Dear ‘Lotta’

For twenty-year-old Kaari, the world looks more dangerous than ever, being plagued by pollution, overpopulation, diseases, drugs, crime and weapons of mass destruction. She envies her grandmother, whose generation she assumes has had a far easier and more carefree life in a more innocent world. But the discovery of her grandmother’s Lotta dress, a uniform worn by the quarter of a million women of Finland’s wartime voluntary organisation Lotta Svärd, begins to change this image. Through flashbacks initiated by her grandmother’s narration, Kaari learns about three twenty-something Lottas and their hard work at a wartime hospital where they had to endure the lack of food and other necessities while taking care of the wounded. As death and love always seem to go hand-in-hand, it is also a story of young and innocent love, and its tragic end. Kilpinen’s play explores its themes with a sense of togetherness and a golden humour that flows mysteriously in the midst of all the death and suffering.