Jumalan teatteri
[1] Jumalan teatteri is best remembered for their experimental act at the Oulu City Theatre in 1987, where the group used fire extinguishers, raw eggs, whips, excrement, and fireworks to drive out all but one member of the audience.
[3] The students performed in the nude and wielded fire extinguishers, stolen from the VR Group railway company.
First responders arrived on the scene, and some individuals who had been in the audience were taken to the hospital for treatment of respiratory damage caused by the explosive gases released from the firecrackers.
Many people thought the inspiration came from Jouko Turkka and his methods of teaching, which had also been the subject of public debate before the Oulu act.
[11][4]: 250 Around ten students of the Theatre Academy formed an "open student body" supporting Jumalan teatteri in early February, demanding that Jussi Parviainen be appointed the new principal and that Marianne Möller, professor of acting work Ritva Valkama and teacher Erkki Saarela [fi] be expelled from the academy.
[6]: 50 A few days later, eight members of the "open student body" caused a scene at the premises of the Theatre Academy in Eira, Helsinki by breaking windows and throwing things out into the snow.
"[2] In late January 1987 the government of Finland announced they would appoint a task force led by chancellor of the Ministry of the Environment Lauri Tarasti [fi] to investigate the internal problems at the Theatre Academy.
Theatre critic Juha-Pekka Hotinen [fi] wrote a debate article at the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat claiming that "the purpose of the act was to investigate the fuzzy consensus community and its use of power".
He claimed the press had inflated the significance of Jumalan teatteri "in an absurd manner", because he thought this had not been an unprecedented act in the theatre circles: "History knows of many attacks to the public, even as far as ritual suicides by artists.
[13]: 106–107 Kari Suomalainen, the editorial cartoonist at Helsingin Sanomat, commented on the issue with a cartoon where two men were discussing on the street: "Arvaa, mikä yhden kirjaimen ero on tasa-arvovaltuutetulla ja nykyteatterilla?"
")[15] Author Matti Mäkelä [fi] has analysed the scandal in his 2016 essay collection Tämä ei ole taidetta ("This is not art").
This was because of many reasons: Yleisradio had not yet learned to handle provocation as news, the press had diminished and the Internet had not yet changed the structure of publicity.
[16] Jari Halonen told in 2016 in the Perjantai show on Yleisradio:[17] Firstly, the situation at the time was that one really did not dare attack the hegemony in charge, it was a completely different situation than today, now anyone who is able to is shouting something against something, they were not doing that at that time, it was one big hegemony, it was a specific problem, that's why we did it so roughly, because we saw that the entire art is... the entertainment industry is taking art underneath it, and it has happened, we prophesied correctly, that is we thought that we must do something, we talked about it the whole time, and some people talked about it, for example Turkka talked about it the whole time, but the hegemony, the artistic circles, they didn't care about it... the same circles went along with the entertainment industry, so we young theatre students decided to sacrifice something of our own, we knew we would get our butts kicked, we didn't do anything dangerous, we didn't do anything like that, but we did invent the best thing, the next thing would have to explode bombs, but we didn't want to hurt anyone, so we thought that heck, the best thing we could do to cause a big scandal would be to take some shit, and it was a huge scandal, it caused a big problem, nothing really happened there, but they told us the people were traumatised there, it was a joke to read about those people, when years ago when there was some actor who was supposed to be an artist, or brave, or a director, told at a police interrogation "when I got shit thrown on me there... and there was something on my coat, I didn't understand... after that I spent half a year on sick leave..." This kind of artist, I would say, there was nothing to joke about, we got our butts kicked, but it was our process of maturing as artists, the first idea of an artist is only to be brave enough to dare to do something, but I think today the bravest thing in art is what is in love that leaves something undone, today people like Veronika Honkasalo and people like that, they are as provocative as they can be, but that they would dare to be in love, I don't dare yet, but I am trying hard.Jussi Parviainen told at a 2017 event by the Oulu Merikoskikerho club along with former cultural reporter Kaisu Mikkola [fi] that Jumalan teatteri had had nothing to do with theatre.
[18] According to chief criminal inspector Kari Myllyniemi [fi] who had led the investigation Turkka had acted cowardly in denying that he had publicly mentioned anything positive about Jumalan teatteri when he was interrogated by the police.
According to Parviainen, it was unforgivable that many students at the Theatre Academy were left without education and training in their profession after Jumalan teatteri.
[13]: 107 One of the accused was assisted by famous lawyer Matti Wuori, who thought that a criminal evaluation of the case should be based on the fact that the audience at the act had been professionals at the Theatre Days, who should have been prepared for a different kind of performance, and not an "unsuspecting Sunday audience who had come to see Moominpappa, but instead ended up in the middle of even symbolically unpleasant phenomena of life".
The most famous former member of this so-called "Pirun teatteri" group was the journalist and, until 2023, Minister of Traffic and Communications Timo Harakka.
