Monday April 24th – Finland “Mammoth" (formally Jessika’s Cub”) Playwright: Leea Klemola

Mammoth (formally Jessika's Cub)

Country - Finland

Playwright - Leea Klemola

Director - Brehan Pautsch

Translator - Penny Black

Collaborator - Akvavit Theatre

Synopsis - Mammoth (formally Jessika’s Cub) is a comedy about Jessika’s family, her role as a wife and a mother, and her panic attack-inducing longing for nature and need to get away from the technological world of today.

Jessika, her mother, her husband, and her mental health therapy dog stage a play to help Jessika confront her demons. The idea is to show Jessika’s now adult, absent son what she wishes his upbringing had been like via a video feed of the play. Instead of staying home in front of the computer, in Jessika’s scenario the whole family goes into the woods to get lost.

Right from the get-go, everything goes awry. Despite their best efforts, Jessika’s mother and husband don’t seem able to create a world without technology that would satisfy her. Through personal and marital crises they are, however, able to understand that Jessika doesn’t belong in the modern era but with mammoths and other wild beasts, and start again from there. Mammoth is about animal instincts and being untamed.