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Nordiska Teaterforskare
CROSSING BORDERS
‒ THEATRE AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
Conference in Helsinki and Tvärminne May 5th ‒ 8th 2015
University of Helsinki
Föreningen Nordiska Teaterforskare
The Theatre Research Society
Content
Program ........................................................................................................................................................... 1
Abstracts .......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Biographies .................................................................................................................................................... 19
Program
Tuesday 5 May, University of Helsinki, Main Building (Unioninkatu 34) and Theatre Museum
10:00-1:00 Auditorium I: The General Assembly of the Association of Nordic Theatre Scholars (NTF),
2:00-6:00 Runeberg Hall: Seminar The State of Theatre and Performance Studies in Northern Europe
(chair Pentti Paavolainen)
2:00 Welcome Mikko-Olavi Seppälä (University of Helsinki) and
Pentti Paavolainen (Finnish Theatre Scholars’ Association)
2:15 Meike Wagner (University of Stockholm): Performance Practices in Theatre Studies
3:00 Hanna Suutela (University of Tampere): Imagining Futures for Finnish Theatre Research
3:30 Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen (Nordiska Teaterforskare): Challenges and Prospects for Theatre
and Performance Studies in the Nordic and Baltic Countries
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:00 Discussion (chair Pentti Paavolainen)
7:00-10:00 Theatre Museum The Welcoming Reception (Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 G, Helsinki)
Wednesday 6 May, University of Helsinki, Main Building (Hall 6) and Tvärminne
9:30-11:00 Hall 6: Research Papers (3) (Fabianinkatu 33, 3rd floor):
Nielsen, Ken: Utopian Crossing: Reading Homebody/Kabul in Abu Dhabi
Gross, Janice: Performing Beyond the Veil: The Mediterranean Crossing of Slimane Benaïssa's
Au-delà du voile
Su, Tsu-Chung: Richard Schechner’s “Play” of the Ramlila of Ramnagar:
A Case of Intercultural Border-Crossings and Encounters
11:00–11:30 Break
11:30–1:00 Hall 6: Research Papers (3), hall 6:
Sauter, Willmar: Aesthetic Historicity – A Cultural Link Between Two Centuries
Hannah, Dorita: Constructing Barricades and Creating Borderline Events
Delmenico, Lesley: Crossing Audience Borders: Melbourne’s One Step Theatre Company’s
International Encounters with Shakespeare, Sight, and Site
1:00–2:00 Lunch
2:00–3:30 Hall 6: Research Papers (3), hall 6:
Füllner, Niklas: Encountering the alienation effect: Brechtian aesthetics in contemporary
Finnish theatre
Strömberg, Mikael: The transformation of a ‘classic’ – Strindbergs Hemsöborna as a farce
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Kukkonen, Aino: Rural and urban encounters in Reijo Kela's choreographies Ilmari's Ploughed
Field (1988) and Cityman (1989)
3:45–6:15 Bus to Tvärminne, leaves from the Senate Square (Unioninkatu 34)
6:15-7:15 Dinner
Thursday 7 May, Tvärminne
9:00-10:30 Research Papers (3)
Wilmer, Stephen: Cultural Encounters in Modern Productions of Greek Tragedy
Dinçel, Burç İdem: Θα Έρθει Μια Μέρα Tüm Sınırlar Werden Ausgelöscht (The Day will Come
When All the Borders will Disappear)
Budzowska, Malgorzata: From Index to Incident – Intercultural Transfuges in the
Contemporary Staging of Ancient Myth
10:30–11:00 Coffee Break
11:00–12:00 Research Papers (2)
Tepavac, Marija: Reunited Theatre Space - Theatre Activity of Heartefact fund in the Region
of ex - Yugoslav Republics
Chambers, Claire: To Belong without Belonging: Musical Woyzeck and the Question of Global
Genre
12:00–1:00 Lunch
1:00–2:00 Research Papers (2)
Laakkonen, Johanna: Early modern dance – a transnational perspective
Korppi-Tommola, Riikka: Historical Body as a point of Intersection
2:00–2:30 Coffee Break
2:30–4:00 Research Papers (3)
Poulton, Cody: Crossing Ontological Borders: The Non-Human in Japanese
Skjoldager-Nielsen, Kim: Crossing Borders of Maori Pōwhiri
Or Encounters with Others within Oneself
Fusini, Letizia: Thirdspace Tragedy and the Dionysian imagination: Schismatic performance
as a form of sparagmos in the theatre of Gao Xingjian
4:30–5:30 Dinner
6:00- Sauna and Reception
2
Friday 8 May, Tvärminne and Helsinki
9:00-10:30 Research Papers (3)
Seppälä, Mikko-Olavi: “S. O. S.” - A Pacifist Intervention in Helsinki in 1929
Korsberg, Hanna: Crossing borders in theatre during the Cold War
Watson, Anna: Breaking Down the Barriers between Art Forms and Theatre Genres in
Norwegian Political Theatre of the 1970s
10:30–11:00 Coffee Break
11:00–12:00 Research Papers (2)
Glišić, Nataša: Prison – Absurd Space of Freedom, or the Impossibility of Deliverance
Koski, Pirkko: At the Meeting Point of Historical Research and Theatre Performance
12:00–1:00 Lunch
1:00–2:30 Final Discussion and Coffee
3:00-5:30 Bus to Helsinki
(7:00 Theatre Performance)
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Abstracts
Malgorzata Budzowska
Assistant Professor at Classical Philology Faculty
University of Lodz, Poland
From Index to Incident – Intercultural Transfuges in the Contemporary Staging of Ancient Myth
Ancient myths from the Mediterranean Culture constitute indexical group of plots and characters that are
transducted, transformed, adapted and translated by various cultural practices in the local and global
background. To focus on theatre productions regarded as one of the most socially signifying practice, I
would like to discuss and analyze the production of Oedipus the King directed by Jan Klata from the Old
Theatre in Cracow (Poland, 2013). As some kind of a formal experiment this production becomes a
metatheatrical commentary to the history of staging of Sophoclean myth. The director creates a short
snapshot inspired by the Sophocles’ tragedy and by the opera-oratory of Igor Stravinsky with libretto by
Jean Cocteau, which provides various subverted juxtapositions:
- audial of Stravinsky’s choirs and postmodern stochastic sounds’ collage
- spatial of catwalk stage that clashes actors with audience
- linguistic of French narration and Latin singing
- choreographic of robotic movements, rope hanging, and monumental opera stagemovement
- generic of narrative (metathetrical) and dramatic parts,
- conceptual of classical ancient myth with its postmodern abridged staging.
Considered as a cultural encounter this production shows the broken index of ancient mythical character of
Oedipus which is displayed in his incidental postmodern entourage. The main issue discussed in this paper
is a question of transfuges’ nature of this kind of ‘new dressed’ myth in performance: if this transcultural
stage translation of ancient myth can/should be seen as treason or as a creative culture-making encounter.
Claire Marie Chambers
Assistant Professor of Drama
Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea
To Belong without Belonging: Musical Woyzeck and the Question of Global Genre
How do non-western theatre artists challenge the western cultural hegemony of globalized genres such as
the Broadway-style musical? As Jean-Luc Nancy has written, the border between aesthetics and politics is a
space where each term is transformed into its other (The Sense of the World, xxvi). But what happens when
a minority presence in a global economy functions as the border itself, as the space where aesthetics and
politics relativize one another? In order to participate in the global economy of musical theatre production,
one South Korean director and producer, Yun Ho Jin, addresses both domestic and international audiences
through musicals like The Last Empress and Hero that attempt to universalize specifically Korean narratives.
But perhaps responding to criticisms that the nationalistic undercurrents of his previous works contributed
to a lack of appeal outside Korea, his latest offering, Musical Woyzeck, reverses this pattern by attempting
to universalize the story of Büchner’s modernist drama by referencing specifically Korean concerns.
