Text is based on an interview with the director.
A funeral mass for mankind
Sanna Kekäläinen‘s new work, A Friend from Ethiopia 2, is a powerful and thought-provoking journey into the origins of humanity, our existence and its disintegration. At its heart is a single phrase that names the entire work. “Every human being comes from Ethiopia.” This paradoxical statement unravels the red thread of the work, through which it draws a parallel between undocumented migrants, refugeeism and mass extinction.
Ethiopia’s fertile land and its paradox
The work reminds us of where it all began. One of the earliest pre-humans, Lucy, who lived more than 3 million years ago, has been found in Ethiopia.
It is from the same land that people flee oppression and deprivation. Crossing the Alps towards a vanishing future. The life of an uundocumented migrant is one of aimless survival, rootless fear and endless invisibility.
In the eyes of the West, these descendants of paradise are unknown, undefined, outsiders. Such categorisation is reminiscent of the distinction between natural resources – some are valuable, others waste, and ‘intrinsic value’ is a foreign word. Man’s faceless power extends everywhere: deciding which species deserve to live and which do not, who can exist and who cannot. The fate of the undocumented migrant and the endangered species is similar – forgotten in their uselessness and stripped of their nothingness. And all this in an age when the battle for the planet’s last natural resources has begun.
The blind self-destruction of our species
Man is one species among others – part of nature – but at the same time unique in its destructiveness. We have risen to dominance at a high price. When man, in his lust for power, forces part of his own species to become invisible – undocumented, non-existent – he also pushes other species to extinction, at the same accelerating rate.
The work makes visible how the greed and aggression of those in power become visible in the weakest, disappearing species, the undocumented migran. They are uprooted, treated as hazardous waste. At the same time, the value of depleting natural resources is seen as infinitely more precious than life itself.
Towards meaningful change
The global perspective of director and dramaturg Sanna Kekäläinen and writer Kari Hukkila unapologetically opens up the stage of the musical, where the history of power and current immigration policy are intertwined with an inexplicable species-typical trait of humanity: the desire to dominate, subjugate and exploit. The work rejects escapism and demands that we look towards.
The destructive cycle described by the work’s world of meaning is visible all around us. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is just one example of how great powers, or power in general, operate. People and resources are moved around in a geopolitical game in which the victims are all those who have something to plunder and who, from the point of view of power, are in the wrong place.
A Friend From Ethiopia 2 is both sad and hopeful. But it is not intended to leave the audience in despair. It is a humorous reminder of who we are, where we come from and what we can still do.
Premiere at Finnish National Theatre, Taivassali 8.5.2025. Tickets.