Robert Lyons – 50th Reunion Essay

Robert Lyons

robert.lyons@dramatik.gu.se

+46 31-773-4131

College: Saybrook

Skipping Over the Ocean

Just after graduating (drama major) I got my draft papers, rented a cheap apartment in the East Village in NYC, and worked at The Casual Aire clothing shop on the corner of Christopher and Bleecker while planning my draft-dodging. Filled with acting tips and clutching my unfit-for-duty letter, both provided by a resistance psychiatrist, I shuffled through the physical (shades of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”) and was told at the final station that unfortunately they couldn’t sign me on. But I had a passport and I was ready to leave.

With “Everybody’s Talkin’” looping through my brain, I flew to England, feeling free. My father, a WWII vet, couldn’t understand. My mother sometimes did. Later in life she sympathized for real. I got a three-month job travelling around Europe doing a branch survey for a peace organisation: Children’s International Summer Villages (CISV). But before activating my Eurail pass I attended a CISV youth meeting over the New Year 1969–1970 in a small village outside of Paris.

An intelligent, beautiful, talented young soprano sang Dylan’s “Farewell Angelina” at the meeting. We’ve been living together in her native Sweden ever since. My best decision ever. Kärstin and I married in June 1971. We’re both educators, recently mostly retired, we travel a lot. Sometimes to the US. Our three children: Jonathan, married to Sara and father of Emelie and Elsa, lives close to us in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city. He heads a unit of the Swedish tax authority and plays funk on sax. (For the record: Swedish taxes provide us with excellent health care and education from preschool through university.) Rebecka is a singer-songwriter and voice teacher living with her husband, Stephen, and their daughter, Ronia, in a small village in Devon, England, and Sara our youngest, has been living in Rome for several years now, works for the UN at the HQ of the World Food Programme. (And she sure can play violin.)

In the late 1980s I directed a couple of professional interactive theatre productions in Sweden: The Dream Train (for the Swedish National Touring Company), concerning environmental issues, and The Latin American Chalk Circle (with Teater Uno), a political piece based on Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and I’ve published my dissertation and a number of articles concerning intercultural and political theatre.

But mainly I’ve taught and studied. Got my MA and PhD in drama here at Gothenburg University, where I’ve now been working for over 35 years, most recently as associate professor in Theatre Studies, specializing in modern European sociopolitical theatre. It’s been, continues to be, stimulating and rewarding. I’ve also guest-lectured at Plymouth U. in England for many years and at Addis Ababa U. and The Freedom Theatre School in Jenin, Palestine.

I’ve recently started my own firm, Lyons Kultur, mainly translating texts in the arts and humanities from Swedish to English and proofreading Swedes’ English texts. I go to the theatre a lot. And sing with the family when I get the chance.