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According to his director’s notes, Yun desires “to make a musical out of a more universal story in order to
penetrate the world market in earnest”.
Yun’s adaptation is a complex synthesis of the musical theatre tradition with its emphasis on choral
performance in contradistinction to the central figure of Woyzeck himself, who stands painfully apart from
the community within which he is thoroughly entrenched. Woyzeck, when read as representative of the
South Korean nation, himself becomes the mark of “genre”, the space where both belonging and
participation transform one into the other, both structuring and cancelling processes of categorization.
Derrida writes, “The re-mark of belonging does not belong. It belongs without belonging….” (The Law of
Genre 65). The mark of recognition within a global genre comes with the high cost of participation without
belonging. Yun’s Musical Woyzeck is a direct challenge to the western cultural hegemony within the global
economy of musical theatre, which is also a challenge to a prevailing “sense of the world” which fails to
recognize that the margin not only stands at but is a border itself.
Lesley Delmenico
Associate Professor of Theatre
Grinnell College, Iowa, USA
Crossing Audience Borders: Melbourne’s One Step Theatre Company’s International Encounters with
Shakespeare, Sight, and Site
In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau observes ways in which urban dwellers pass through
public areas. Habituated to tuning out others and the built environment, everyday walkers often ignore
people at the physical and social margins, stratifying urban zones through their inattention. Encouraging
audiences to re-visualize urban spaces, Melbourne theatre company “One Step at a Time Like This” has
staged ambulatory performances in cities in Australia, the U.K., U.S., Korea, and New Zealand. MP3 players
with oversized headphones and cell phone prompts guide solo audience walks, encouraging participants’
intense connection and emotional engagement and crossing borders between audience and environment.
In September 2014, the company staged Since I Suppose, expanding its performance methodology to
incorporate actors and an existing text, and partnering with the Chicago Shakespeare Company. Also
ambulatory, audience-participatory, and technology-based, this performance included encounters with live
actors to provoke audience engagements with the sex-and-power issues of Shakespeare’s Measure for
Measure. Lone walkers heard fragments of Shakespeare’s text and contemporary interviews on
headphones, witnessed and participated in live scenes, crossing unexpected actor/audience boundaries to
engage the play’s ethical questions. On MP3s, “follow cams” guided traversals through sites of power and
vice, public or hidden/private. Decentering walkers and prompting vulnerability to encounter, Since I
Suppose forced in-the-moment decisions and created indelible images and re-perceptions of city spaces.
One Step’s macro/international production formula and globalized Shakespearian text created tensions
with specific urban landscapes--and walkers’ micro-engagements with their technological devices. For some
participants, it was a performance in which the echoes of their footsteps linger in memory. This paper will
use interviews with One Step and Chicago Shakespeare Company members, audience members, and
personal experience to interrogate some of those performative echoes.
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Burç İdem Dinçel
Phd Candidate in Drama
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Θα Έρθει Μια Μέρα Tüm Sınırlar Werden Ausgelöscht (The Day will Come When All the Borders will
Disappear)
One can barely reflect upon the concept of borders independent of the socio-cultural dynamics of the
geography that they pertain to. Being one of the most crucial elements of a given geography, borders do
have the capacity to occupy the centre of discussions related to the communities, values, languages, and
identities that they exclude. As a matter of fact, the notion of borders can prove to be a vital starting point
for a study aimed at investigating the conceptual role that they acquire in Theodoros Terzopoulos’
production of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (2010). Performed in three languages—Greek, Turkish and
German—Terzopoulos’ interpretation brings back Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound to the geography that it
once sprouted. This is a significant point since Terzopoulos’ multilingual staging approach problematises the
very existence of borders that nation-states and languages have inevitably drawn during the entire course
of history. What makes Terzopoulos’ approach even more captivating, moreover, is the role of the
performative language that the director creates through his “interweaving” of the Turkish, Greek and
German performative cultures, thereby enabling the actors to surpass the linguistic borders that each
individual language can potentially set forth. In this particular respect, the present paper seeks to present
an account of Terzopoulos’ production of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound with the purpose of investigating
the characteristics of the director’s performative language and the staging strategies that utilise this
language. Doing so would illuminate how this language erases the borders that have left their marks on the
individual languages and the performance to start with. In this sense, borders appear to be entities that
give rise to ideas and practices that challenge their own existence. Drawing upon these points, the study
lays particular emphasis on Terzopoulos’ interpretation in that it draws heavily on the physical mimetic
interaction that takes place between the actors and the source dramaturgy throughout the cultural
encounters immanent to the performance.
Letizia Fusini
Phd Candidate at the Department of Languages and Cultures of China and Inner Asia
SOAS University of London, UK
Thirdspace Tragedy and the Dionysian imagination: Schismatic performance as a form of sparagmos in
the theatre of Gao Xingjian
There is unanimous agreement among scholars (Quah: 2004; Yeung: 2008; Coulter: 2014) to frame the
dramatic aesthetics of Sino-French playwright Gao Xingjian as a blend of intra-cultural and intercultural
elements (European and East-Asian) oriented towards the creation of an overarching transcultural
paradigm. Particularly, Gao’s theory and practice of tripartite performance (biaoyan de sanzhongxing),
which creatively merges Brecht’s theory of Verfremdung with analogous acting techniques derived from
traditional Chinese theatre, provides material for understanding how those processes of creative
transculturation are carried out, thereby leading to the establishment of transcultural dramaturgies.
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This paper sets out to reconfigure GXJ’s notion of the tripartite actor as a form of dramatic sparagmos.
Typically associated with Dionysus, the god of drunken revelry and patron of the stage in ancient Greek
culture, sparagmos originally designated the ritual dismemberment of a sacrificial victim. In a metaphorical
sense, sparagmos can be construed as a theatrical paradigm, the epitome of theatrical divisiveness, of the
schismatic yet binding relationship between the acted self and the performing self. According to this
framework, the protagonists of GXJ’s Sino-French plays can be envisioned as dyadic entities, inherently
divided and constantly on the verge of a meta-dramatic psychosis. The actor-character relationship, made
of overlapping yet lacerated identities, signals the presence of a tragic threshold, beyond which the self of
the performer is not only dismembered but also extinguished, conquered by the character, acting as a
Dionysian dismantling presence within the actor’s consciousness. Drawing on a range of critical approaches,
including William Storm’s theory of the tragic after Dionysus (1999), I theorize the notion of a “thirdspace
tragedy” to conceptualize what I deem the transcultural tragic subtext of GXJ’s Sino-French plays.
Niklas Füllner
Lecturer at the Centre of Fine Arts
Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Encountering the alienation effect: Brechtian aesthetics in contemporary Finnish theatre
Finnish theatre experienced a wave of new politically engaged drama at the beginning of the 21st century.
Political issues had been a rare phenomenon on Finnish stages since the end of the seventies, but now they
came back hand in hand with renewed aesthetics and dramaturgical strategies. One important component
of this renewal was a new perspective at Brecht’s idea of the epic theatre. Interestingly, this new
perspective was initiated by visits of Finnish theatre directors to contemporary German theatre
performances where they noticed the frequent use of Brechtian methods, especially the alienation effect.
In the following, Brechtian acting style and dramaturgy entered the Finnish stages and also became a
compulsory subject at the Finnish Theatre Academy. The result of this encounter is an interweavement of
contemporary German Brechtian aesthetics and contemporary Finnish aesthetics. One example for this is
Juha Jokela’s Esitystalous (Performance Economy) from 2010. On the one hand the characters in Jokela’s
play directly address the audience, and Jokela frequently uses alienation effects to put the audience in the
position of a critical observer, while on the other hand Jokela does not question the unity of actor and role
but sticks to the Finnish acting tradition, thereby creating his very own new aesthetics of contemporary
political theatre.
