HELSINKI SYNDROME is a performance art group led by artists Rachel Hynes + Mike Pham presenting non-linear ensemble driven performance pieces, incorporating their trademark hybrid of theater, movement, and imagination into bold new works.

Hailed as “young theatrical explorers…in the rebel spirit of…The  Wooster Group and Forced Entertainment” (The Seattle Times) HELSINKI SYNDROME produces high quality experimental work, challenging individual and collective notions of theater and performance.  

HELSINKI SYNDROME is a common misnomer for Stockholm Syndrome [the psychological response of having compassion for your captors despite the dangers in which you have been placed]. In this way, HELSINKI SYNDROME moves closer to the things that capture us, risking the possibility that we might just get it wrong. Tackling modern dilemmas using innovative, multi-disciplinary storytelling HELSINKI SYNDROME creates new modes for understanding the contemporary human experience through a unique interplay of visual art, music, poetry, and movement to provide all audiences an alternative experience of performance.

HELSINKI SYNDROME has performed to sold-out houses and critical acclaim, and have premiered pieces at Seattle venues Annex Theatre, Open Circle Theater, Henry Art Gallery, and On the Boards’ 12 Minutes Max and NW New Works Festival. In 2008, HELSINKI SYNDROME was a recipient in a summer residency co-production with Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, and marked the New York debut of TRUE NORTH.

In 2009, HELSINKI SYNDROME collaborated on two different projects on two different continents (SEATTLE USA + LONDON UK] with the dual presentation of MY BODY LIES OVER THE OCEAN a world premiere as a part of On the Boards' NW New Works Festival and the international debut for HELSINKI SYNDROME as a part of Camden Peoples's Theatre's SPRINT Festival. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, an adaptation produced in association with the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator.