Royal Dramatic TheatreIngmar Bergman first experienced the magic of the theatre as a child at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and, as a guest director, he made his debut there in 1951 with Light in the Shack. In the early 1960s the theatre appointed him as a full time director, and for a turbulent period between 1963-66, he was head of the organisation. With the exception of his period in exile in Germany (1976-84) he remained loyal to the Royal Dramatic Theatre right up to his farewell production Ghosts in 2002. |
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The first time Bergman applied for a job at the theatre ("anything, as long as I could be there to learn the profession") was in 1939, but the director at the time, Pauline Brunius, turned him down on the advice of his father, Erik Bergman. Instead, he landed himself a temporary job as a director's assistant at the Royal Opera.
Some ten years later, following a successful spell at the Gothenburg City Theatre, Bergman had been promised an appointment by Ragnar Josephson, the uncle of Erland Josephson, who was manager of the Royal Dramatic Theatre at the time. However, when Karl Ragnar Gierow took over from him in 1951, the new manager did not feel bound by the promise made by his predecessor. In The Magic Lantern, Bergman writes: "[Gierow] told me in humiliating terms that I hardly came up to the standards of our national stage". Instead, Bergman got a job as a director and artistic advisor at the Malmö Municipal Theatre.
It was third time lucky for Bergman in 1960, when after seven highly successful years in Malmö, he was finally offered a post. As the director of the theatre between 1963 and 1966, he introduced major reforms. These included the establishment of an actors' council to introduce democracy into the choice of repertoire. He was succeeded in the post by Erland Josephson.
In 1975, having been its manager for nine years, Erland Josephson described what the Royal Dramatic Theatre is, or should be:
"The Royal Dramatic Theatre is often referred to as a showpiece, a marble palace, a temple of high-brow culture. And that's exactly what it is. The architecture expresses values that the theatre is proud to stand for: that culture is important, that theatre is also a ritual and a purification, that the various arts are interwoven with each other."
As the head of the Dramaten, Bergman now faced two of his most respected directors: Olof Molander and Alf Sjöberg. He began his tenure by seeing to it that Molander retired, together with aging actor and Dramaten icon Lars Hanson. For Bergman's account of his Dramaten years, incluiding his reaction to Molander's dismissal and his respectful collegiate relationship with Sjöberg.