Nataša Glišić
Assistant Professor at the Theatre Department of Academy of Arts
University of Banja Luka. Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Prison – Absurd Space of Freedom, or the Impossibility of Deliverance
The play „Trpele“ (They Suffered) from the Belgrade Drama Theatre (Belgrade, Serbia) addresses the issue
of violence against women. The play is based on documentary material and testimonies of women victims
of violence that are part of the research of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights conducted in prisons.
The imprisoned women featured in the show are serving life sentences for the murder of their abusers.
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Without slipping into pathos, and occasionally departing from the real life narratives, each of the seven
stories represents a victim and her abuser. The actresses who play these women have conducted detailed
research in order to represent them faithfully. The seven stories depict women representative of various
backgrounds, professional profiles, origins, social roles, educational and economic status. These women
have one thing in common – all of them have suffered violence and killed when they could no longer
endure their suffering.
The show encourages social engagement and raises awareness of the problem occurring around us. The
statistics are disturbing; a significant number of women are still suffering shame, fear, and
misunderstanding. They are trying in vain to break free from this vicious circle of violence. The
imprisonment becomes an absurd space of freedom, a respite from the torture and a refuge from violence.
This performance has played in almost all cities in Serbia and in almost all former Yugoslav republics (Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro) leaving audience breathless and winning awards.
Janice Gross
Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages with Senior Faculty Status in the Dep. of French and Arabic
Grinnell College, Iowa, USA
Performing Beyond the Veil: The Mediterranean Crossing of Slimane Benaïssa's Au-delà du voile
Leading Algerian playwright-director, Slimane Benaïssa, created Rak khouya, ou ana chkoun? [If you are my
brother, then who am I?] in 1990 at a critical juncture in Algerian post-independence history. Designed to
provide “ideological lucidity” for Algerian audiences, Benaïssa’s all-female cast portrayed two sisters
embroiled in debate over the decision to wear (or not wear) the headscarf (hidjab). Broadcast on Algerian
television to Maghrebian viewers in 1991, the play sparked explosive reactions within families, and was
quickly pulled from view. Hastily translated into French by the playwright, both journeyed across the
Mediterranean. Renamed Au-delà du voile [Beyond the Veil] and published for Editions Lansman (1991,
2008), it played across France and Europe in the 1990’s, performed on alternate nights in French and in
dialectical Arabic. As Algeria plunged deeper into its “Black Decade” of terror, Benaïssa fled Islamist death
threats and adopted the French stage as his new homeland. Meanwhile, as France, too, was grappling to
define its relationship to Islam and the veil, director Agnès Renaud adapted and directed Au-delà du voile
with la Compagnie de l’Arcade in 2004, Avignon 2008, and Paris 2010. Critics judged it to have withstood
the test of time “without a wrinkle.” How did this Algerian-born text stay relevant for over two decades as
it “cut across” entangled national, linguistic, cultural, gendered, and religious borders? Based on E. Balibar’s
definition of the “transindividual” situated between the private and the public, and the transnational
relationship between France and Algeria, this discussion will compare the performative languages adopted
by each director. By what scenic means did each production enable different audiences, separated in time,
place, and context, to confront the polysemic and polemical force of the veil, and hear the Muslim sisters’
views in order to discover new pathways to thinking and feeling “beyond the veil?”
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Dorita Hannah
Research Professor of Interdisciplinary Architecture, Art & Design at UTAS in Australia and Adjunct
Professor of Stage and Space at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
Constructing Barricades and Creating Borderline Events
Every performance enacts a theory, and every theory performs in the public square.
(Diana Taylor: The Archive and the Repertoire)
As a discursive and constructive practice, performance design casts a performance studies lens on
scenography in order to broaden its scope and assert its capability of confronting, critiquing and
reimagining our lived reality, especially within a globalized condition of proliferating borders that reduce,
control and deny mobility for bodies and information. Adopting a ‘broad spectrum approach’ this exposes
the acts of designing performance and performing design within the socio-political realm, thereby revealing
that those constructing our world – the architects, planners, engineers, builders, technicians,
manufacturers, suppliers and politicians – tend to be complicit in spatially suppressing our motility,
flexibility and expressivity. This paper crosses the creative fields of theatre, design and architecture to
inquire into how space performs, and spatial designers play an active role in such performances. Such
inquiry discloses how the built environment reinforces a contemporary barricade mentality, which curtails
our freedom of movement and expression in the very name of “freedom”. And yet the borderline, as an
anomalous zone, also offers the place for resistance through radical acts. Existing spatial performativity can
be reconfigured via fleeting interventions, capable of destabilizing architecture’s will to be fixed and
durable, by concentrating on its eventual complexities. This realignment redresses Henri Lefebvre’s
appraisal of architecture’s implacable objectality with Gilles Deleuze’s focus on the mobilized objectile.
Such an emphasis on architecture’s temporal mutability also reinforces Sanford Kwinter’s demand for “an
all-encompassing theory and politics of the ‘event’”. Scrutinizing our contemporary borderline condition,
alongside constructed and deconstructed barricades created by artists, designers and architects, unearths a
critique of how our public performances are limited and controlled. Positing the barricade as an
architectural and social formation allows us to consider its shifting political implications seen in public
artworks that are aligned with Rubió Ignaci Solà-Morales’ concept of “weak architecture” as a productively
scenographic approach to spatial analysis and its mediation.
Riikka Korppi-Tommola
Deputy University Lecturer of Theatre Research
University of Helsinki, Finland
Historical Body as a point of Intersection
Corporality relates to how we conceive the world. A human body receives, conveys and produces
knowledge. In my paper, I will approach past with the concept of historical body. That exists within archives
as well as in the bodies of dancers and choreographers, who acted in their own cultural environments.
In dance tradition, in international canonized ballet productions especially, the bodily knowledge is passed
from one generation to another and from one body to another in the rehearsal studios. At that transitional
moment, transnational influences pass over through bodily actions. Can we reach back to that process,
freeze the moment and open up the roots of those specific influences? I will trace that process of bodily
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intersection by analyzing the body memoirs and archival materials, in other words, the manifold repertoire
of the archives (Diana Taylor 2003).
By paying attention to the method of historical body, I will ask can this bodily interaction add anything new
to the traditional methods of archival research. My focus is on Finnish choreographer Elsa Sylvestersson
(1924–1996) and the body memories of her dancers. Sylvestersson was the key figure in transmitting the
work of George Balanchine and Roland Petit to Finnish stages.
Hanna Korsberg
Professor of Theatre Research
University of Helsinki, Finland
Crossing borders in theatre during the Cold War
After the World War II, especially Europe was soon divided between two camps. As the Cold War was a war
fought on battlegrounds of rhetoric and impressions culture had an important role in the formation
process. The International Theatre Institute, ITI, was founded by twelve countries in Prague in 1948. I shall
discuss how theatre participated in creating a community with members from both camps. New members
joined the organisation soon and in ITI world congress in Helsinki in June 1959 were representatives from
33 countries.
In Helsinki in 1959, the keynote address was given by Eugène Ionesco. He spoke about avant-garde in
contemporary theatre and about the relationship between the dramatic works and their audience.
Ionesco’s keynote divided the audience. The Eighth Congress of the ITI turned into a battlefield of the Cold
War though the ITI had, according to the Charter of the organisation, decided to stay autonomous.
Especially, it looks like it was a political division that followed the front line of the Cold War since the
strongest criticism came from the representatives of the Eastern Block. Performing avant-garde plays – or
absurd plays as we know them after Martin Esslin’s book – was an important act in creating an
international community. Regardless of the dispute in the discussion, new countries wanted to join the ITI
and they were also accepted as new members: China, DDR, Romania and the Soviet Union. The ITI was
operating in connection to the UNESCO – officially from 1962 –and it was important for the organisation to
include countries from both blocks as its members.
