Performance in the Fourth World: An Interview with Ula Ryum

Performance in the Fourth World An Interview with Ula Ryum by PerBrask I am writing in a foreign language (. .. on the page my words become increasingly blurred they are pulled down into the words below as if consumed from beneath (from the poetry collection Skrift by the Samek writer Ailo Gaup. Translated from the Norwegian by P.B.) 108 SINCE HER DEBUT AS A NOVELIST in 1962, the Danish playwright and director Ulla Ryum has published four novels, three collections of short stories, and two collections of essays. She has had eleven plays produced, several radio plays, ballet scenarios, operas, and TV dramas. Many of these she has directed herself for different regional theatres in Denmark and at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. Her work is fueled by intense ecological concerns and by a meticulous analysis of human relationships. She has been extremely active in writers' organizations and involved in several governmental committees. Ryum has also written extensively on dramaturgical theory. Her own dramaturgical model illustrates a non-linear, non-Aristotelian approach towards the elucidation of a dramatic question. The process as Ryum outlines it allows for greater audience participation, in the sense that the audience is not being forced to accept the conditions upon which the story develops, characteristic of Aristotelian dramaturgy. The audience is encouraged to relate to possibilities, suggestions. A play then does not move toward resolution but aims at insight into the conditions activated by dramatic issues. It is from this sense of dramaturgical democracy that she conducts her intercultural work with the Samek and with Faeroe Islanders. The Samek are an indigenous people living in the Polar region of Fennoscandia inhabiting the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula in the Soviet Union. They have lived in these areas for over four thousand years. Only a small portion of Samek herd reindeer; many are involved in fishing (including whaling), farming and hunting, and other industries, depending on where they live. They have been exposed to many kinds of oppression from the countries in which they live; from being forcibly converted to Christianity to having their lands and their language taken away-a story not unfamiliar to many peoples of the fourth world. The term "fourth world" as it is used in this interview includes what anthropologists would call traditional societies. The number "four" arises out of the rather ethnocentric sequence which sees industrialized Europe as the (old) first world, industrialized America as the (new) second world, and developing countries as the third world. It is clear that this terminology is not without severely problematic connotations. It is presented here, however, because the term is sometimes used by the peoples of the fourth world themselves in order to underline their distinction from the desire for industrialization expressed by the other three worlds; that is, in order to bring attention to the fact that they wish to retain their aboriginal cultures whether they live in the first, second, or third world. Another expression of this kind of assertion is found in the term "first nations" which Canadian natives, for example, often use when fighting for land claims. This term, 109 too, is problematic as the concept of nationhood is also imported from a foreign value system. Be that as it may, I hope it is clear that here the term is used sympathetically to denote aboriginal cultures, many of which are now fighting against their complete absorption into industrialized worlds. (The following is takenfrom a conversationwith U/la Ryum at her home in Farum, Denmark in November 1988. It was translated from the Danish by the interviewer.) When did yourfirst meeting with the Samek culture take place? As a part of my hotel training-my training involved tourist hotels, resort hotels as opposed to business hotels in the cities-I apprenticed, starting in 1956, with the Swedish Tourist Association which runs a number of hotels in Sweden. I was sent to a hotel in Ammarnass which is located in a part of Lpland. It was the first time I was that far North. Ammarndss proved to be one of the most lively and still functioning church localities where twice a year-early spring and...