Photo & © Peter Knutson
ICA-Kuriren 2023-09-14
By: LINDA ANDERSSON
Photo: PETER KNUTSON
After a professional slump a few years ago, Helen Sjöholm is back on the musical stage with new energy. Having just turned 53, she is in an upheaval phase of her life where many changes are at the door. However, some things remain constant – such as the enduring love for work and husband David.
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Had her breakthrough in Kristina from Duvemåla
Nobody needs to be reminded that 28 years ago Helen broke through with a bang in a premiere performance of another Swedish national epic. She spent almost five years of her life embodying Kristina from Vilhelm Moberg’s emigrant suite. When the opportunity to once again give musical life to an iconic movie character appeared, she welcomed it with open arms.
– I’m happy when Swedish musical theater dares to take a step forward. It’s very rare that you get the chance to play newly written material. To be part of something played on stage for the first time is the best thing I know. Everything happens in the moment. As an actor, you are both a co-creator and a tool for the creators behind the work. If something doesn’t sound good and needs to be changed, you have the freedom to do so. That possibility doesn’t exist when working with a finished work that has been performed before, she explains.
Helen Sjöholm
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Family: Husband David Granditsky, 57, children Ruben, 16, and twins Samuel and Johanna, 11 (…) (…)
Best character trait: My energy has been a huge positive for me.
Worst character trait: Energetic. Sometimes it can be stressful both for myself and those around me (…)
Lives in Nacka with the family
We sit and talk on a small hill outside the culture house Dieselverkstaden in Nacka. A frequent destination for Helen who lives nearby with her family. If the other visitors recognize her, they make no bones about it. With her low-key appearance, Helen almost feels like the antithesis of the extroverted Rut Flogfält, who parades through her hometown with her oversized glasses on the tip of her nose. But when you look beneath the surface, there are several personality traits of the character that she can recognize in herself.
– Above all, I can identify with Rut’s need to protect what she has. When something challenges one’s sense of security, it’s easy to become judgmental. Like Rut, I can also have problems dealing with situations where loyalties are broken. It isn’t often that I have been let down, but the times it has happened I’ve had a hard time accepting it, states Helen thoughtfully.
Quite afraid of conflict
Rut’s flammable temperament then, is it something that Helen can relate to for her own part?
– No, I’m quite afraid of conflict. It will probably be a challenge for me to find that explosiveness. It’s not something I wear everyday. I am an empathetic person who always wants to try to understand everyone and reach consensus. When I get angry, I run, clean or rearrange the furniture. I don’t think I’ve ever scolded anyone.
Another complex character that Helen has recently played with that honor is the shunned family mother Annika in Amy Deasimont’s critically acclaimed youth series Thunder in my heart (…) In recent years, Helen has done several purely speaking roles.
– From the very beginning, I have considered myself an acting singer, but I had long been curious about putting acting first. It has been very developing and at the same time great fun to do speaking roles. I think it is valuable to have that breadth in the long term if you want to continue working in the industry. Now that I’m older, the roles that I can imagine getting on a musical stage are fewer than when I was younger.
The voice changes
(…) With equanimity, she has accepted that her main working instrument has undergone a noticeable change over the years.
–05604 I no longer have the same upper clarity in my voice. The keys I sang when I was 25 I can still handle, but it doesn’t sound the same as it did then. Although the biggest change is not really that it sounds so particularly different, but that it is more difficult in terms of endurance. When I was younger, I could sing for much longer periods of time. Today I get tired and worn out faster. If I play a show four days a week, I can’t do other gigs on the side. In return, with age I have gained a depth in my voice that I did not have before.
Dissecting her singing voice into its smallest component is actually something that Helen is not the least bit amused by. Her voice has always been the obvious constant in her life, living a life of its own and defying performance nervousness as well as failing self-confidence. She already discovered that people were touched by her voice at the age of five, when her father Hans drove Helen and her siblings around to various nursing homes to visit elderly relatives. In her early teens, she tested her vocal resources in her father’s sheet metal shop, where she cleaned after closing time.
Dropped out of studies when she got the role of Kristina
– I screamed and sounded and noticed that it was carrying when I took the turns. In part, the singing was probably therapy for me. During school I was sometimes a loner. I never had many friends. The choir became my context.
Growing up in Sundsvall, the heartland of choral singing, offered many opportunities for performances. But despite the fact that Helen early participated in both Café Sundsvall and Kjell Lönnå’s televised sing-along program, it wasn’t until adulthood that she fully began to think about the idea that singing was actually something she could devote herself to on a professional basis. Influenced by her parents’ concern that the music investment would lead to disappointment and financial insecurity, she nevertheless kept a back door open and began studying at the cultural studies course in Stockholm. In parallel with her studies, she applied in competition from over a thousand other aspirants for the lead role in the Björn and Benny musical Kristina from Duvemåla. When the director Lars Rudolfsson called and told her that the role was hers if she wanted it, life changed in an instant. Quickly, 24-year-old Helen dropped out of her studies, took on the role of the emigrant farmer’s wife Kristina, and made, as we all know, a celebrated success. With success comes expectations. Helen admits that it has sometimes felt burdensome to live up to the stamp of quality that the breakthrough gave her.
