A fake job advertisement was published for the position of director of the National Theatre

To social at the beginning of February, an announcement appeared in the media in which the National Theater was looking for a new director. The announcement had a picture of the facade of the National Theater and the text “apply for us to work”.

However, the notice was not genuine, but a fake notice prepared by the perpetrators, who have remained anonymous for the time being. It was published National Theater 2030 website, and content has been published on Instagram under the same name.

On the website, Kansallisteatteri 2030 is said to be an “artistic intervention” that has tried to open a discussion about the management model and recruitment practices of an art institution maintained with public funds.

Until now, the general director of the National Theater has not been chosen through an open application, but the board of the theater invites the person of their choice to the position. At the National Theatre, the director acts as both artistic director and CEO.

From 2010 led the National Theatre Mika Myllyaho commented on the fake job advertisement on Wednesday in public Facebookin its update. He said that through the service provider of the National Theater 2030 website, he had forwarded the request to the creators of the page to remove the announcement from the website.

Since then, the announcement disappeared from the Kansallisteatteri 2030 website. It was replaced by a message stating that the National Theater considered that “instead of opening an artistic discussion, our intervention was about an illegal job advertisement”.

The page has a link to a form where you can leave your name and email address and freely answer the question “What could the term national stage mean now – or in 2030”.

Myllyaho tells HS that he has no idea who is behind the announcement.

“I tried to find out, because over the years various places from St. Petersburg have been trolling us, and there have been many types of disturbance messages. In the end, it turned out that an unknown Finnish group is behind it,” says Myllyaho.

Myllyaho does not object to the opening of the discussion of Kansallisteatteri 2030. He himself has supported reforming the management model of the National Theatre, for example, so that a new director would be chosen through an open search, and that the same director would no longer be responsible for the theater’s artistic content and finances.

“And I already brought these thoughts to the board’s attention last year, when I shared my own plans for the future. I also wanted no one to feel that the theater doesn’t want or dare to discuss this”, Myllyaho justifies his public answer.

National Theater 2030 says on his website that he was inspired by the takeover of Berlin’s Volksbühne theater that took place in the fall of 2017.

In it, local activists took over one of Berlin’s most famous theaters and said they were preparing a new program, which includes free events, discussions and political content.

The takeover was preceded by a change of director of the theater. The director of the Volksbühne was chosen without an open application. Such an event was only organized in 2021.

Although the occupiers were concerned that the Volksbühne line was becoming more commercial, the takeover was also more broadly about the future of the city’s alternative culture and gentrification, i.e. becoming middle class.

The group of occupiers included artists, political activists, students and city dwellers against gentrification. The six-day occupation ended without a violent confrontation with the police.

HS was unable to reach a representative of Kansallisteatteri 2030 for comment.