{"title":"Cause of Death: Lähiö","authors":"Sanni Lindroos","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i2.141661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i2.141661","url":null,"abstract":"As geographically and socially marginalized neighbourhoods, Finnish lähiös are associated with urban segregation and a set of stereotypes about their residents. Claiming to portray everyday life in the lähiö, in 2018, Turku City Theatre premiered a musical theatre production Varissuo, which was set in the city’s largest and most multicultural housing unit. This article investigates how Varissuo was constructed and depicted both on stage and beyond the stage by analyzing several characters and their storylines, as well as material details present in the theatre building’s lobby area. Drawing from Richard Dyer’s notion of stereotypes as a product of assumed consensuses about specific social groups, the article first focuses on plotting how both novelistic and stereotypical characters contributed to an understanding of the lähiö as a locus of ill-being and personal struggle. Critically approaching Jill Dolan’s conceptual utopian performatives, the article then discusses the elements of utopia and dystopia in Varissuo, suggesting that the representation of the lähiö on stage and in the theatre building erased political potential of the utopian performatives and subverted them into a counterproductive force. I argue that the utilization of lähiö stereotypes and Varissuo’s detachment from its real-life origins potentially contributes to further stigmatization and polarization between social groups","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":" 1292","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138960196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Actors as Co-Creators in Contemporary Latvian Theatre","authors":"Ieva Rodiņa","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137927","url":null,"abstract":"In Latvian theatre, the last decade has been a time of significant changes regarding the working methods of independent theatre movements. Two of the oldest independent theatres in Riga – Dirty Deal Teatro and Ģertrūde Street Theatre – have become a centre for various theatre productions, therefore moving towards the model of state repertoire theatres. Meanwhile, in recent years, several new theatre companies and creative groups have appeared in the field. Theatre troupe KVADRIFRONS, formed by four young actors having just graduated from the Latvian Academy of Culture, as well as the theatre company esARTe, led by director and teacher Elmārs Seņkovs and the ‘scandalous’ young actors trained in the so-called puppet theatre course at the Latvian Academy of Culture, – these are just a few examples of the new creative formations in Latvian theatre. While in repertoire theatre the creative process mostly lies on the shoulders of the stage director, the aforementioned theatre companies highlight the importance of the actor as co-creator – both in the artistic (devised theatre methods), and the administrative process (actors as managers, etc.). Has the profession of actor changed from performer to administrator? How does the administrative status of the newly founded theatre companies influence the work of freelance actors? How has the status of the actor changed in today’s society? The research tackles the topic of actor as co-creators focusing on the examples and experiences of new independent Latvian theatre companies and including significant social, as well as aesthetical aspects.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135138690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coeval Dancefutures in the Nordics","authors":"Ingri Midgard Fiksdal","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137922","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137922","url":null,"abstract":"This paper looks at the conceptual boundaries of dance-as-art in the Nordics and discusses strategies towards coeval dancefutures away from contemporaneity as a colonial idea(l) of time. The future of dance-as-art in the Nordics needs to be pluralised for the artform to be representative of the regional demography and, as such, stay relevant. This paper proposes two research strands that can contribute to this pluralisation. The first investigates how the conceptual boundaries of dance-as-art shape the leading dance education courses in the Nordics in terms of curricula and student mass, and how these could be expanded. The second strand focuses on diversifying the professional field through artistic research in choreography as a format of speculative future fiction that can suggest new, coeval dancefutures.
 Dance-as-art is frequently equated with the genre referred to as Contemporary Dance, a highly contradictory term. Rather than denoting all dance forms of the present, it commonly implies a specific set of formalized dance techniques and choreographic formats derived from Western-European and North American modern dance of the twentieth century. Contemporary Dance holds a somewhat exclusive access to formal dance education, art funding as well as networks of dissemination and distribution in the Nordics. Other dance forms are often met with a denial of coeavalness by the Contemporary Dance field, hence largely excluded from the realm of art.
