Handbook for Housewives

AN INTIMATE STORY OF THE CONDITIONS OF MOTHERHOOD, OF CARE, AND A FRIENDSHIP THAT SURVIVES IT ALL.

When Ester moves into the newly built villa, the house is spacious and modern, seventy square meters with a bathroom and an indoor laundry room. Husband Gunnar thinks they can afford some comforts, and soon their first child will be born.

Across the street lives Majken, who is going on holiday as a housewife, and Gunhild, who picks berries to earn her own money for a freezer. Many years later, when Ester has lived her whole life in the house and will soon move out, she suddenly stands face to face with who she once was; the nineteen-year-old new mother who tried to find her place in the housewife ideals of the fifties and the forty-year-old who walks alone during the days when her daughter has grown up, who understands that the care she gives to the home is not valued as before and that she is now expected to look for a job.

The Housewife is a newly written play depicting a homemaker's life with frilled pillowcases, varnished floors, and sewing machines. A story of motherhood, about care and a friendship that survives everything. Three actors play the same role at three different ages in a performance where the often invisible women's work, such as needlework and housework, takes place on stage.

Playwright Camilla Blomqvist and director Johanna Salander have approached the play, among other things, through research and interviews about the folk home era in Skellefteå. Hanna Cecilia Lindkvist is responsible for the scenography and Frida Johansson for the specially composed music. In the role of Ester we see Annika Nordin, Sonja Lindblom and Malin Vispe.

Facts about seating:
The scenography is structured as a room where the audience sits around the stage. The performance takes place in the middle of the room with the audience on all sides. In this way, the performance feels intimate and this is reinforced by the fact that there is only room for about 90 people in the audience per performance. Coffee will be served at the end of the performance and is included in the ticket price.