Ulrik Torsslow

Olof Ulrik Torsslow (18 December 1801 in Stockholm – 1 September 1881 in Stockholm), was a Swedish actor and theatre director. He was an elite actor in the Royal Dramatic Theatre. He is known for leading two big strikes at the royal stage, referred to as the 'First Torsslow Argument' and 'Second Torsslow Argument' (1834), and for crushing the monopoly of the royal theaters in Stockholm in 1842. He was the director of the Mindre teatern.

Life

Ulrik Torsslow was born to bank official Mattias Torsslow. He was a student at the Royal Dramatic Training Academy in 1816–19 and made his debut as Hamlet on the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1819, where he stayed until the great strike of 1834.

In 1830, he married the actress Sara Torsslow.

The Torsslow Arguments

In 1827 and 1834, two major strikes - indeed, the biggest strikes in the theatre's history - took place in the "Royal Theaters" (the Royal Swedish Opera and the Royal Dramatic Theatre), referred to as 'First Torsslow Argument' (1827) and 'Second Torsslow Argument' (1834) after the leading figures, Ulrik Torsslow and Sara Torsslow.

In 1827, director Karl Johan Puke introduced reforms in which the benefit performances of the actors (in which the entire income from a performance was given to one of the actors) and the actors' share in the theater was to be replaced by fixed salaries.

He returned to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1856 and made his last performance in 1863.