Ingemar Lindh:
Preparing for the Unknown

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INGEMAR LINDH, festival conference, Porsgrunn, Norway, June 5th 1997, upon a comment on his preceding speech from a member of the audience:- 'How do you work at the Institute for Scenic Art (Institutet för Scenkonst), and what do you aim at with your work?':

"We don't know what we aim at.

You perhaps know what you don't want, and it's a lot of work already to eliminate what you don't want. So it's ladders without steps. And when you discover, you always discover something that, even if it was unknown, was already latent in you. Because otherwise you would not recognise it. Our only possibility of recognising the unknown, is that it has a correspondence within us somewhere.

But how we work is a very long story."

"I think one general thing is: 'How do I as an actor prepare, very carefully, to encounter the unknown?' It seems like a contradiction. I used to take this example of an expedition, where they, a couple of centuries ago, went to the unknown continent Africa. And they don't know what they will meet. Neither do any expedition for that sake. Going towards where nobody have been before. You can imagine certain things, you can have the intuition of certain things, you can inform yourself about certain facts. And you prepare, and you prepare, and you prepare. And when you come there, it's not at all like that.

But you are prepared. So you have your reference. You can prepare for the danger coming from here. As in Malta, they always say that the Turks will do the invasion. Of course, as they are all there stuck looking towards Turkey, they will be very surprised when they come form Africa. So they will not be able to turn around.

But if you are prepared that some other will attack, then you can train it here in this direction, but you can also switch. And this is the only way we can really prepare. Prepare for the unknown, and listen -- to not get stuck... That you already know what you will find. Because if you don't find that, you will not see what you find.

And then you are as if you were blind."

Replies to questions and comments from the audience after the main speech:

• The extensive need for therapy in society, as a symptom of lack of opportunities to be creative.
  
  
• You say you want a society were people are creative. How about those that does not dare to be creative?
  
  
• In a discussion you have said an actor cannot be another person. But can you use a play to gain understanding into another person?
  
  
• How do you work at the Institute for Scenic Art (Institutet för Scenkonst), and what do you aim at with your work?