The Romany minority has its own interest in the theatre, and the Same language minority in Lapland takes part in transborder performances in the Arctic area. Amateur dramatic societies abound up and down the country. Swedish-speaking theatre groups have given rise to repeats of the same performances in Finnish and at times to bilingual productions. Such bilingualism is a hallmark of the Lilla Teatern in Helsinki. The works tend to be familiar, potential box office draws, sometimes with a social message.
Expression is traditional.
International successes usually appear in Finnish translation fairly rapidly. At times the repertoires have served as tools with which to reassess the country's recent history. On the lighter side, every big auditorium has at least one musical in its basic repertoire. T he opening of the small auditorium of The National Theatre in 1954 marked the advent of parallel auditoriums in the Finnish theatre. To start with, the small auditoriums were often venues for radical experiments but gradually they came to favour more established, contemporary works.