 This paper argues for the creation of structures for a large variety of coeval dancefutures through revising professional and ethical standards in the Nordic dance field. Instead of continuing to claim the defining power of what constitutes dance-as-art, those of us who currently do have access to education, funding, and dissemination need to take responsibility for challenging and expanding these systems to create a diverse, cultural sustainability within dance-as-art.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"247 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135188183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theatre and Social Responsibility","authors":"Martynas Petrikas, Katri Tanskanen","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137921","url":null,"abstract":"The idea for the current issue came out of musing on linguistics. The noun “responsibility” can be (mis)spelled “responsability” an ability to respond which to our ear sounded truly inspiring. In late 2021, after the gruesome pandemic years, theatre as an ability to react, to create, and to initiate a better adaptation for the changing world, looked like a theme for a new call for papers that might resonate well. The body of scholarship on the subject pointed out to the virtually unlimited conceptions of how theatre can be responsible towards the world, society, audience, and itself. It is interesting to observe how, in the course of the last hundred years, cutting-edge theatre feels first responsible for its own aesthetic value and accessibility focusing on artistic achievement over financial success and decentralisation. The U. S. and France could be a case in point.1 Then comes the age of politically transgressive content as manifested in engaged theatre theories and practices of the second half of the twentieth century. It is especially evident in the development of Scandinavian independent performance, which as volume no. 11 of this very journal, co-edited by Knut Ove Arntzen and Anna Blekastad Watson, points out, was focused not only on formal experimentation but also on an anthropological turn and fusion of the popular and political theatre, thus creating a distinctive and region specific aesthetics.2 In the case of the Baltics, societal responsibility is deeply embedded in local theatre tradition, which developed in the framework of the national emancipation movement of the late nineteenth century. Currently, the responsibility of theatre can address the promotion of values in audiences ranging from risk-taking, individual freedoms, personal responsibility (“the entrepreneurial participation” in Adam Alston’s wording3) to strengthening the social fabric in dislocated communities4. In all the cases however, it is safe to conclude that the social responsibility of theatre dwells on the belief that (to paraphrase David Elliott et al.5) theatre is made by the people for the people.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85201884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Precarization in the Name of Freedom","authors":"Liliana Farcas, H. Holgersson","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137926","url":null,"abstract":"This article is written within the frame of the interdisciplinary research project “Expansion and Diversity: Digitally Mapping and Exploring Independent Performance in Gothenburg 1965–2000”. It contributes to the critical ambition of producing an inclusive historiography of local independent performing arts groups by exploring the municipal distribution of cultural grants and the material conditions in the field. Based on interviews with nine well-known members of early independent performing arts groups in Gothenburg, complemented with archived funding applications and news articles, the article uses a cultural studies perspective to elaborate on how artistic freedom was negotiated in relation to dependence on public funding.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85583270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How to Resolve the Trauma of Exile?","authors":"Martin Nõmm","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137924","url":null,"abstract":"The Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians who were forced to leave their respective homelands after World War II in the wake of Soviet occupation came to form exile communities across the world. These communities continued their cultural traditions and practices with the arts becoming a medium to reaffirm their identities in exile and narrate their experiences. But with a quarter of a century having passed since their migration, the 1970s became a period of re-evaluating this focus, often represented by topics of generational conflict or inability to change with the times. In North America, first generation Baltic exile playwrights Ilmar Külvet, Alfreds Straumanis, and Algirdas Landsbergis often scrutinized the condition of exile within their works. In this study, I will examine the Baltic narrative of exile as a cultural trauma and take into focus three works by these authors with representations reflecting on the changing times and crises of belonging and identity. The three plays also present a way out of these tensions and can be considered deliberate efforts by the authors to shift cultural discourse and explore other creative potentials of exile, best facilitated by negotiating between the old and the new, the traumatic past, and the ever-changing present.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75968336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migration and Opera Old and New","authors":"J. Severn","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137923","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses Eva Noer Kondrup’s chamber opera Den Rejsende (Copenhagen 2018) to examine the challenges and opportunities provoked by the operatic form when attempting to create socially responsible theatre. Focusing on how opera reflects and contributes to contemporary discourse on migration, it examines how opera’s unusual performance and reception demands differentiate it from, for example, spoken verbatim theatre. The article first considers the most common way opera companies today engage with migration – through productions of existing operas – in which socially responsible decisions are primarily in the hands of directors and designers and relate mostly to interpretation, and it explores some of the risks and opportunities of engaging with migration in recent revivals of repertoire works. It then analyses how questions of social responsibility in new operas extend to structural issues that are the field of the composer and librettist. The article examines Kondrup’s decisions as librettist-composer of Den Rejsende, demonstrating the potential for opera to use non-realist operatic techniques to engage with some of the issues with which spoken verbatim theatre has wrestled, including questions of authority, authenticity and authorship, and of empathy, engagement, and identification. The production, performed by two Swedish singers from non-refugee backgrounds in multiple roles, favoured distanciation techniques over “authenticity effects” and avoided tensions between giving voice to and speaking for contemporary refugees that can arise in spoken verbatim theatre. While the libretto contained found text, this was from historical refugee situations, and from the words of Inger Støjberg in her role as Danish Minister for Immigration, Integration and Housing. By throwing a spotlight on the words of an elected representative, Den Rejsende indicated an area in which audience members of what is often thought of as an affective theatrical form might have some influence in effecting practical change.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81511136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introducing Behavioral Wedges and Nudging Into the Production Process to Reduce CO2","authors":"Whitney Byrn","doi":"10.7146/nts.v34i1.137928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v34i1.137928","url":null,"abstract":"In January 2020, two actors in Denmark started an association, Bæredygtig Scenekunst NU (BS NU), dedicated to making theatre environmentally sustainable. Six weeks later, the country closed down due to COVID-19, and theatres closed. A few weeks later, Jacob Teglgaard from BS NU and Anne Gry Henningsen, Artistic Director of Mærkværk agreed that the play Frontløberne would be BS NU’s pilot project and proof of concept to test the policies and procedures BS NU hoped to eventually institute throughout the performing arts industry in Denmark. BS NU introduced behavioral wedges in the forms of an Environmental Policy, an Environmental Action Plan, and monitoring into the production process with the goal of nudging behavior to reduce emissions. In light of these behavioral wedges, this article will examine BS NU and Mærkværk’s journey of sustainability, the steps taken to create a sustainable production, elaborate the successes and failures of the process, and, most importantly, create a baseline CO2 figure for the production. Furthermore, it will discuss whether the behavioral wedges and nudging have led to shifting mindsets and long term behavioral changes that reduce CO2 emissions in theatrical production processes at Mærkværk.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75360391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}