Spex

Spex is traditional student theater in Sweden.  They started in the 1800's as parodies of the classic dramas in Greek and Latin that university students studied.  I had the opportunity to see a Spex last weekend.  One of my classmates was involved and since I had been told I needed to see 1 Spex in my life as a student in Sweden, I knew this was the perfect time to see it.

This particular Spex was about Cupid's lack of ability to shoot his arrow at the right people.  It was all in Swedish but because my friends and I were attending, they'd written brief explanations of each scene in English for us.  Even without knowing exactly what was being said it was funny and ridiculous.  There was lots of singing and dancing and it was fun to see my friend in that context.  While learning about case-cohort studies I never knew Natasha could sing so well.

She was a Bond Girl for Achilles who was a secret agent 

Overall, lots of ridiculousness 

We sat in the front row so we could catch all the action, not knowing it was semi-interactive theater.  The actors look to the front row to gage how funny they are and often leaned down to point a finger at us or get in our faces to make everyone else laugh.  When the intermission came my friend explained this to us and we realized we were the worst people to sit in the front row since we were not laughing that hard at the jokes (since they were in Swedish and we didn't catch them). 

In Spex the audience also controls how long and in what capacity the play moves along.  After a song and dance number, if the audience really liked it they would keep clapping until the actors were forced to do it again, but with different words and actions building upon the last performance.  This could go on for several renditions. Audience members could also call out commands making the actors have to change their voice level, standing or sitting position, or even do the scene in a different language.  It was very interesting and I realized the actors had to have VERY high energy to keep going and switch with the whims of the crowd.  It is not something I would be good at.  But, again, it was really fun to see my friend in that setting.  She did a great job.

Spex, check.  One more wonderful experience to check off my list of things to do and learn about while living in Sweden.  On to the next . . .