Raivo Kütt "PAPA" Synopsis
ENG
In his two-act, radio drama, Papa, Estonian playwright, Raivo Kütt explores the fragility of sibling relationships in contemporary society that is more and more beset with a deficiency of human closeness and naturalness – a society that prizes material gain over human warmth.
Still, loving relationships are realizable. People touched by the divine do move among us; would that we were able to recognize them when we wish to preserve these once-formed bonds. Rebirth into the realm of sincerely loving persons is not an empty wish or doubting heart’s pipe dream. It is within the reach of each and every mortal, here and now, in each new day.
Three natural sisters – Kersti, Ülle and Milvi with their husbands, Robert and Juss -- have come to their father’s home. They have come not to prepare for the next family reunion and celebration of their father’s jubilee, but rather to sort out and divvy up their father’s unbequeathed properties.
They all agree that the ancestral woodlands must be quickly turned into cash; the monies used to pursue their present desires and fleeting dreams.
To project a sense of rightness while hypocritically putting a caring face on their proceedings, they launch the plans for the upcoming birthday celebration, and throw in the planning of their father’s eventual funeral -- stipulating that both events be paid for by Papa himself. These negotiations bring to the surface long-buried rivalries and hatred.
Papa, ostensibly asleep in the next room, overhears their fighting. This next generation’s greed and tactlessness, the bitterness arising from alienation through time and circumstance, impels him to dream of relationships moved by affection and sincerity. He decides that he will fulfill his dream. Irrational as it may seem, he will be re-born, through a surrogate mother! In this hyperbole lies the author’s attitude toward the brittleness of blood ties.
Papa’s farmhand, Timmu, becomes his helper in making this dream possible. Relying on a brief glimpse into things worldly (in Finland), Timmu advises Papa to visit a bordello. In their encounter with two of its “ladies”, the inexperienced Papa makes a connection with Kristiina, in whom he sees some semblance of an admired, magazine-touted, social lioness, Maarika, who possess an affectionate soul. When Kristiina is thrown out of the brothel because she has contracted AIDS, Papa invites her to come to live at his farm. Thence, this becomes not only Papa’s story, but also that of Kristiina, whose soul through this friendship, begins to blossom.
The bond between two human beings becomes complete. Papa leaves all his woodlands to Kristiina’s daughter, Annika. The playwright’s attitude is revealed in this gesture of disinheriting his natural heirs, leaving ancestral properties to a stranger’s child. Papa’s unabated longing to be reborn is given a tragi-comedic flavour. He will be re-born with Kristiina through her daughter, Anniki; through newly created bonds of relationship. Kristiina is bound for eternity. Surely, in pondering eternity, we might be moved to believe that in some point of time – in winter, in time distant, in eternity, - all broken bonds will be restored when widely separated brothers and sisters return HOME, for ever.
Kalle Kadakas
Director
translated by Heli Kopti
EWR VIDEO
Video I part: http://www.eesti.ca/kuuldemang...Video II part:
http://www.eesti.ca/kuuldemang...