Bergman on stage

Photo: Georg Cassirer
© Göteborgs Stadsteater

The strong connection between film and theatre in the artistic life of Ingmar Bergman is a common fact. Bergman's actors are part of both films and theatre productions and the theatre is recovered in the films in thematics as well as milieus and vice versa. This interaction has lately grown to yet another dimension when the film scripts of Bergman are being staged on theatres all over the world. Very few of Bergman's 168 productions for the stage are written by himself. The reason Bergman himself claims is that his early attempts to stage his own scripts were met by reviews that praised him as a director but criticised him as an author. Through the years he instead came to direct world famous dramatists such as August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen and William Shakespeare, but also contemporary authors such as Edward Albee in the European premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Albert Camus in the world opening of Caligula.

The inquiries to stage the film scripts of Ingmar Bergman commenced when they were published in book form. It then became obvious that the film scripts might as well have been written for the stage and that they did not only possess a literal, but also an apparent theatrical quality, a fact that hardly escape the world of theatre. Bergman's reply was nevertheless always a firm no. He has through the years been a resolute opponent to having his texts staged on the theatre.  The only script he has let over to someone else to direct is Wood Painting, the preliminary study to The Seventh Seal. But Bergman's rejection did not stop all the prospective purchasers. Many productions have been staged without permission, among others Smiles of a Summer Night in Moscow and The Seventh Seal in Tallinn.

It was as late as 1981, during the Munich exile, that Bergman himself staged a shorter version of his own TV-drama Scenes from a Marriage together with excerpts from August Strindberg's Miss Julie and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House under the title Nora/Julie/Szenen einer Ehe. It was also a person with strong connection to this staging who became the first to get permission to direct Scenes from a Marriage, namely Rita Russek, the actress who played the part of Nora. Her productions have been played in Tel Aviv, Budapest, Copenhagen, Paris, Montreal and London. Bergman then more or less willingly permitted Dieter Giesing to direct the long version of Scenes from a Marriage at Zürich Schauspielhaus. The production was an immediate success and guest performances were held at Burgtheater in Vienna and Schaubühne in Berlin. The following inquiries concerning this manuscript were met with greater enthusiasm and today Scenes from a Marriage ranges over fifty different stagings, from Norway to Mexico.

Productions of After the Rehearsal, Private Confessions and A Spiritual Matter followed, but when the turn came to Autumn Sonata the answer was once again no. Not until 2002 when Ernst Deutsch Theater wanted to produce a performance with the actress Judy Winter in the part of Charlotte Andergast, Bergman gave his approval. Today Autumn Sonata is the most inquired and played of Bergman's scripts.

There are still film scripts that Bergman, in spite of great demand, did not want to be staged, among others Persona, The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring. However, after his passing in 2007, due to his donation, all of his scripts were made avaliable for stage productions.

As late as 2007, the same year of his passing, he also gave his permission to the first productions on a Swedish stage and the first stage production in Sweden was to becom Scenes from a Marriage at Dramaten in 2009. 2009 also meant the first Ingmar Bergman International Theatre Festival at Dramaten, where a selection of productions of his scripts and stagings made in his spirit, guest perfromed in Stockholm.

The production of Fanny and Alexander becomes the eighteenth filmscript to be staged when it premieres at Nationaltheatret in November 2009.