The Art of the Handelsspexet

With the start of the spring term, students at SSE can start looking forward to one of the biggest SASSE events of the year: Handelsspexet, the iconic theatrical performance put on each year by students at SSE. Last spring, the play The Meaning of Leif was finally performed in front of an elated audience at Intiman. The Viking-themed play was delayed for three years due to the pandemic, but there is little doubt that the wait was worth it, as the performance was acclaimed by externals and students alike.

Thomas Brolin Stjärne, photographed by Emilia Essinger

While there are a few months still until the next edition of the Spex, set to be performed in May, Minimax has the privilege of presenting you with an exclusive interview with a seasoned Spex-veteran: Thomas Brolin Stjärne. Thomas was the Project General behind The Meaning of Leif, this year, he is in charge of script-writing.

In an interview, he told Minimax: “I took over from the previous Project Leader in 2020 and kept at it until 2022, when my project team was finally allowed to perform. It was an amazing experience. Since it was so much fun I decided, upon handing over to my successor Elsa, that I still wanted to be a part of the project. So I immediately joined the script group, and now I have also auditioned to be an actor in the show.” 

Handelsspexet’s new project leader Elsa Persson, photographed by Emilia Essinger (yes, that is a bruise - life is tough for ski lovers lately...)

Elsa Persson is the current project leader. I asked Thomas if he could tell us anything about the theme for the upcoming Spex, which he unfortunately could not:

“It’s a big deal for the Spex to reveal the theme as we release the tickets. So roughly one month until the show is when that happens, and until then it is, not always, a well kept secret, but we do our best. But, it’s gonna be spectacular and it’s gonna be very different from the previous year’s theme. The complete opposite, that’s about as much as I can say.”

With several years of experience within the Spex group, Thomas was able to give us a good overview of how the process unfolds.

As soon as this year’s play is finished, the Project Lead, or Spex General, hands the reins over to a successor, and work begins on the next Spex. For the first few months, this entails creating a script group and starting to write the script. According to Thomas, the script group is usually made up mostly of Spex veterans, but there are usually some new faces too. He further reassured that you can wholly contribute to the script without prior experience in the Spex. The group is aided by the theater director Micke Klingvall, who has been active on the Swedish stage-play scene since the ‘90s.

In the fall, as work on the script continues, leaders for the other groups of the project are appointed.

“They consist of the on-stage parts, which we call ABCD: actors, the band, the choir and dancers. Besides that we have an internal events team, of course, cause it’s SASSE. We have a sales and marketing team, a sponsorship team, a costumes and make up team, as well as a scenography team. The last two handle what is gonna be on stage and on the actors,” explains Thomas, adding that the Spex also has an internal photography team.

During the spring is when work really picks up:

“Intensity ramps up, with some key events along the way such as internal banquets and then a huge weekend which usually lands somewhere in March or early April. The groups get together to carry out what is usually the first run-through of the show... You rehearse several days a week if you’re part of the on-stage groups, especially the actors. With the show usually being held in the middle of May, the ticket release happens in the middle of April, the theme being released then as well. One week ahead of the show, we basically live and breathe Spex, and nothing else. It’s a daunting thought, but also an amazing experience. The excitement in combination with the [nervousness] last year was an amazing rush, but of course it culminates in two performances. First one for externals, which is basically a trial run for the actual SASSE show, which ends the entire project year.”

The now-retired General gave us some more insight into the script-writing process. First, a theme has to be decided. The group brainstorms and discusses various alternatives. In the end, the issue is typically settled with a vote. Then, the story is built from the ground up. There are some general structures to adhere to, such as having the play be split into two acts. Micke Klingvall also provides some pointers. A story is roughly outlined, and different team members are assigned to write different scenes that are then rewritten in order to fit together. Thomas describes it as an organic and fun process, where the end-product is often very different from the original idea. 

“Oftentimes, stuff ends up in a way [that] no individual in the group could have imagined.”

(Strategy aficionados may recognize this as “path-dependencies”.)

Then, the script is sent to Micke, who according to Thomas, usually has the group rewrite more or less the whole script. This is typically repeated two or three times.

“In the end, we have what resembles a theater script and it is sent for the final edit to Micke, who then once again rewrites most of it but bases it on what we’ve done. And since he has like forty years of experience in theater, the end results are amazing. Oftentimes very unlike what we started with, but you can go back and see how it has grown from the original idea and it’s an amazing process.”

The Spex is rumored to have some spectacular internal events, so naturally I had to ask Thomas about this. He told us that they are quite unlike anything else SASSE has to offer.

“With the type of people who are usually drawn to the Spex, you have a ton of creativity. People who like to play on themselves, people who aren’t afraid either to take space or allow others to be themselves... We make something special of every occasion. And the sense of community, both within the various project teams but also across the entire project, is amazing. I have a ton of people from last year that I still hang out with frequently, and have really built friendships for life. So it’s a close-knit community that makes for excellent events.”

I asked Thomas what he thinks is the most important ingredient in a successful Spex, to which he replied: a team of ambitious people who are able to trust each other. 

“It really has to be stressed for those that haven’t seen a Handelsspex, that our aspirations aren’t on the level of a student show. We perform in a proper venue with over five hundred seats, we do a proper show, and we aspire to have a professional theatrical production level in everything we do. You need to trust everyone else, trust that they can do their part… I think building a strong sense of community early on is a great contributor to ensuring that the Spex is gonna turn out great. The way the project works is, you don’t need to have experience going in, but when you exit the project, you’re gonna be damn near ready to actually work in theater.”

Whether or not it is your ambition to pursue that line of work, Spexet is sure to provide a special camaraderie and unique experiences during the course of the project. In the end, after months, or an entire year (or three) of work, the project culminates with two performances. Thomas left us with a few words about this experience:

“I was incredibly nervous last year, during the Friday show, which was the external show, super anxious about how it was gonna go… But it was a huge, huge success, and that gave us so much confidence going into the SASSE show. [The] feeling of that night, to just see everything land perfectly again and again, and sharing that moment, that entire experience with everyone who had worked so hard. Some of whom had been with me for three years by then… It really is an event where you worked super hard, some people for a year, most people for half a year, and the entire pay off comes in a single weekend.”

Of course, reading now has the opportunity to take part in the splendor and spectacle when the doors of Intiman finally reopen in May. Why not pay a visit to this year’s play?