Leif Andrée, actor.
What is your relationship with Bowie?
– I discovered him when I was 14 years old with the single “Starman”. It was as if the heavens opened! I fell so hugely in love with Bowie. Then I read in a pop magazine that he was doing pantomime and then I thought I had to try that.
Leif Andrée in “Leif”, which premiered at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern in 2016. Photo: Petra Hellberg
In what way has he shaped your career?
– In my monologue “Leif”, the guitarist Susanna Risberg played a potpourri of Bowie songs and “Five years” ended the whole show. He has meant a lot, just this with his outfit and his manner. I got a ring in my ear in 1973 because I wanted to look like Bowie. He was way ahead of his time with the androgynous. Even I dressed in women’s clothes. I was an elite swimmer and very thin at the time. Since my girlfriend was quite tall, I could wear her clothes.
Jens Ohlin. Photo: Fredrik Funck
Jens Ohlin, playwright and director.
You use Bowie’s song “Changes” in “Et drömspel” at Uppsala Stadsteater and “Heroes” was included in your and Hannes Meidal’s play “(Macbeth)” at Dramaten. Why?
– On the one hand, I think he is a fantastic artist overall, and on the other hand I would like to have music that I can relate to.
David Bowie on stage in 1977, the same year he released the album “Heroes”. Photo: Ian Dickson/REX
What do you relate to in Bowie?
– It is difficult to say whether it is the individual songs themselves or whether it is his entire chameleonship. I don’t think I would have Bowie at any show. “Heroes” can be filled with your own fight or exactly what you want and that’s what we were looking for there, a general fight song. With “Changes” it was like I changed the song and chose it on the genre rope. I thought the performance is so blurry that I needed help. You get to follow a person through an entire life and thematically the text was just as clear as it needed to be.
Tiina Rosenberg. Photo: Roger Turesson
Tiina Rosenberg, Professor i teatervetenskap.
What is your relationship with Bowie?
– I was born in 1958, which means that I was a teenager during Bowie’s heyday in the 70s and listened to him a lot then. But I have not written about Bowie himself as an academic, for me he is more associated with a personal era during his upbringing.
What does Bowie mean to a theater scholar?
– The 1960s and 70s are very much characterized by the free groups that challenge the institutions. There, Bowie is an interesting exception. He does not join a political theater in that way, but had his own politics with the artistic and the lighted. To be interesting on stage you have to be theatrical in some way, people want a show, and Bowie was definitely that. Therefore, he is of great interest in a subject such as theater studies or performance studies.
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Therefore, the musical stage is Bowie’s right element