Selected Theatre Works
GYMNASTICS GIRLS (Jumppatytöt, 2024-)
Gymnastics girls (Jumppatytöt) is a performance about aesthetic group gymnastics.
It is a journey by former gymnasts into their past and present bodies – into training, competition, comparison, judgment, joy, beauty, community, and peerhood.
The performance is an ode to Finnish women’s gymnastics and to everyone who has ever trained so hard that they could taste metal in their mouth.
“ENJOY”
Premiering in 2024, Jumppatytöt has become a phenomenon that sold out before opening night and has since toured over 80 sold-out performances across Finland and the Baltics. Hailed as “the theatre event of the year” and widely covered in national media, the piece has sparked a significant cultural conversation about gymnastics and body politics. In 2025, the creators received Finland’s prestigious State Award for Public Information for the work’s exceptional ability to open up new knowledge and reveal cultural structures.
Jumppatytöt has drawn new audiences to theatre, resonating across generations and backgrounds, and inspiring requests from schools, sports clubs, and workplaces. Its documentary-artistic approach has influenced academic research and expanded into collaborations with historians. The team has been invited to perform on the Finnish National Theatre’s Main Stage, and a dedicated Jumppatytöt exhibition will be presented at the TAHTO Sports Museum in 2026. More information about the tour can be found on the Gymnastics girls website.
“Jumppatytöt touches both the beautiful and the painful private memories and turns them into something shared and collective.”
– Ministry of Education and Culture press release on the State Award recipients, 13 June 2025
Text, direction, dramaturgy, scenography, performance:
Katariina Havukainen, Inkeri Hyvönen, Ella Lahdenmäki
Choreography: Antton Laine and the working group
Sound design: Roy Boswell, Oscar Fagerudd and the working group
Video: assembled from home videos and archival material by Liisa Mudist
Production: Teatteri Takomo – Sara Nyberg and the working group
Supported by: Kansan sivistysrahasto (President Tarja Halonen Fund), Ida Aalberg Foundation (Petra Uexküll Fund), Samuel Huber Art Foundation, City of Helsinki, Finnish Cultural Foundation Pirkanmaa, Uusimaa and Varsinais-Suomi branches
Recommended age: 12+
Duration: approx. 1 h 45 min, no intermission.
Request a link to the English-subtitled performance recording by emailing havukainen.katariina@gmail.com
“I cannot remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre as after Jumppatytöt.”
– Riitta Koivuranta, Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest and most influential newspaper in Finland)
“The audience bursts at the seams as the dramatic, dark pathos of the Jumppatytöt team’s performance turns, in a fraction of a second, into an aerobic firework display. Endorphins surge through the entire girls’ school gymnasium.”
– Emma Vainio, Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest and most influential newspaper in Finland)
“The theatre event of the year was created by three women.”
– Hilla Körkkö, Uusi Juttu
“The performance offered the audience a truly therapeutic and empowering experience. This, if anything, is theatre at its best.”
– Kati Eskola, Kulttuuritoimitus
reviews and media highlights:
Helsingin Sanomat / Teatteriarvio ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kainuun Sanomat / Teatteriarvio ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kulttuuritoimitus / Teatteriarvio ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
HBL / Teatteriarvio
Voima / Teatteriarvio
Helsingin Sanomat / HS-analyysi
YLE / Haastattelu
Uusi Juttu / Haastattelu: “Maton alle lakaistut”
Kulttuuritoimitus / Kolumni: Miksi miehet pelkäävät jumppatyttöjä?
Helsingin Sanomat / Parasta juuri nyt
Helsingin Sanomat / Haastattelu: Kuukausiliite
Tv:
YLE Areena / YLE Uutinen
MTV3 Huomenta Suomi / Haastattelu
YLE Kulttuuricoctail Live / Haastattelu
Blogs ja podcasts:
Voima
TARA (Kom-theatre 2020, National Theatre’s Touring Stage 2023)
Tara is a performance about poem-girls by Katariina Havukainen, Sara-Maria Heinonen and Julia Jäntti.
Tara explores the fragile, shifting memories of youth: experiences of rawness and aggression, unpredictability and tender surfaces, and on the other hand, experiences of affection, desire, and playfulness. The performance is based on the debut poetry collection Tara runotarina (Otava 2003) by Juuli Niemi, recipient of the Finlandia Prize. The work was created in collaboration with KOM-teatteri and the Finnish Readers’ Association. In 2023, Tara toured all state reform schools as part of the Finnish National Theatre’s touring stage programme, and it has also been performed at the Kajaani Poetry Week and the Volter Kilpi Festival in Kustavi.
Premiere: 13 January 2020, KOM-teatteri
Tour production: National Theatre’s Touring Stage
Text: Juuli Niemi, the working group
Concept, creation, performance: Katariina Havukainen and Sara-Maria Heinonen
Scenography and sound design: Julia Jäntti and the working group
Photos: Sonja Hyytiäinen and Jonne Renvall
Supported by: Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Ida Aalberg Foundation, Alfred Kordelin Foundation
“Tara is a sensory, exuberant triumph of intelligent actor-dramaturgy and new performership! (…) Tara uses Juuli Niemi’s debut collection Tara runotarina as its source material and builds its own unique performance language and mode of being on top of it—personal, permeating, porous performance. The piece is presence, yes of course, self-evidently, but in this kind of acting the ‘now-moment’ reaches an entirely new level. What creates it? What gives rise to that sense of unpredictability? Improvisation and the courage to seize small offers and impulses? A refusal to hide? A different kind of presence without ego? I don’t know, but this demands investigation—it must be examined and articulated. In the latter half of the 2010s, performership in contemporary theatre has taken a tremendous leap forward.”