Pirkko Koski
Professor Emerita of Theatre Research
University of Helsinki, Finland
At the Meeting Point of Historical Research and Theatre Performance
Historical researcher Heikki Ylikangas sparked off a wide debate on the reasons of the outbreak of the
Winter War with his book Käännekohdat Suomen historiassa (“Turning Points in Finnish History”, 1986).
Ylikangas’ bold historical interpretation that dealt with one of the cornerstones of national identity, the
Winter War, was criticized by his fellow researchers. Besides his academic study, Ylikangas wrote a play on
the topic, Tie talvisotaan (“Way to the Winter War”). It was performed at the Main Stage of the Finnish
National Theatre in spring 1989. In the new environment, Ylikangas’ interpretation was accepted without
much resistance, and the disagreements in reviews had more to do with the dramatic form than the
possible discrepancy between the play and historical facts. The interpretation of history remained the same
in the new format. Ylikangas presented his interpretation within the framework of two different systems,
as a piece of research and a theatrical performance, and the ”truthfulness” of the interpretations was
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assessed in them with different objectives and tools. I intend to discuss Ylikangas’ play and its performance
as a meeting place of different discourses and as part of a national identity project. My comparison
material is an earlier historical play by Ylikangas that was also produced at the Finnish National Theatre.
Kolmekymmentä hopearahaa (“Thirty Pieces of Silver”, 1982) was also based on the author’s study that had
aroused general attention. Way to the Winter War can be seen as “people’s theatre” of the Main Stage,
with traces of the success of Ylikangas’ previous play. The production is also part of the tradition of plays
that deal with the Finnish national history, where the historical understanding of the elite and the
predominant research view are questioned by presenting an alternative perspective of “the people”. (With
the difference that the other plays have been written by authors or dramatists rather than scholars.) In this
perspective, Ylikangas sought support for his academic views from the theatre audience by rhetorical
means.
In my analysis, I intend to apply de Certeau’s idea of spaces and places: “space is a practiced place.” (The
Practice of Everyday Life, 117). I will examine the production of Ylikangas’ play as an event that challenges
the metaphoric ”space” of the national identity project. The parties that maintain and challenge the project
include research and theatre institutions, their specialists and the audience, as this was ultimately a
struggle over the favour and assessment of the spectators. The opponents in the battle being security and
acting, resistance and movement, or, using de Certaeu’s concepts, strategies and tactics. Ylikangas himself
has reflected on the historical researcher’s and dramatist’s relationship with historical ”knowledge”. It is
also my goal to challenge conceptions connected to these roles by utilizing reception research. The
objective of the study is not to find the winner of the battle but to assess the construction of cultural
potential.
Aino Kukkonen
University of Helsinki, Finland
Rural and urban encounters in Reijo Kela's choreographies Ilmari's Ploughed Field (1988) and Cityman
(1989)
Since the early 1980s the solo performances of Reijo Kela (b. 1952) have brought original perspectives to
Finnish dance, particularly in terms of how he wanted to dance in close proximity to the spectator and how
the lines between art-forms were blurred. In his first large-scale site-specific works Ilmari's Ploughed Field
(Ilmarin kynnös, 1988) and Cityman (1989), he handled the relations between dance, site and changing
Finnish society. They were happening in the heart of the rural and urban life: one in a abandoned field in
Suomussalmi Eastern Finland and the other in the busiest shopping areas in the capital.
In my paper I am going to examine how and what kind of ideas of countryside and city Kela's work
manifest. What kind of cultural images they represent? And how they were received at that time of their
premiere, at the end of the 1980s in Finland?
The theoretical approach includes theories of postmodernism and site-specific performance. The works
also feature several combining themes linked to American postmodern dance of the 1960s and 70s. They
include different performing locations, as well as “the everyday” and pedestrianism, interrelation with the
audience, and institutional critique, and I shall discuss how they appear in the Finnish context.
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Johanna Laakkonen
University Lecturer of Theatre Research
University of Helsinki, Finland
Early modern dance – a transnational perspective
In my paper, I will explore the early modern dance from a transnational perspective. Inspired by scholars
like Ulrich Beck and Pascale Casanova I will discuss the benefits and the challenges of the transnational
approach for dance history scholarship. I will take a closer look at three issues that fostered the
transnational development: education and training methods, the job market and the literal culture that
evolved around modern dance.
By reading and combining the German, Austrian and Finnish sources the paper suggests that in order to
reveal the rich tapestry of the dance scene of the 1920s one should cross the national borders and explore
the encounters between the canonical centres and more peripheral dance cultures. We should also study
the various local centres and their orbits, like Vienna. This kind of an approach would help, for example, to
create a more varied picture of the dance training and methods that were developed and used during the
period.
I will approach my topic by focusing on Finnish dancers who studied and worked in Schule HellerauDresden (est. in 1911), and in Hellerau-Laxenburg, near Vienna. It was one of the leading educational
institutes of rhythmics, gymnastics and early modern dance in Europe. The school attracted students from
Europe as well as from America and its teachers included three Finns, among them, the head of the
gymnastics programme Marianne Pontan. Many students continued their careers in the leading modern
dance companies or as freelance dancers and pedagogues in different parts of the world.
Ken Nielsen
Senior Lecturer and Associate Director for the Writing Center
NYU Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Utopian Crossing: Reading Homebody/Kabul in Abu Dhabi
A young woman wearing a hijab stands on the stairs of the white amphitheater in the waning light. Soon
the humid Arabian night will fall upon New York University’s Abu Dhabi Campus. The theater’s white stone
emits the accumulated heat of the day. We hear the wind, and then we hear her voice reading the
Homebody’s words as she recounts her erotic fantasy involving the shopkeeper with the maimed hand. The
young woman is my Iraqi student and she is participating in our collective reading of Tony Kushner’s
meditation on terrorism, loss, longing, history, and beauty in his 2001 play Homebody/Kabul. As a collective
body giving voice to the Homebody’s words we come from Kazakhstan, Moldavia, Iraq, Vietnam, Romania,
Fiji, the USA, and Denmark; in reading—an immediate embodiment of the character’s words—together, we
meet in the multilayered production and reception of theatre.
I offer this anecdote as the nexus of my proposed paper on reading Homebody/Kabul in Abu Dhabi,
because it illustrates the power of the theatrical moment to cross multiple borders: between participant
and spectator, between individual and collective, between national and intercultural identity, and, not
least, between discipline and desire. Thinking of the specific theatrical and pedagogical moment of reading
Homebody/Kabul as a moment of interweaving of cultures and identities—a moment simultaneously full of
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a pleasure and danger—I utilize Jill Dolan’s concept of the utopian performative to suggest that in the
moment in which “performance” becomes “a utopian gesture” it holds immense pedagogical qualities. In
other words, “Utopian Crossing” asks how theatre and performance might be utilized in the production of
critical pedagogies in service of a better, more respectfully intercultural world that takes pleasure in
crossing borders.
M. Cody Poulton,
Professor of Japanese language, literature, theatre and culture
University of Victoria; Visiting Research Fellow, Interweaving Performance Cultures Research Center, Berlin
Free University, Germany
Crossing Ontological Borders: The Non-Human in Japanese
Different metaphysical constructs give rise to different dramaturgical principles in world theatre. Unlike
Western theatre, traditional Japanese performance is not anthropocentric but situates humanity into a
larger matrix of life and death, nature and supernature, where principles of metamorphosis and
transmigration, not to mention the very function of role-play itself, render identity contingent and
unstable. “It’s commonly said that kabuki’s stage characters are stereotypical and not psychologically
accurate, but it was never from the onset the intention to theatrically portray human beings on stage,”
kabuki scholar Gunji Masakatsu has written. “The performing arts were founded on of the people’s
psychological need for an apotheosis, on their expectation to see repeatedly with their own eyes the
miracle of resurrection and metamorphosis.”
