a blog by Peter Leonard
Just got back from a talk by Margareta Garpe, a well-known playwright in Sweden. We had a staged reading of her play Alla dagar alla nätter (All the Days, All the Nights) last semester at Columbia, but this was the first time I had seen her in person.
She spoke specifically about relationships between mothers and daughters in her plays, including her most recent, Limbo which just had its premiere in Stockholm. She's interested in the ways that daughters rebel against their mothers, or fail to do so, compared to the dynamics of father-son relationships. The desire for independence, versus the responsibilities of caring for others, are common themes in her work as well. Beroenden, or dependency, binds some women to sublimate their own interests and desires to husbands or parents, in exchange for the psychological security of a sure place in the world.
Bio from Columbia's Swedish Program site:
Regarded today as one of Sweden's leading authors, Margareta Garpe has created dramas with feminist themes for Stockholm's Municipal Theater and has also been active as a film director.
She has written film scripts, cabarets, songs, and monologues, has worked with translations and adaptations of drama classics, and has done reports and interviews.
In addition to staging her own plays, Ms. Garpe has also directed and adapted Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and Hedda Gabler for Swedish television as well as the drama series Skilda världar (Separate Worlds) for Swedish TV;s Channel 4. Her drama All the Days, All the Nights was performed at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater in 1992, on Swedish television in 1996, at Copenhagen's Royal Theater in 2002, and as a staged reading at Columbia's Deutsches Haus in November 2002. Her most recent production in Stockholm is the play Limbo, premiering at Stockholm Municipal Theater on February 28, 2003.