{"id":1714,"date":"2013-05-09T17:03:06","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T15:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/?page_id=1714"},"modified":"2022-03-09T19:20:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:20:40","slug":"helen-behind-the-laughter","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/press-clips\/interviews-2010\/helen-behind-the-laughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen behind the laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kup\u00e9,<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kup\u00e9, November 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: CAROLINE ENGVALL
\nPhoto: YLVA SUNDGREN<\/p>\n

Always happy, always friendly. Sure, but behind Helen Sj\u00f6holm\u2019s girl-cozy facade there is uncertainty, poor self-esteem, existential pondering and reflections on everyday problems. Perhaps even more so now when she plays Aniara at the City Theatre.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sven Wollter rests a heavy hand on Helen Sj\u00f6holm\u2019s shoulder. Both are taking small, rhythmical, steps forward. Soon the rest of the team of actors follow. Slowly. Zombie-like. All of it to the tunes of Andreas Kleerup\u2019s space music.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm wears soft gray pants, comfortable black boots and a blue sweater tied around the hips. When she sings, time comes to a halt.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Tuesday morning in September, just before the lunch break. Yawning begins to spread among actors such as Helge Skoog and Iwa Boman, before director Lars Rudolfsson lets them off to the staff lunchroom on 9th floor.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm chooses chicken without rice, yogurt instead of mango sauce. The health preparation for the premiere of Harry Martinson\u2019s Aniara, which is supposed to draw full houses for Stockholm\u2019s City Theatre\u2019s 50 year anniversary, has now begun. Everything has to be on top. The body. The voice. The self-confidence.
\nA week earlier, we sat huddled in a gruff couch backstage at the theatre. Few would have recognized the singer, who were on the Swedish charts for 278 weeks, who has played the lead role in \u201dKristina fr\u00e5n Duvem\u00e5la\u201d for four years, who appeared in Oscar-nominated \u201dAs it is in heaven\u201d.<\/p>\n

She walks through the stage door at the Stockholm City Theatre with her bike-helmet in hand. Bruises on her forearm after rehearsals. Her face as unadorned as the emotions she is soon about to bury herself in. But let\u2019s make one thing clear from the beginning. The singer and actress Helen Sj\u00f6holm is actually a very happy type. She laughs a lot. Likes to play monkey a bit.<\/p>\n

But.<\/p>\n

People would be pale without fierce, burning feelings. Songs would be flat without depth. Therefore, this interview is not meant to reflect a cheerful and shiny artist-facade. It\u2019s hard to be sparkling when talking about the vision of the future that Harry Martinson\u2019s 50th century epic Aniara displays. The story takes place in a spacecraft passing from a ruined Earth towards the big Nothing and can be seen as a symbol of the human civilization.
\nHelen plays the blind Poetissan, a woman without eye-sight who has got the gift of the word and the song. With those she comforts her fellow passengers, gets them to recognize that there is meaning in the hopelessness, the emptiness, the fear that soon they shall continue out into space and die.<\/p>\n

And as part of such a dramatic story it\u2019s obviously impossible not to think about life. Especially if you are even an ounce of a pondering type.
\n– Yes, I think a lot about existential questions, how little we know about our future. The entire ensemble kind of halts and start talking about big questions. I think a lot about the environmental threat, that suddenly everything can be turned upside down. Acting in this kind of play makes one think about what is truly important.
\n– For me that\u2019s family and closeness. Through that I create my own purpose in the big picture.<\/p>\n

Then what do you think about the big question: The meaning of life?  <\/strong><\/em>
\n– I say like my father: \u201dLife is a bag – empty and meaningless if you don\u2019t fill it with something.\u201d To fill the bag with things I like makes life worth living for me. It\u2019s family, friends, being out in the nature (the best therapy!) and my work that I also love.
\n– And trying to be a conscious and kind human being in the meantime.<\/p>\n

And what do you believe happens after death?<\/strong><\/em>
\n– I sometimes feel a strong presence of people who were dear to me, but who are gone now. However, I sense them more like a resonance within me. I don\u2019t believe in a concrete life after this. The consciousness is extinguished, but the dust gives new life in the extension. Beautiful like that.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is a wild tousled rascal as cause for these reflections. His name is Ruben, and he boxed his way into mama Helen\u2019s heart three years ago, knockouting her with his love and bringing her life to a head. As the modern and hardworking mother she is she\u2019s torn between work and family. Won\u2019t opt out. Cannot shut out the feeling of not being enough for her greatest love.
\n– Having a child has made me an even more pondering person. It\u2019s hard when you want to let your child roam and still be close to them. How do one get this together?<\/p>\n

Helen tells about the fun but pressed working year, on which she has just spent all of her energy to get through. Talks about how she would have wanted to take it easy in the spring, but then came the part as the mother Karin Larsson in the movie \u201dSimon and the oaks\u201d, a part she just couldn\u2019t refuse. The result was a kick work wise \u2013 but a struggle inside with her inner ideals. How moms should be there for their children twentyfour-seven, always available.<\/p>\n

– This new thing, when you have children, is constantly planning by the millimeter. It\u2019s an unsexy equation but totally inevitable. I know it\u2019s worth it. I love my job, but work hasn\u2019t been that vitaly important since I had children. At the same time my work depends on that I think it is just that important, but I try to get better at being totally present on stage and then let it all go at home. Though I\u2019m not there yet.<\/p>\n

– Meanwhile, life as a parent has also enriched me with a new anxiety and fear, while the humor and presence has grown. Everything gets a bigger dimension and makes it easier to identify with anxiety, longing and fear, but also love and humor. Every room inside me has become bigger since Ruben.<\/p>\n

Helen made her brake through at the age of 25 in Bj\u00f6rn and Benny\u2019s musical \u201dKristina fr\u00e5n Duvem\u00e5la\u201d. Full steam ahead for four years. Then she jumped onboard musicals such as \u201dFiddler on the Roof\u201d, \u201dLes Miserables\u201d and \u201dChess\u201d. Tour with Benny Andersson\u2019s Orkester BAO. Film roles in \u201dD\u00e4r regnb\u00e5gen slutar\u201d and \u201dAs it is in Heaven\u201d. Rarely paused. Has been close to the famous wall many times.<\/p>\n

– Two years ago when we moved and renovated the house, and I started working again, I had a very tough time. Moving in with a one-year-old in a house as unfinished as it was, and having had two such houses in the past, it was very tough. I only slept and worked.
\n– But I had good support and was able to attend some rehearsals and rest whenever I wanted to. I air myself frequently in my work, maybe that\u2019s the reason I find it hard to be vacant for long periods. Singing has been my channel and I have always filled the words with things going on inside me.<\/p>\n

Helen knows what medicine she needs. Says she\u2019s a combusting person whose signs become apparent only when the collision is a fact. Therefore she learned how to slow puncture herself. She releases some of the pressure while walking or running. Not every day, but several times a week. But singing at home? Never!
\n– I hardly listen to music at home. The only time I sing at home is with Ruben, right now we are singing a strange version of \u201dOoa hela natten\u201d.<\/p>\n

Though it won\u2019t be on Helen\u2019s new album, coming out this autumn. The idea to the album was born one evening at home on the couch when she and her husband ran a music quiz.
\n– He\u2019s amused by that I never can make a correct guess. That evening we got stuck on Billy Joel songs and listened through his treasure of music from the 70- and 80\u2019s. Then I got the idea to record them in Swedish.<\/p>\n

It was about the same in the living room at home in Sundsvall. There Helen sang. All the time. The accent is still there, it breaks through from time to time. The round, coarser letter l\u2019s. She says she\u2019s had it very well. Two wonderful siblings, no sore childhood. In Sundsvall a talented, but not TOO talented, Helen Sj\u00f6holm went to H\u00f6glundaskolan in the early 80\u2019s.
\n– It was not super easy for me, but I liked to study. I had a harmonious childhood, but I have also felt like an outsider and I have had periods in my youth when I didn\u2019t fit in. I didn\u2019t ride when all the others did. I had friends but I wasn\u2019t one of the gang. Before high school I never felt at home in any environment besides the singing.<\/p>\n

I read on the net about the wild high school club Athena…<\/strong> <\/em>
\nHelen laughs, tells about teenage life with happy party days every weekend in the girl-club Athena.
\n– There were tough admission tests… bullying really, incredibly American. One week of humiliation. It was fun years but seen from the outside it must look very strange. Today I would get nightmares if Ruben would be in such an association.<\/p>\n

What is your son like?<\/strong> <\/em>
\n– He is funny, very funny. He runs small shows and hates it when I sing, he wants to sing himself. \u201dHush, now its meeee\u201d, he says. And then he takes over.<\/p>\n

Ruben\u2019s father David, Helen\u2019s great love, came into her life seven years ago, in a period when the desire to work centrifuged at high speed. Lasse Berghagen had just persuaded her to play in a revue and managed to turn Helen\u2019s no into a yes.
\n– I really had no thought of playing revue. I had just done Chess and it was a heavy period when I had just broken off a relationship. But when I turned it down Lasse said \u201dwhy don\u2019t you do it just for the fun of it, take it as a big joke!\u201d. Today I\u2019m so glad that I dared to try, it was a big step in my development. David worked as a sound technician at Hamburger B\u00f6rs and I had been checking him out for a while before I took him home, she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s her way. Laps precipice with high laughs. She\u2019s a true body contact person who likes to touch people around her and spreads warmth through humor and acting talent. Though she rarely wants to watch herself on TV or movie.
\n– That\u2019s right. I have more confidence than self-esteem. When I listen to myself I get overly critical. I have seen too many pictures of myself in this job. I don\u2019t want to know how I look when I sing, it restricts me. I should be able to shrug it off, but I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The question is wether Helen Sj\u00f6holm really should. Songs would, as said, be flat without depth.<\/p>\n

\n

FACTS HELEN SJ\u00d6HOLM<\/strong>
\n Name:<\/strong> Marie Helen Sj\u00f6holm Granditsky
\nAge:<\/strong> 40 years
\nFamily:<\/strong> Husband David, sound engineer. Together they have a son Ruben, 3.5 years old
\nCurrent projects:<\/strong> As the blind Poetissa in Stockholm City Theatre set of Aniara.  In November, new album with Billy Joel songs, interpreted by Tomas Andersson Wij.
\nInterests: “I find it hard to be completely unscheduled, I should really practice that. When I’m not working I have a lot of projects at home as wallpapering and painting.”
\nBest train memory:<\/strong> Seven years ago, I and a friend went by overnight train from northern to southern Vietnam. We booked first class because we thought that it was better, but it was an awful trip. The only luxury was that there were walls. Soldiers searched the train, it was scary. But it was really beautiful when we arrived. Here in Sweden I and my son Ruben travel by train very often, and then we are housed in the dining car.<\/p>\n

\n

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Kup\u00e9, November 2010 By: CAROLINE ENGVALL Photo: YLVA SUNDGREN Always happy, always friendly. Sure, but behind Helen Sj\u00f6holm\u2019s girl-cozy facade there is uncertainty, poor self-esteem, Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1620,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1714","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1714\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}