Remembering Light and Video at the Finnish National Theatre

Live team
1 day ago
6 min read

The Finnish National Theatre’s Day of Remembrance is a poignant portrayal of true, historical events. We talk to the light and video team who shaped the production’s stark visual landscape

Words Katie Kasperson | Images Janne Vasama

A group of immigrants travels to the promised land hoping for a richer life but, lured under false pretences, these migrants are met with a reality much harsher than they’d imagined.

Sound familiar? It should. Countless immigrants have had to face similar circumstances and still do today. Day of Remembrance (Muistopäivä), a stage play written by Elli Salo and directed by Riikka Oksanen, focuses on those who defected from Finland to the Soviet Union and then disappeared during Stalin’s rule.

Based on authentic archival material such as letters, diaries, manuscripts, police records and other personal files, Day of Remembrance is currently playing in Helsinki at the Finnish National Theatre’s Small Stage. The performance follows seven Finns, all fictionalised amalgamations of real people, attempting to survive Stalin’s purges and build better lives. More significantly, it memorialises those lost during the thirties thanks to its sensitive direction and intentional creative design.

A light in the darkness

Ville Virtanen, the show’s lighting and video designer, joined the team early on. “I had made one previous show with the director,” he says. “Riikka was open to any idea: ‘Let’s try this, let’s do that.’ The first discussion we had was about the people disappearing. ‘Can we make the actors disappear on stage? How dark can we go?’” he recalls.

“There is a lot of darkness and usually only one key light. While the darkness and sadness are important to convey, the strongest feeling is hope,” Virtanen explains. “There are also very bright moments, too.”

Also handling all things video related, he adopted a minimalist approach, primarily using textured ‘walls’ that were projected downstage. Occasionally, he added archival photos and documents –“pictures of real people who were killed,” he states. “Then, when the audience exits, there are four thousand, three hundred and something names sort of raining down the walls in the foyer. These are the names from the forced labour camps.”

As head of the lighting and video department at the Finnish National Theatre, Virtanen called on members of his team to help design and deploy Day of Remembrance, such as the system operator Matias Koivuniemi. “Because it’s our own stage, it was easy to operate,” he shares. Collaborators for nearly ten years now, Koivuniemi could accommodate Virtanen’s creative and technical requests with little friction. Meanwhile, light and video technician Ilari Kallinen created videos based on Virtanen’s designs. “I had an Excel file with names, dates and locations. We had to clean that up – almost 5000 names would be a lot of clicking to do. So Ilari used artificial intelligence.” From there, Kallinen made the raining effect for the foyer projection, giving each name – each life – proper recognition.

Tech specs

Koivuniemi arranged the set-up of the show’s technical side, selecting to use the Epson EB-PU2216B and Panasonic PT-DW6300ES as the production’s projectors as well as a Sony PXW-Z90 as the live camera, operated during performances by video operator Kalle Mäkelä. “It was basically plug-and-play because the stage is so familiar,” Koivuniemi reveals. “My biggest jobs were to figure out where to put the projectors in the foyer, so that they were not in anybody’s way, and how to project onto three walls.”

As the production’s media server, he employed the Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2, which processed live feeds from the camera, transmitted via Teradek Bolt 500 Pro, as well as any pre-made content. The Boreal+ MK2 also linked the two main projectors, enabling them to display one seamless, blown-up image.

“One of the most distinctive media servers on the market,” according to Bob Bonniol, chief innovation officer at ACT Entertainment, the Hippotizer’s “state-based render engine gives theatre teams the freedom to treat video like lighting: as playable, sculptable and instantly adjustable in the room.” This is exactly what Virtanen and his team needed: to use projected content as an additional light source.

The cast and crew had roughly 70 on-stage rehearsals – “which is quite a lot,” comments Virtanen – providing plenty of time for trial and error.

Throughout, the Hippotizer enabled live experimentation. “Seamless control from GrandMA3, Stream Decks, Midi, other lighting desks, timelines and presets let designers try things, break things and fine-tune and rebalance looks fast – without drowning in pre-production,” says Bonniol. “This flexibility is the reason why the Hippotizer is the perfect collaborator for the creatively nimble world of theatre.”

Working with what you’ve got

The Finnish National Theatre is the oldest professional theatre in Finland, founded in May 1872. “It’s a mix-and-match set,” Virtanen shares, yet able to achieve the desired atmosphere. The Small Stage blends light sources from Apollo, Ayrton, Claypaky, JB-Lighting, Martin, ETC and CLF, controlling all on a GrandMA3 Compact XT console.

“There are only two technical people running the shows on the Small Stage, so everything needs to be fast and easy,” Virtanen adds.

The set design itself played a role in Day of Remembrance – especially the glossy stage surface, which created an intriguing, reflective effect. The floor, made from PVC ‘that had been coloured red’, according to Virtanen, could be used to bounce light. “I was afraid that everything would turn red, but it wasn’t the case,” he shares. “White light would reflect as white stripes on the walls.”

The show’s set designer, Janne Vasama, opted for a barren physical concept. While he occasionally added a wooden ship or crate, the stage was otherwise left mostly empty. “I liked it,” admits Virtanen. “I had more freedom to shape different places with light and video. With almost every video, the reflection worked so well.

“Although I hadn’t worked with Janne before, we immediately connected and the collaboration was smooth,” Virtanen continues. “I was excited about the final results and how the set came together.”

Setting the scene

Day of Remembrance’s story begins in December 1931, when a group of hopeful migrants board a smuggler’s boat that is bound for the Soviet Union. After crossing the Gulf of Finland, they arrive in Stalin’s backyard just in time for winter, facing grim conditions such as tight living quarters, cold weather and forced labour.

“There is a scene when the people are just arriving in Russia,” Virtanen explains. “A black wall comes down for the first time, the doors open in the middle and let a bright light through while the rest remains in darkness. It’s maybe a ten-minute scene, and there’s no change in lighting cue. But when the doors close and open again, it shifts the mood significantly. It’s a powerful moment.”

Later on, the characters occupy bunk beds in one of the internment camps. “People are sleeping, and there’s one light that comes from behind,” Virtanen explains, barely illuminating the action. “They start to write letters to home,” he continues, “and we have a live video of one letter being written on stage – the video becomes the front light.”

Finally, in the second act, it begins to snow. “We have ten snow machines on the ceiling, and the snow covers the whole stage. The floor starts to turn white, and it keeps raining and raining,” says Virtanen. Six of the machines were made in-house, finalised days before the opening night back in November.

“The whole piece works really well,” Virtanen believes. “There’s nothing I would tweak. Usually there is, but with this, I don’t want to change anything.”

Everyone’s invited

Though performed entirely in Finnish, Day of Remembrance is available with English subtitles from February 2026. “We are sometimes asked, ‘Do you have translations?’ They are rare, but this has been a show where we’ve been asked a lot, so we said yes,” explains Virtanen.

“These are live captions you can follow on your own device,” adds Koivuniemi. For those who require such captions, their phones will display coloured text on a black background, minimising the distraction to others. “This is the second or third production that is going to have captions in a different language, so it’s still new to us. It’s the future of accessibility.”

In a nearby Swedish-language theatre, “they are trying assisted listening, so if you’re hard of seeing, you can get audio cues as well,” Koivuniemi continues. He hopes the Finnish National Theatre will soon deploy the same technology.

“We don’t want to rule out anyone coming to see the shows,” Virtanen stresses. “Even if you don’t know the language, or even if you can’t see or hear, we still want to bring theatre to everyone.” With a show that is as historically and socially significant as Day of Remembrance, the bigger the audience, the better.