Here I shall examine how transformation (at times natural, at other times, magical) inform the dramaturgy
of kabuki theatre. With some specific examples from that genre—notably, the portrayal of fox characters in
Lady Kuzunoha (1734) and Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees (1747)—I will discuss how such
devices as modoki (parody or mocking imitation), mitate (playful comparison), yatsushi (disguise), jitsu wa
(true identity), migawari (substitution) and monogurui (madness) underscore this metatrope of
metamorphosis.
Willmar Sauter
Professor Emeritus of Theatre Studies
Stockholm University, Sweden
Aesthetic Historicity – A Cultural Link Between Two Centuries
The Stockholm-based research project “Performing Premodernity” aims at establishing fruitful relations
between the theatrical culture of the eighteenth century and today’s artistic practices. Focusing on
historical theatres such as the Drottningholm Court Theatre and Confidencen in Stockholm, and the
Schwarzenberg Theatre in Ceský Krumlov, the main concerns of the project are how these historical venues
are and can be used by modern artists. In order to relate societies more than two centuries apart to each
other, some general parameters of comparison have been developed: industrialism, democracy,
naturalism, among others. These terms refer to Premodernity as being pre-industrial, pre-democratic and
pre-naturalistic, etc. whereas our own times are rather described by the prefix ‘post-‘ in connection with
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these parameters. While the societies of the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries in many respects stand
in sharp contrast to each other, the preserved historical theatres can function as bridges over time. These
‘living’ historical monuments can be understood and studied in terms of their aesthetic historicity.
This relational concept of an aesthetic historicity will be presented and discussed as a theoretical approach,
transgressing the gap between past and presence – a way of appropriating historical aesthetics for the
aesthetic historicity of today’s performance practices.
Mikko-Olavi Seppälä
Acting Professor of Theatre Research
University of Helsinki, Finland
A Modernist Intervention through Workers’ Theatre or a Communist Intervention through Modernist
Aesthetics? Hagar Olsson’s “S. O. S.” in Koiton Näyttämö (Helsinki) in 1929
In my paper, I will examine the premiere performance of the play “S. O. S.” in Koiton Näyttämö, Helsinki, in
the year 1929. Written by a Swedish-speaking critic and writer Hagar Olsson, the play was received as the
first Finnish modernist play. The ultra-modern setting was designed by sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen. Koiton
Näyttämö was a semi-professional workers’ theatre run by a socialist temperance association, already
known for its performances of the German expressionist plays. Some right-wing critics saw that the
performance was partly turned into a communist demonstration by the socialist audience – while they
experienced a threat of a Moscow-led Communist World Revolution. Following year (1930), a large fascist
uprising supported by the parliament suppressed all the communist activity in the country.
I am asking, why the (Swedish-speaking) modernist artists and authors came up with co-operation with the
(Finnish-speaking) socialist theatre, or, how the modernist aesthetics met the socialist movement in the
context of 1920s Finland and Europe. What goals lay behind the co-operation? And what came out of it?
Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen
Phd Candidate at Theatre Studies
Stockholm University, Sweden
Crossing Borders of Maori Pōwhiri Or Encounters with Others within Oneself
This paper applies the term “crossing borders” both literally, between cultures, spaces, bodies, and
figuratively, between performance categories (theatre/ritual), disciplines (Theatre Studies, Anthropology
and Maori Studies), and between concepts (self/other, dead/living). Taking as its object the traditional
welcome ritual, pōwhiri, used by the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand, the Maori, the
approach is performance analysis proposing an intervention that may “disturb” established anthropological
and indigenous studies methodology to inspire trans-disciplinary dialogue. Based on my own and a Danish
politician’s experience of being welcomed as foreigners (Pākehā), my approach claims the significance of
the newcomer’s view when analysing ritual effects, in particular, those of pōwhiri. Whereas anthropological
fieldwork attempts to understand a culture from the indigenous point of view and indigenous studies, to
some extend, discourage research by non-natives (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012), I do not establish long-term
interaction with the community or particularly align with Maori interests. The aim is to analyse the spiritual
potential of pōwhiri as event. By examining interrelations between experience and cultural
contextualization, i.e. knowledge/ignorance of protocol and doxa, this analysis may disclose the ritual as
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either a trans-cultural event promoting mutual understanding or a misperformance generating conflict.
Scholars of both European and Maori decent have described the welcome ritual as social performance
(Salmond, 1975) and “ritual with theatrical elements” (McCallum, 2011). As my analytical lens, I use “the
aesthetics of the performative” (Fischer-Lichte, 2004), as pōwhiri creates Turnerian liminality through
crossing of spatial borders and confrontational bodily co-presence and transforms visitors’ social status
from “untouchables” (tapu) to “normals” (noa). It is “a rite of encounter” (Salmond), which has the
affective potential of the visitor recognizing the others within herself, as the pōwhiri makes the participant
recall her lost ones and through recounts of ancestry and use of theatrical elements may call into presence
the dead.
Mikael Strömberg
Acting Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
The transformation of a ‘classic’ – Strindbergs Hemsöborna as a farce
This paper uses an adaptation of a Swedish classic to discuss a transformation. More specifically the paper
uses the novel The People of Hemsö (Hemsöborna) by August Strindberg and two versions or productions of
that text to discuss the dynamics of and the transition between different genres. A TV-production from
1966, directed by Bengt Lagerkvist and with a script by Herbert Grevenius, is discussed in relation to the
free adaptation, made by Krister and Lars Claesson, performed in 2007 at Vallarnas outdoor theatre in
Falkenberg. The TV-production is regarded as a legendary production with Sif Ruud and Allan Edwall in the
two leading roles. The Vallarna production is a comical adaptation starring Jojje Jönsson and Siw Carlsson,
both well-known comedy actors. The paper strives to discuss and analyze transitions between center and
periphery together with fine culture in relation to popular culture through the different productions.
Focus is on humour and the comical in relation to the transformations made while adapting Strindberg’s
play as a farce. This will include examples regarding ways of acting, thematic changes but also regional
changes. Humour and entertainment can be described as a way of making the familiar strange or unfamiliar
by introducing a difference or a distance. By using the Strindberg novel together with the TV-adaptation
and the 2007 production this paper investigates how a comical adaptation of a classical Swedish play can
function as a distancing factor revealing new themes in a well-known play and at the same time work as an
interesting illustration of a cultural encounter.
Tsu-Chung Su
Professor of English
Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, China
Richard Schechner’s “Play”of the Ramlila of Ramnagar:
A Case of Intercultural Border-Crossings and Encounters
For Richard Schechner, the Ramlila of Ramnagarhas alot to offer. It is a special kind of ritual performance,
offering a wide array of fantastic experiences to participants.“What those attending Ramlila experience,”
writes Schechner,“is a rich mix of texts: literary, dramatic, choreographic, ritual, religious, popular, musical,
spatial, and temporal. The choreographic, spatial, and temporal texts concern me here. The crowds who
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attend Ramlila join Rama on his journeys through the mythopoetic space of epic India. As they follow, they
identify with Rama: Ramlila is not a theatre of make believe but of hyperreality.”Schechnerhas spilled much
ink on the Ramlila of Ramnagar and created performance theory along the way. “What I saw and began to
study in India was certainly very influential on the work that I did from around 1972
onwards,”saidSchechner in his interview with Patrice Pavis.As one of the intercultural theatre pioneers,
Schechner’s numerous trips to India have enriched his theory and practice tremendously. His writings
derived from his turn to India or Indian experiences have long and lasting influence on the making of
contemporary performance theory.
