Göteborgs stadsteater

Photo: Georg Cassirer
© Göteborgs Stadsteater

Opened on 29 September 1934, the Gothenburg City Theatre was widely regarded as one of the most technically advanced stages in Europe. Its position on Götaplatsen made it an architectural focal point, alongside the Museum of Art (1923) and the Concert House (1935).

The theatre architect was Carl Bergsten, and the legendary director/scenographer, Knut Ström, who had worked with August Strindberg, helped with the stage design and layout. The first manager of the theatre was Torsten Hammarén (1884-1962), who arrived from the Lorensberg theatre in the same city. He had previously been the head of the Helsingborg City Theatre. Knut Ström was chosen to direct the opening production, Shakespeare's Tempest, an ideal vehicle for showcasing much of the theatre's new technology.

Under Hammarén the Gothenburg City Theatre grew to be regarded as a foil for the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm through its more daring choice of repertoire (after the war they put plays by Tennessee Williams, John Osborne and others), a highly skilled repertory company and a team of directors that included Helge Wahlgren. During the Second World War the repertoire was at times decidedly anti-Nazi, and in the smaller venue, The Studio (added in 1937), they put on smaller scale plays not suitable for the main stage.

Ingmar Bergman, his wife Ellen and their two children moved to Gothenburg early in 1946. For his debut at the theatre he chose Albert Camus' Caligula, with his friend from student theatre days, Anders Ek, also making his debut at the theatre, in the title role. Almost immediately, Bergman came into conflict with Torsten Hammarén, who on one occasion took over an early rehearsal. However, they soon resolved their differences, the older director becoming Bergman's mentor. As Bergman writes in The Magic Lantern: "I at once appointed him in my heart as the father-figure I had lacked since God had abandoned me. He took on the role and played it conscientiously during the years I stayed in his theatre."

In the same book Bergman also describes sitting in on one of Hammarén's rehearsals of a party scene featuring 23 actors in Kaj Munk's Love. Hammarén prescribed in minute detail how every actor should move and speak their lines. The scene at first appeared deprived of every ounce of spontaneity, stone dead in fact. But when the actors came to play the whole scene "an easy, relaxed and amusing conversation broke out [...] The actors, secure in their thoroughly rehearsed territories, felt a freedom to create the characters. They fantasized unexpectedly and humorously. They were not doing down their fellow players, but were respecting the whole, the rhythm." It was a lesson that stuck with Bergman and one which he thenceforth incorporated into his own directing. The party scene he saw rehearsed was quoted as a tribute to Hammarén by Bergman in his 1995 production of Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy at the Royal Dramatic Theatre.

When Hammarén noticed that Bergman did not make notes or scenery descriptions in his director's notebook, it also made him sceptical. Bergman needed his advice once again, and ever since then has drawn every scene, making sure that when he goes to rehearsals he has a set of instructions that are "clear, practicable and preferably stimulating. Only he who is well prepared has any opportunity to improvise." In The Magic Lantern he writes about the lasting influence that Hammarén and Herbert Grevenius have had on him: "When I was green and unformed, Torsten Hammarén and Herbert Grevenius stood like two stern and incorruptible angels. I learnt my craft from Hammarén and a certain orderliness of thought from Grevenius. They pinched me, kneaded me and put me right."

Caligula was a huge success, prompting David Hallén to write in Aftonbladet:

"The City Theatre offered us great art yesterday. Frenchman Albert Camus' 'Caligula' is an important work of art, built on the genuine ability of this dramatist and poet to shape, animate and maintain his theme from the first line through to the last. Ingmar Bergman's direction was nothing less than a renaissance of the art of theatre in our northern climes.

Bergman however, who also put on his own plays The Day Ends early and Unto My Fear on the Studio stage, disliked living in Gothenburg, and wrote in The Magic Lantern that "the city was in many ways cut off, the theatre a limited world in which no one talked about anything except the profession". His unhappy situation at work was not helped by his chaotic private life, living together with Ellen, their two children (soon to become three) and his mother-in-law (with her own young child) in a house outside the city. In the evenings he preferred to sit in his office at the theatre, reviewing scripts and writing screenplays for films. After a while, he also began to commute to Stockholm. During this period he continued to make films for Lorens Marmstedt, including A Ship to India, Prison and To Joy.

In 1949 Bergman returned to Stockholm, and the following year became the artistic director of Marmstedt's Intimate Theatre. Between 1950-53, Stig Torsslow, who came from Malmö City Theatre, where Bergman was to end up two years later, was the head of the Intimate Theatre, and Bengt Ekerot (who had also worked in Malmö) made his directing debut there. Torsslow's successor was Karin Kavli who gave many new Swedish dramatists, including Erland Josephson, a chance at the theatre.

References  

Myggans nöjeslexikon
Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern

Work with references to this subject