvi mansplains with a sausage between her legs, that's when POP SLUT becomes political."

- Maria Säkö, Helsingin Sanomat, 25.11.2013