“Still feel like I don’t know my profession”
– I know, for example, that some people buy tickets to Änglagård (House of Angels) because I’m in the show. There’s something so damn scary about that. To find the joy of work, I have to rub the stamp of quality out of my mind and start from square one every time. If someone had lined up everything I would get to do in my career up to now for my 25-year-old self, I would probably have thought: What a strong self-esteem I must have then. But I still don’t feel that I know my profession. Rather, every time I have a feeling of: How the hell am I going to do this? At the same time, I am grateful for the constant search because it keeps me passionate about my work.
Most of the time, the search leads her right, but when Helen appeared in the musical Next to normal at Uppsala City Theater in the spring of 2020, she felt that she was groping blindly in her portrayal of the bipolar mother Diana.
– I didn’t feel well when I did the role. It wasn’t about marriage problems or anything, but I had some other tough personal challenges that were draining me. Normally, my almost unfailing battery is my greatest asset, but at that moment I was like a twisted rag. I had longed to play the role of this mother who felt so bad, and so I didn’t quite get there in my interpretation of her. It was a horrible feeling. I was so sad and disappointed.
When everything felt most frustrating, fate intervened. The entire playing season was canceled after only eight performances. The reason for it? The pandemic, of course. When the show resumed two years later, Helen found herself in a much brighter place in life.
– It was a great gift to be able to play the musical again then. The role no longer robbed me of power. I could play it fully and still go home feeling good.
Must prioritize
Even though Helen goes wholeheartedly into every assignment she undertakes, she has, ever since the start of her career, made sure that the job must not become too important.
– It has almost been like a working method. If the work becomes too important, I lose my courage. I have to feel that if this were to disappear, life would not be empty of content. It must never happen that I only feel good when I’m on stage because then something is seriously wrong.
Life changes come whether you like it or not. Helen states that she is currently facing a completely new stage in her life. Children starting to break free. Puberty hormones. Own menopausal hormones. Aging parents who need more support than before.
– It’s quite dizzying. I would say that it is a very intense and emotional period that I am in. I find that I have to start prioritizing a little differently, which is difficult for me who is voracious about life and has been able to do many things at once.
Finds security in female friendship
As safe havens in the storm are the female friendships in which Helen has found a sense of belonging in recent years.
– The fact that I, who didn’t have many friends at all as a child, has been enriched with several new friends feels super wonderful. We women have a lot to go through. It also gives us a lot to talk about. The anxieties and weaknesses that are now more noticeable than before open up a community that I feel strengthened by.
5 quick questions with Helen Sjöholm
Favorite author: I have recently discovered Per Anders Fogelström’s town series and Karl Ove Knausgård’s Morning Star Trilogy. Both reading experiences left me stunned.
People I would like to meet: My mother’s father and my father’s father. My mother’s father died when I was little and I never got to meet my father’s father. I’m very curious about them.
Dearest possession: My photo albums. My mother constantly took pictures of me and my siblings when we were children and made albums for us.
Favorite place: Alnön outside Sundsvall where I grew up. I also like the Jämtland mountains a lot.
Greatest musical experience: When I saw Tommy Körberg perform the Jacques Brel song Gamla älskares sång (Old Lover’s Song) when I was really young.
Together with husband David Granditsky for 20 years
Helen has another pillar of support in her husband David. This year they celebrate their 20th anniversary as a couple. The given question is, of course, how to get a relationship as long and enduring as theirs.
– I think part of the answer is the fact that David and I decided early on that it was the two of us. Neither of us has panicked when the relationship hasn’t been at its best and you haven’t always had the response from the other. For long periods, our life has mostly consisted of logistics and the family business. Despite that, we have never felt that now things are going to hell for us.
The fact that David, who works as a sound engineer, works in the same industry as Helen has mostly meant advantages.
– We both understand the constant “infatuations” that arise in our work. During a production, you become one with your ensemble and come home fulfilled by the work. Then it is important to feel secure that it does not pose any danger to our relationship.
But the very biggest advantage is that David comes from a family of many actors.
– It has been very significant because I struggled with a very bad conscience towards the children and asked myself if you are really allowed to have this profession and be a mother at the same time. For David, that is a non-issue, which has had a de-dramatizing effect on me.
(The entire interview is not reproduced for copyright reasons)