Emil Gittansson Jensen We Must Stay in Touch

About the Performance

A unique and beloved stage personality is back to inspire courage and strength in the Uppsala audience. With a new name – and a new performance that warmly and seriously explores the power of friendship.

The award-winning artist and poet is back with a new show and tour through Sweden. With his entirely unique blend of music and speech, humor and seriousness, personal and global, Emil Gittansson Jensen instills courage and strength in his contemporaries.

“The performance revolves around the theme of friendship as a phenomenon. This undervalued relationship, vital for us as human animals and the foundation for all solidarity,” he says about the theme.
By turning and twisting concepts with the help of an old overhead projector, through spellbinding music and impassioned speeches, and not least through his deeply personal stories, Emil leaves no one unmoved.
The red thread of friendship encompasses everything from historical retrospectives to future predictions, but it’s also about loneliness and our era’s extreme individualism.

“Recently, I’ve lost my best friend, who took his own life, and both my parents who became my closest friends over the years. This has made me ponder what a true friend is. How to stay in touch – whether someone is alive or not! Why does friendship have such low status, both in art and society? And why are all quotes about friendship so sappy?”
Over the years, Emil has emerged as one of our most unique and beloved stage personalities. With peculiar interludes that can transition into songs, spoken word, small lectures, and stand-up comedy. Or “lie-down tragedy” as he calls it himself.

We Must Stay in Touch

In We Must Stay in Touch, he now explores even more of the possibilities of performing arts, with the help of director Siri Bengtén.
At the core lies Emil’s treasure trove of songs, and of course, he brings a Friendship Band – with Anna Dager, cello, Hanna Ekström, violin, and Staffan Findin, trombone.

“I’ve noticed that several of my previous songs orbit like planets around this very theme, and now, together with the newly written ones, they form a whole new solar system. Just as one changes in different encounters. Songs are like imaginary friends, the more I think about it.”

Emil Gittansson Jensen – Acclaimed Artist and Poet

Emil Jensen – now also Gittansson, as a tribute to his mother – has released eight acclaimed albums, several books, is regularly heard on Swedish Radio as a columnist in “Good Morning World” and “Thoughts for the Day,” and as a multiple praised Winter and Summer speaker.
He has received the Nils Ferlin Prize for his poetry, the Evert Taube Prize for his songwriting, the Karl Gerhard Prize for his shows, and has been nominated for the Martin Luther King Prize for civil courage.

Recently, he was also awarded the ABF Cultural Prize with a motivation that in many ways illuminates Emil’s artistry.

From the Motivation:
“Through his unique combination of music, poetry, storytelling, and social engagement, he creates art that both touches and changes.
With equal parts playfulness and seriousness, he reminds us of the importance of solidarity in a time often characterized by individualism and harsh conflicts.
Emil has a special ability to make the invisible visible – to highlight the small moments, the forgotten perspectives, and the voices that otherwise risk not being heard.”

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