What is “hyperreal”in the Ramlila of Ramnagar? What is Schechner’s “play”or rendering of the Ramlila of
Ramnagar? Which aspectsof the Ramnagar Ramlila are reckoned asessential featuresthat help
shapeSchechner’s performance theory? Does he appropriate and represent the Ramnagar Ramlila in a
decontextualized way or without taking the particularities of a specific historical condition into
consideration? Does he exploit Indian ritual performance from his post-modern and post-colonial ethnocentric position? This paperproposes not only to explorethemythopoetic Ramayanaand its festive and
fantastic ritual display—the Ramlila of Ramnagar—butalsotoexamine Schechner’s “play”or rendering of the
Ramlila of Ramnagar. Finally it will assess the impact of the Ramnagar Ramlila on Schechner and interrogate
his formulation of performance theoryasa case of intercultural border-crossings and encounters.
Marija Tepavac
Phd Candidate at the Institute of Slavoc Studies
University of Vienna, Austria
Reunited Theatre Space - Theatre Activity of Heartefact fund in the Region of ex - Yugoslav Republics
The topic of this paper is the contemporary theatre space of the former Yugoslav countries. Following the
breakup of Yugoslavia, the cultural space of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, FYR
Macedonia and Slovenia fell apart and each of these countries worked vigorously on creating a unique,
independent national identity, including the theatrical scene. After the countries’ democratic governments
were elected and established, the borders between their theatrical stages slowly blurred. A dramatic
difference has been made since the foundation of the Heartefact Fund in 2009. The Fund’s theatrical
engagement represents the primary focus of this paper. The Heartefact Fund is the regional organization
that encourages and connects creative processes in theatre and various other socio-cultural projects. It
forms new interregional relations, which helps overcome the consequences of wars on the territory of exYugoslavia. The Heartefact Fund actuates and produces theatre plays which are socially and politically
engaged, portraying the unequal status of women, LGBT and national minorities. Along with being
responsible for the choice of topics, the Fund chooses the cast for the plays from the entire region and
organizes performances throughout the territory of former Yugoslavia. The activities of Heartefact show
that ex-Yugoslav nations have, contrary to other art forms, a common theatrical space where the war
conflicts are overcome or erased. The author will define the post-war trauma primarily based on theories
by Jeffrey Alexander. Through the prism of critical events defined by Veena Das, the last five years in exYugoslavia will be observed in line with the works of Christos Mylonas and Kathrin Verdery, socio-cultural
theorists whose scientific explorations focus specifically on the Balkans. This paper will show how the
theatre establishes a unique art space for all the former constituents of Yugoslavia on a trans-national and
trans-cultural level and help to overcome the national identity crisis present in the region after the war.
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Anna Watson
Phd Fellow in Theatre Studies
University of Bergen, Norway
Breaking Down the Barriers between Art Forms and Theatre Genres in Norwegian Political Theatre of the
1970s
In this paper I am mapping out different aesthetic strategies within Norwegian political theatre of the
1970s, namely the mix of styles/genres and artistic techniques. I argue that the political awakening, during
the counter-culture movement, created a need to collaborate and to break down the traditional barriers
and methods both between the different art forms, but also between the strictly defined theatre genres.
My examples stem from the avant-garde art collective Gruppe 66 (Bergen), the theatre venue Club 7 (Oslo),
and the political theatre groups Perleporten and Tramteateret (Oslo). Gruppe 66 used diverse art venues to
break down and criticise the art world itself and society at large, in their cross-over arts events Co-ritus
(1966), Konkret Analyse (1970) and Samliv [Relationship] (1977). Club 7, whose playwrights included Jens
Bjørneboe, utilized the collage-form. Bjørneboe’s anti-capitalist play Dongery (1976) clearly steps away
from traditional psychological-realism and Aristotelian dramaturgy. The theatre venue Club 7 was one of
the few venues in the 1960s to support and stage alternative theatre. The theatre groups Perleporten and
Tramteatret also stepped away from an Aristotelian narrative structure in their political satirical plays.
Perleporten experimented with popular historical theatre forms like revue and cabaret together with
collage-form in their search of creating a new aesthetics on stage.
Therefore, I show how in this period there was a clear detour from Realism towards mash-up
experimentation, which was manifested in different sub-genres: revue, cabaret, collage-form, documentary
theatre, performance and happenings.
In this presentation my prime examples will be: - the exhibition, Samliv (1977), Perleporten’s performance
Faren satt på første benk og moren satt på annen og Knoll og Tott på galleri og lo som bare faen (1975)
(The father sat on the first row, the mother on the second and Knoll and Tott on the gallery and laughing as
hell) and Tramteatret’s performance/cabaret Deep Sea Thriller (1977).
Stephen Wilmer
Professor Emeritus and former Head of the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity College Dublin,
Ireland, and Research Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at
the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Cultural Encounters in Modern Productions of Greek Tragedy
The exiled character in need of asylum is a recurrent theme in ancient Greek tragedy. In many of these
plays, we see uprooted and homeless persons seeking sanctuary, and for the ancient Greeks, hospitality
was an important issue. Many of these plays have been updated to comment on the current social and
political conditions of refugees and often reflect on the notion of hospitality, something which both
Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida considered to be fundamental to ethics.
Recently there has been a series of demonstrations and occupations of public spaces by asylum seekers
that has gained considerable news coverage. In Austria a group of about sixty or seventy refugees (from the
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Afghanistan-Pakistan border area) occupied the famous Votiv church in the middle of Vienna in 2012 and
went on hunger strike. In Germany a large group of asylum seekers marched from various parts of the
country to Berlin where they occupied the square at the Brandenburg Gate before being allowed to
establish a tent community in Kreuzberg. In Hamburg a group of 80 asylum seekers who came to Germany
via Lampedusa found refuge in St Pauli church, and it was there that Nicholas Stemann presented a first
reading of Elfriede Jelinkek’s play Die Schutzbefohlenen in September 2013. More recently right-wing
groups have mounted weekly marches through Dresden to call for a halt to immigration, and these have
been contested by simultaneous counter-demonstrations in favour of immigrants and refugees. In this
paper I will consider several adaptations of Greek tragedy that highlight cultural encounters between the
local population and those arriving from abroad who are looking for asylum. In particular I will examine
Stemann’s production that has been running at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg since September 2014, and
features asylum seekers from Lampedusa on stage who beg the audience for the right to remain in
Germany.
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Biographies
Malgorzata Budzowska
Assistant Professor at Classical Philology Faculty, University of Lodz (Poland). She was awarded her PhD by
the University of Lodz, Classics Faculty and MA by the Institute of Contemporary Culture (theatre and
drama theory) at the same university. Her research interests include: ancient moral philosophy (Aristotle),
ancient tragedy, reception of ancient drama and myths in contemporary theatre, intercultural and
intersemiotic transfer of ideas. Author of the awarded monograph: Phaedra. Ethics of Emotions in the
tragedies of Euripides, Seneca and Racine, Peter Lang 2012 and co-editor of the volume Ancient Myths in
the Making of Culture (Peter Lang 2014). Currently, she is involved in two research projects founded by the
National Science Centre: Reception of Ancient Myths from Mediterranean Culture in Polish theatre of XXI
Century and Ancient theatre and drama in the works of scholiasts.