— Hanna Helavuori, Theatre Information Centre, 16 January 2020
SIEGFRIED (Helsinki City Theatre 2019)
what seems straight might be queer underwater
Siegfried is a performance about non-normative lust. The performance happens in the mud bottom of Tsaikovski’s Swan Lake and it combines experiences from Tsaikovski himself, Ludvig II of Bavaria and fictional Prince Siegfried. The performance is a queer reading from the original Swan Lake story. The bodily aesthetics of the piece aim to decentralize the actor’s body and in this way to create a non-figurative and queer gendered subject.
Premiere in the Helsinki City Theatre Studio Pasila Stage 12.3.2019
text & dramaturgy
Katariina Havukainen ja Mikko Kauppila
direction, sound design
Katariina Havukainen
performer, choreography
Mikko Kauppila
light design
Julia Jäntti
stage and costume design
Katariina Havukainen ja Julia Jäntti
music
Pjotr Tšaikovski ja Mikko Kauppila
supported by
Finnish cultural foundation, Helsinki City ja Samuel Huber foundation
“Siegfried, created by University of Tampere acting students Mikko Kauppila and Katariina Havukainen, reveals theatre’s capacity to queer gender and desire. The actor’s psychophysicality / materiality tears through all forms of heteronormative and hegemonic gender constructs. Siegfried is proof of the realm of freedom in which acting students can move when creating their artistic theses. This realm of freedom must also be claimed from within oneself. One must dare to go beyond and above self-censorship and to overcome the biopower produced by one’s surroundings when building actor’s dramaturgy. Siegfried succeeds in this as it plays, remaining in a constant state of searching, changing, and becoming.”
— Hanna Helavuori, Theatre Information Centre Finland, 14 March 2019
esityskuvat: Santtu Salminen
For example, Nina (Esim. Nina, Kajaani Poetry Week 2017)
kuva: Jonne Renvall
”Nimeni on Henna ja toimin tänään Helenan sijaisena. Viemärit sekoittuvat toisiinsa kuin ihmismäisten talojen juuret. Opettajanhuoneessa on käytössä oleva pää, jonka tukassa horsma rehottaa. Saatan muuttua aivan toiseksi ihmiseksi. Viemärit sekoittuvat toisiinsa kuin ihmismäisten talojen juuret. Toisissa tapauksissa tehoaa ainoastaan julmuus.”
For example, Nina is a daydream born of longing for one’s possible selves. The performance explores identity and sexuality with humour—and perhaps with a touch of boldness.
The Woman is 27 and dreams of Copenhagen, a substitute. She would gladly be someone, somewhere—and what kind of life would she then be living?
For example, Nina is a stage work by the RVS Collective for the main programme of the Kajaani Poetry Week. The performance was composed of poems by Henriikka Tavi and Reetta Pekkanen, as well as original material by the working group. The RVS Collective—founded in 2015 by Havukainen and Heinonen—is a performance art collective whose work is grounded in feminist practice and driven by a passion for discovering new forms of bodily poetics.
Dramaturgy, direction & performance
Katariina Havukainen and Sara-Maria Heinonen
Text
Henriikka Tavi, Reetta Pekkanen, working group
Sound design
Katariina Havukainen
Lighting design
Raimo Salmi
Production
RVS Collective & Kajaani Poetry Week
Premiere
9 July 2017, Kajaani Poetry Week
MILLA RUMI CLUBS (National Theatre’s club, 2013)
At the Milla Rumi Clubs curated by Katariina Havukainen and Milla-Mari Pylkkänen, the pair approached stage art classics with a tender kind of violence — through theatre, music, video art, and journalism.
The clubs featured interpretations of works such as:
Albee: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard
Shakespeare: Macbeth
Büchner: Woyzeck
Beckett: Waiting for Godot – TO DOG – a performance for Samuel Beckett
Brecht: The Threepenny Opera
Havukainen and Pylkkänen jointly served as the concept creators, producers, and dramaturgs of the club. Havukainen directed the performances, and Pylkkänen composed the music. The clubs also included Viheriö, a journalistic segment hosted and produced by journalist Rosa Kettumäki, where the artists engaged in conversations about art and societal issues with a rotating selection of guests.
In addition to emerging young artists, the club hosted long-established figures such as Arto af Hällström, Janne Reinikainen, Kirsikka Moring, and Paavo Westerberg.
The club received wide praise from both audiences and the National Theatre.
The club was produced in collaboration with the Finnish National Theatre and Johanna Kustannus record label.
kuvassa: Sonja Salminen ja Esa-Matti Smolander (c) Jussi Hellsten
A STREETCAR NAMED LUST (2016)
Lust can be a force that drives us forward but it can also be a paralyzing aspect in us, one that we don't want or dare to confront. Is lust a motor we can become aware of, or subconcious expectations of what we see as desirable? Is what we crave affected by what is considered desirable? Is lust a ”force” that can be a justification for acting immorally in both one's private life and on a societal level? Is lust global?
A Streescar named Lust is a fragmentary performance based on the experiences of the actors. Lust is a private feeling, but in our performance it becomes a communal event as we invite the viewers to step into a common field of perception with us.
The goal is to create a common field of perception between the performers and the viewers, where we can move freely within our imaginations and study the forming of the common spacial experience. The field of perception is a specific acting technique that shows up in the research of our professor, Pauliina Hulkko, and that we have further developed in the University of Tampere.
text, direction and performers
Katariina Havukainen & Sara-Maria Heinonen
sound design
Katariina Havukainen
stage and costume design
Katariina Havukainen & Sara-Maria Heinonen
production
RVS-collective & Iceland Academy of the Arts
premiere
4.6.2016, Motif Festival, Iceland Academy of the Arts