Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s wonderful.

 

INTRO:

As I leave through the back door and inner yard of my apartment building, I habitually draw the key to my bicycle lock from my back pocket. Despite the fact I’ve been looking forward to attending one of Veera Katila’s performances for some time, and had plenty of time to leave earlier, I find myself in the yard wrestling the key into the lock as time ticks ever on….

Shit shit shit – I can’t believe this could happen – The key has, without so much as a sound, crisply snapped at the hilt rendering the lock unopenable and thus my bicycle chained to the laundry pole! I bury my frustration and begin the trot toward Musiikkitalo where the concert is taking place. Anxious glances to the clock encourage me to pick up pace, the journey takes about 15 minutes. Only 5 mins late – I remark.

Upon arriving at Musikkitalo, I b-line for the Black Box – the multi-purpose theatre and rhythm music venue. Although this performance marks Katila’s masters exam, it constitutes a group process between herself, Sini Onne, Raphaël Beau and Aino Myöhänen. Notably, this is a diverse cast of theatre practitioners rather than the typical band of musicians.

ACT I:

Peeping over the balustrade, I see a commotion in the foyer; a hum-drum of people talking and gently laughing over the voice of Raphaël Beau, who is performing their ever evolving “practice and play from what is here”.

The practice is made up of a premise to draw out the innate theatre of social dynamics and expectations, as well as utilising architectural and site-emergent elements. Initially, the performances question themselves – it seems that neither the audience nor performer understand the context. Through audience work and heckles, Beau finds a saving grace to each performance – the meaning of the thing only becoming apparent through the process. Thus, performances become something like post-modern fables, interrogations of both outer life and the interiority of living it.

As fate would have it, the “bikelock episode” finds me flanking the crowd. I am among the first to be pruned off and ushered from the atrium to Black Box proper. As we are taken away, Beau is in full swing; this time, creating a human-chain of interlocking arms and confused smiles. Passing down the hallway to the far-side of the hall Beau’s amplified voice fades.

A second usher welcomes us into the hall; “Take your shoes off and try to make yourself at home”, is roughly the instruction we are told before the vast door is opened. My feet ache, gladly removing my boots. The scene inside the Black Box is almost cozy:

• A washing line in the far corner (empty) 
• Grand piano (closed)
• A sleeping person (atop an impromptu stack of mattresses) 
• Bean bags (arranged in a cornucopia)
• Persian rugs in counterpoint on the floor (are these ever really Persian?)
• Shelving with headphones (…)
• A man with glasses sits at a desk on which is a basin of water and a pyramidal stack of glasses and mugs (various) 
• A stack of (quite comfortable) pillows

Though this inventory of furnishings constitutes a cozy cottage atmosphere, there is an oddness about their placement in the room; everything is dead centre, giving this feeling of a wall-lessness, as if this is a cottage oasis in an otherwise desolate void.

Black speakers adorn the spot-lit centre in a fairy ring. A setting of chairs on the perimeter makes spectres of audience members, who will sit outside the boundary of the lit centre?

In my fatigue, I lie down under the piano, hoping my feet don’t stink too much.

The rest of the audience drips in over the next 20 or so minutes, I wonder how the practice and play performance ended up… Oh, even Raphael is here now – I hear theirs and Leik’s voices near me on the bean bags.

People are exploring the space it seems, first in silence then talking a little bit. One can make out excited yet suppressed collisions between old friends as they aren’t sure whether talking is allowed or not.

ACT II:

A glance to my right reveals four legs sharing the piano bench, the loudest-softly- played notes encourage me to leave the sanctuary from under the piano.

It’s been about 30 minutes, the scene has come alive, people are draped over and around furnishings looking relaxed and natural. The space feels better with people in it. We are, however, all looking at each other – trying to figure out the situation. Is there a stooge among us? Will we eventually hear some music?

A distant droning passes through the speakers, it is the disembodied sounds of hoovering – a vacuum cleaner operated by a ghost… – Someone is putting up sheets on the clothes line. I have placed a pair of headphones on; an older feminine voice is dictating house rules on loop. The oppressive hoover-errand fades past us.