Claire Marie Chambers
Assistant Professor of Drama at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea. Teaching and research interests in
contemporary and traditional Asian theatre (specifically Korean masked dance drama and the ‘original
Korean musical’), 20th Century and contemporary drama, dramatic literature, modern performance,
theatre history, performance studies (theory and performance analysis), philosophy and performance,
intercultural performance and theatre, phenomenology, religion and theatre, ritual studies, performance
art, experimental theatre, women’s and gender issues in performance and drama, theatre for civic
engagement and service, liturgy and liturgical drama. Publications: Performance Studies and Negative
Epistemology: performance apophatics, forthcoming. Performance Philosophy Series, Palgrave Macmillan,
2016. Performing Religion in Public, co-edited with Joshua Edelman and Simon DuToit. Houndsmills and
New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. “Woyzeck the Musical, directed by Yun Ho-Jin”, co-reviewed with
Chun Dong-Hwang, commissioned for May 2015 issue of Theatre Journal. “Transcultural and Queer:
Douglas Maxwell’s Our Bad Magnet in Seoul”, currently under review with Theatre Journal. “Liturgy”,
Ecumenica Journal of Theatre and Performance, special issue on key words, forthcoming. “Mythologizing
the Global with the ‘Korean Original Musical’”, Theatre Research International 39.3, Summer 2014, pp. 168181. “Epistle and Episteme: Yee Sookyung’s ‘The Very Best Statue’ and the Art Object as Social Space”, Text
and Performance Quarterly 34.2, April 2014, pp. 125-143.
Lesley Delmenico
Lesley Delmenico is an associate professor of theatre at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa. Her teaching,
directing, and research focus on theatre’s political roles in contemporary society, particularly the
intersections of performance with urban spaces, the natural environment, immigration, gender, and
culture. She is co-editing a book with Mary Elizabeth Anderson, Mobile Publics, addressing new,
technologically-mediated ways in which audiences engage with spaces of performance. Lesley is also
currently working with three London immigrant women’s NGOs to stage community issues around
tradition, sexuality, law, the body, and changing identities in the metropolis. She has previously created
community-based performances in Mumbai and Grinnell and has studied community and intercultural
performance in East Timor and Darwin, Sydney, and Melbourne, Australia. Interested in trauma-induced
performances, she has written about the affective re-placing of destroyed urban sites in the District Six
Museum, Cape Town, and theatre about genocide and reconciliation in Dili. She has published in theatre
and sociology journals, and has made thirty-six conference presentations on community-based and political
performances. Her teaching includes an experiential, site-specific course, “London as Performance,” for
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Grinnell and for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Lesley’s M.A. and Ph.D. are in Theatre and
Performance Studies from Northwestern University, where she began exploring intercultural metropolitan
postcoloniality in urban spaces.
Burç İdem Dinçel
Burç İdem Dinçel is a PhD candidate in Drama at Trinity College Dublin. He has published extensively on
Theatre and Translation Studies in various academic journals and gave lectures on twentieth century
theatre, theatre movements, Traditional Turkish Theatre, as well as on the history of Turkish theatre. He is
the author of Last Tape on Stage in Translation: Unwinding Beckett’s Spool in Turkey.
Letizia Fusini
Letizia Fusini is a Phd candidate at the Department of the Languages and Cultures of China and Inner Asia,
SOAS, University of London. She is an early career researcher in modern Chinese drama and comparative
literature with particular expertise on the work of Sino-French Nobel Prize Winner Gao Xingjian. Her latest
publications include “Estrangement Techniques with Chinese Characteristics. The Dialectics of Ver/EntFremdung in the Drama of Gao Xingjian: Brechtian Reminiscences in Existentialist Disguise.’ In: Oliveira
Lopes Rui, (ed.), Face to Face. The transcendence of the arts in China and beyond –Approaches to modern
and contemporary art.
Niklas Füllner
Dr. Niklas Füllner studied Theatre Research and English Literature and Culture in Bayreuth, Bochum and
Helsinki. In July 2014 he received his PhD from the Institute for Theatre Studies at Ruhr University Bochum.
For his research project which focused on contemporary political theatre from Finland in the tradition of
Bertolt Brecht he was awarded a three-year scholarship by the Faculty of Philology of Ruhr University
Bochum. His dissertation was published last autumn under the title Theater ist eine Volkssauna. Politische
Gegenwartsdramatik aus Finnland in der Tradition von Bertolt Brecht. Niklas Füllner is now working as a
lecturer at the Centre for Fine Arts of Ruhr University Bochum and as a student theatre director.
Nataša Glišić
Nataša Glišić is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department, Academy of Arts, the University of Banja
Luka in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She holds BA and MA in Comparative Literature from the
University of Novi Sad, and PhD in Drama from University of Arts in Belgrade (2008). Nataša’s research
interests include: history and theory of drama and theatre, dramaturgy, world theatre, and contemporary
European theatre (especially Serbian theatre). She has published two books Danilo Kiš’s Elektra as Citation
of Euripides’s Drama (Elektra kao citat, 2006) and The Problem of Mourning in Contemporary Adaptations
of the Myth of Electra (Kome priliči crnina, 2012). Nataša is also very active and well respected as a cultural
programmer and has published her research in journals such as Zbornik Matice srpske za scenske
umetnosti, Letopis Matice srpske, Riječ, Anrić-Initiative, Agon and Tmača Art. Nataša attended the
IFTR/FIRT World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (2013) and the IFTR/FIRT conference at the University of
Warwick, United Kingdom (2014).
Janice Gross
Janice (Jan) Gross is Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages with Senior Faculty Status in the
Department of French and Arabic at Grinnell College where she has taught the literatures and cultures of
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the French-speaking world, with a specialization in contemporary francophone theatre. Publications
appearing in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, French Review, and numerous collections focus on
representations of the French-Algerian relationship, including the role of Albert Camus. As an outgrowth of
her work, she sponsored visits to Iowa of Algerian playwrights (Slimane Benaïssa, Mohamed Kacimi, and
Fatima Gallaire). She was selected as translator with Daniel Gross of Slimane Benaïssa's novel, The Last
Night of a Damned Soul (Grove Press, 2004), one of the first creative works to address the 9/11 attacks
from a Muslim perspective. Her current book project "Performing Out of Islam" treats the representations
of interreligious encounters on the contemporary French stage.
Dorita Hannah
Professor Dorita Hannah is Research Professor of Interdisciplinary Architecture, Art & Design at UTAS in
Australia and Adjunct Professor of Stage and Space at Aalto University. Her creative work, teaching and
research focus on the intersection between space and performance with her designs incorporating
scenographic, interior, exhibition and installation design, as well as a theatre architecture. Focusing on
‘event-space’ her work investigates how the built environment housing an event is itself an event and an
integral driver of experience. An active contributor to the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) and World Stage Design
(WSD), she is currently Theory Curator for PQ 2015 and completing a book titled Event-Space: Theatre
Architecture & the Historical Avant-Garde (Routledge Press).
Riikka Korppi-Tommola
Riikka Korppi-Tommola is a deputy university lecturer of Theatre Research at the University of Helsinki. Her
doctoral thesis titled Other Movements, New Currents. The Process of Change in Finnish Modern Dance
during the 1960s was published in January 2014. Her publications include The Cultural Context of
Reception: Merce Cunningham and John Cage in Helsinki in 1964 in Nordic Journal of Dance ‒ Practice,
Education and Research (Vol. 3 (2), 2012) and Politics Promote Dance: Martha Graham in Finland 1962 in
the Special Issue of Dance Chronicle (Dance Chronicle 33, 2010). Before her career in theatre research
Korppi-Tommola was a professional dance artist (1980‒2000).
Hanna Korsberg
Hanna Korsberg completed her Ph. D. at the University of Helsinki in 2004. Since 2008, she has been
appointed as Professor of Theatre Research at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests include the
relationship between theatre and politics in Finland, a topic which she has studied in her doctoral
dissertation (2004) and in a monograph (2004). She is also the author of several articles discussing theatre
history, historiography and performance analysis. She has been an active member of the IFTR
Historiography Working Group since 2001 and an executive committee member in 2007–2015. She has
participated actively in the Association of Nordic Theatre Scholars as a board member in 1999–2009 and as
chairperson in 2008–2009. She had the position of board member in the Finnish Theatre Research Society
in 2005–2008 and of chairperson in 2007–2008. In 2010–2014, she was a member of the advisory board of
the Contemporary Theatre Review. Recently, she was appointed as Fellow of the University of Helsinki
Teachers’ Academy and elected a vice president of the IFTR (2015–2019).
