Kolmas Tila (Third Space) premieres its new theatre production The White Star on February 13, 2025.

The White Star deals with Antarctica, the scientific work done there, the ethics and activism of that work, and the place and importance of the continent for the life of our planet and its history, also its future. The starting point and circumstances of the work, which combines documentary information, research information and fiction, is the planet’s climate emergency.

The White Star follows an Antarctic research expedition in the unspecified near future, at a research station isolated from the outside world, during one winter – on a region where the average outside temperature is around -57 C and total darkness lasts for three months.

The expedition includes an astronomer studying exoplanets, a glaciologist studying ice and glaciers, and a doctor specializing in sleep research. Waiting for them at the station is the fourth member of the expedition, a botanist – or so they believe.

Does the research station’s closed storage contain archived messages for researchers? What is it that someone wanted to tell them?

The White Star is Tuomas Rinta-Panttila’s second directorial work for Third Space:

”How to deal with the climate emergency with the means of art without ending up with the obvious? And how to take a stand on the current tightening of cultural resources and even, it would not be an exaggeration to say, the partial ideological undermining of culture’s operational possibilities?

By making art that is artistically of the highest possible level, which does not agree to single-mindedness, declarativeness, empty promises or ideological elevation. Art that is multi-meaningful, poetic, giving space to the viewer’s own thinking and activating it. By creating on stage a network of thinking, which, like the world itself, creates meanings from the whole, not by staring at a single detail. And yet; by believing in the power of art not as an instrument and tool for something, but as a value in itself.

All this is possible thanks to Seppo Parkkinen’s text and the boldness of Third Space. The bold search for a new kind of stage aesthetics that started in Raumzeit will continue in The White Star. The work group has mostly remained the same, and this enables an atmosphere of trust, gentleness and courage created by common thinking. An atmosphere that also makes it possible to strive for new, as yet unexplored areas of stage art. You could even say to the Antarctic of stage art…

Bravely towards the unknown, then!”

ON STAGE:

Katja Küttner, Eetu Känkänen and Kristina Vahvaselkä with voice actors.

PRODUCTION GROUP:

Script: Seppo Parkkinen / Director: Tuomas Rinta-Panttila /Costume design: Maria Sirén /Light, video and set design: Eero Erkamo /Sound design and music: Ville Aalto /Technical design: Antton Kainulainen / Producer: Kristina Vahvaselkä / Publicity: Jukka Kittilä /Graphic design: Tuomas Rinta-Panttila, Eve Sillanpää  / Photos: Robert Seger / Production by Kolmas Tila – Tredje Rummet ry / rf / In addition scientific collaborators