A phone rings – most likely it’s part of soundscape – a nifty trick that has caught all our attention! Although, no, someone’s real phone is really going off. But they aren’t retrieving it? It’s coming from the island of bags amidst the sea of shoes by the entrance. A hidden speaker? Oh, there they go. I guess it was real after all.

Sloping to the desk and retrieving a glass of strawberry juice from the man with glasses, a colleague approaches: 

“What’s going on?” they whisper, “When will the performance start?”

I can barely bring myself to speak, “This is it, I think”

“This? What?” – we giggle.

It’s funny to become part of the soundscape – one can imagine how many little interactions like this have happened already – 50? 200? And how many more are yet to come.

Triggered by this meaningless exchange and the last drop of saccharine strawberry down my gullet, I’m reminded of Estragon hungrily eating a carrot in Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot (1952).

In fact, other beats in this performance have shared a slightly Godotic tone; the semi-desolate setting of Black Box might as well be the barren “country road with a single tree”; the taking off of the shoes mimics Estragon’s boot struggle in the opening scene; one could even interpret Raphaël Beau as Lucky – whose semi intelligible speech in Act I breaks down la-la-language itself in an attempt of finding meaning. It is remarkably similar to what play and act… is all about.

Our own participation in mindless chores, re-arranging the bean bags, putting up the sheets (they’re bone dry), rinsing a used glass, moving through the space without motivation – all have an absurdist quality to them in this context, one that has a notably Beckettian humour in it.

– Another phone call disrupts this thought –

This time definitely from the main PA – the voice of Veera, finally! She is outside, somewhere, and slightly out of breath, affirming us that she will arrive soon. She asks if we need anything from the shop, oat milk? Oat milk it is.

She hangs up, silence again.

I’m immediately reminded of the parallel endings (of both acts) from Waiting for Godot remembering the goatherd boys’ affirmation:

BOY:
(In a rush.) Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.

Silence.

VLADIMIR:
Is that all?

BOY:
Yes Sir.

Silence.

VLADIMIR:
You work for Mr. Godot?

BOY:
Yes Sir.

VLADIMIR:
What do you do?

BOY:
I mind the goats, Sir.¹

Just as I begin to feel I’ve worked out this performance the following events take place:

• Veera bursts through the back door of the black box rosy-red from the cool air, bicycle in tow. 
• She thanks everyone for coming to the concert. 
• Sini Onne walks to the piano bench exchanging some words with Veera before holding down the pedal and closing the piano lid. 
• Veera asks us if we’d like to hear some music? 
• A liru (shepherd horn) is produced from the folds of the jacket liner.

No sooner does the music start than we are encouraged to start cleaning up the space. The audience collects the bean bags, pillows, empty glasses and mugs, wakes up the sleeping Sara Pollari, fold the bedsheets, piano is closed, the man with glasses turns out to be Veera’s father. 

We put on our shoes and leave, all the while the sound of the liru endures, rocking in three.

To sum up, yritin rakentaa tänne kodin /\ (in English: “I tried to build a home here”) isn’t interested in breaking the fourth wall – it attempts to set in motion a situation in which the audience constructs the walls themselves, creating the necessity to play the dual role of spectator and player.

Holding a special reverence for the mundane, Katila, Onne, Myöhänen and Beau invoke the invisible actions that make up everyday life, chores, pleasantries, social serendipities, noise, sound and memory – balancing an efficiently minimalist intervention with enough mystery to spark a rich internal theatre.

What we came to hear was folk music. In a way that’s exactly what we participated in – understanding the word “folk” in its old meaning, in other words: a music of people.

CODA:

I walk home, sensation primed, like smelling a new smell for the first time. 

Entering the apartment I look over to my bike, which at the time of writing has been locked in place for some 2-months now. Reminding me to this day what a delight it was, to be waiting on that mid-November evening.  

END.

 

1. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Grove Press, 1954. ↩︎

 

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yritin rakentaa tänne kodin /\

18.11.2025 | Black Box, Musiikkitalo, Helsinki

Performers

Veera Katila, housework and voice work
Sini Onne, housework and stage work
Raphaël Beau, housework and performance work
Aino Myöhänen, housework and public works