Pirkko Koski
Professor emerita Pirkko Koski was responsible for the Department of Theatre Research in the Institute of
Art Research at the University of Helsinki, and the director of the Institute of Art Research until the end of
2007. Her research concentrates on performance analysis, historiography, and Finnish theatre and its
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history. Except scholarly articles, she has published several books in these fields, the most recent of them
Näyttelijänä Suomessa (“Acting and Actors in Finland”) in 2013. She has also edited and co-edited several
anthologies about Finnish theatre, translated Christopher B. Balme’s The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre
Studies into Finnish (in 2015) and edited volumes of scholarly articles translated into Finnish.
Aino Kukkonen
Aino Kukkonen (Theatre Research, University of Helsinki) participated in Doctoral Study Programme of
Performing Arts. Her dissertation Postmoderni liikkeessä: Tulkintoja 1980-luvun suomalaisesta tanssista
(Postmodern on the Move: Interpretations of Finnish Dance in the 1980s, 2014) examined how
postmodernism was present in the works of three central Finnish contemporary choreographers. She has
published several books and articles on Finnish dance and theatre history and also writes for
Teatteri+Tanssi & Sirkus -magazine.
Johanna Laakkonen
Johanna Laakkonen is University lecturer of Theatre Studies at the University of Helsinki. She has published
the book Edvard Fazer and the Imperial Russian Ballet 1908–1910 (2009) and is the editor, together with
Tiina Suhonen, of Weimarista Valtoihin – Kansainvälisyys suomalaisessa tanssissa (From Weimar and the
United States. Transnational encounters in Finnish dance, 2012). Her recent publications include articles on
early modern dance and theatre in Finland and on Marianne Pontan and the Hellerau-Laxenburg method.
She is currently writing a monograph on Finnish dancers who worked in Germany and Austria in the 1920s
and 30s.
Ken Nielsen
Ken Nielsen graduated from the Graduate Center, City University of New York in February of 2011. For the
following three and a half years, Nielsen taught interdisciplinary writing seminars in the Princeton Writing
Program, Princeton University. In August of 2014, he joined NYU in Abu Dhabi as Senior Lecturer and
Associate Director for the Writing Center. He is the author of several articles, most recently of “Gone With
the Plague: Negotiating Sexual Citizenship in Crisis” published in Nordic Theatre Studies 25. He is also the
author of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America a Continuum Theatre Guide.
Cody Poulton
Cody Poulton is a Professor of Japanese language, literature, theatre and culture in the University of
Victoria (since 2008). He has acted as the chair of the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies at the
University of Victoria between 2005 and 2011. His publications include among others monographs Spirits of
Another Sort: The Plays of Izumi Kyôka (2001), A Beggar’s Art: Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama,
1900-1930 (2010) and edited volumes Dreams and Shadows: Tanizaki and Japanese Poetics in Prague—
Essays in Honour of Anthony V. Liman. (With Zdenka Svarcova, 2007), Sino-Japanese Transculturation: from
the late nineteenth century to the end of the Pacific War (Co-editor and contributor, with Katsuhiko Endo
and Richard King. 2011) and The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (With Mitsuya Mori, J.
Thomas Rimer, eds 2014).
Willmar Sauter
Willmar Sauter is Professor emeritus of Theatre Studies at Stockholm University. His most recent books are
The Theatrical Event. Dynamics of Performance and Perception (Paperback edition, Iowa University Press
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2014) and The Theatre of Drottningholm – Then and Now. Performance between the 18th and 21st
Centuries (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 2014).
Mikko-Olavi Seppälä
Mikko-Olavi Seppälä is acting professor of Theatre Research at the University of Helsinki. He has published
several books on the Finnish theatre history, his special fields of interest being workers’ theatre and musical
comedy.
Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen
Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen is a Danish PhD student in theatre studies at Stockholm University. His dissertation
is about spiritual experience in staged events. He earned an MA in theatre studies from the University of
Copenhagen in 2009. 2010-2013 he was coeditor of the journal Nordic Theatre Studies and he is the current
president of the Association of Nordic Theatre Scholars. Since 2010, he is a member of the Norwegianbased research network Aesthetics, Natural Sciences and Theology under the governmentally supported
research area Religion in Pluralistic Society. With the International Federation of Theatre Research he
serves as founding co-convener of the working group Performance and Religion. Among other subjects, he
has published on theatre and ritual, performativity, spirituality and religion in research anthologies and in
journals including Performance Research, Ecumenica – Journal of Theatre and Performance and Kritisk
forum for praktisk teologi.
Mikael Strömberg
Mikael Strömberg has a Phd in Performance Studies from University of Stockholm. Currently he is acting
associate professor of Theatre studies (30%) and international coordinator (70%) at the University of
Gothenburg. He is also working on a research project Turning Points and Continuity: The Changing Roles of
Performance in Society 1880-1925. The project aims to revisit and re-interpret a period celebrated as the
breakthrough of modern theatre. The project is funded by Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and
coordinated by the Dept. of Musicology and Performance studies at Stockholm University.
Tsu-Chung Su
Tsu-Chung Su, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, USA, is Professor of English
at National Taiwan NormalUniversity. He is the author of two monographs: The Writing of the Dionysian:
The Dionysian in Modern Critical Theory(1996)& The Anatomy of Hysteria: What It is, with Some of the
Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Representations, & Several Critiques of It (2004).He was a Visiting Scholar at
Harvard University in 2002-2003 and a Fulbright Scholar at Princeton University in 2007-2008. His areas
ofteaching and research interestare performance studies, Nietzsche and his French legacy, and theories of
hysteriaand melancholia. His recent publications include essays onAntonin Artaud, Peter Brook, Robert
Wilson, Jerzy Grotowski, Richard Schechner, and Eugenio Barba. He is currently working on a book project
on Antonin Artaud.
Marija Tepavac
Marija Tepavac was born in Niš, Serbia in 1988 but currently lives in Vienna, Austria. After bachelor studies
of Slavic literature and Serbian Language at the University of Niš she started with PhD studies at University
of Vienna, on Institute of Slavoc Studies. Her PhD thesis “The Structural Modernisation of Serbian Drama in
the Work of Jovan Hristić” focuses on a new theater tendencies, semiotics, philosophy, culture theories and
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political theater in Serbian. Her goal is to reconstruct dramas and plays through new narrative, social,
cultural and performance theories. Her work is focused on Serbian contemporary theater.
Anna Blekastad Watson
Anna Blekastad Watson (b. 1979, London, England) is a theatre director and deviser, theatre pedagogue
and researcher in theatre studies. She holds a MA from the University of Bergen (Norway) in Theatre
Studies, titled “Devising Theatre: Egalitarian Theatre between Censorship and Counter-culture,” and a BA in
Contemporary Theatre Practice from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, in Glasgow.
Currently she is a PhD Fellow in Theatre Studies at the University of Bergen. Her PhD project is titled
“Norwegian Political Theatre since the 1970s: A Revisited History of Institutional and Non-institutional
Theatre Collectives.” Anna Watson has been in several collaborative theatre groups and projects. In 2010
she won a play writers scholarship from the Norwegian Arts Council, in a still on-going theatre project
about contemporary fathering-roles in Norway. She has also published several articles and theatre critiques
in theatre journals.
Stephen Wilmer
Stephen Wilmer is Professor Emeritus and former Head of the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity
College Dublin, and Research Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance
Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin. Recent publications include ed. (with Audrone Zukauskaite)
Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism (Oxford UP, 2010); ed. Native American
Performance and Representation (Arizona U P, 2009); ed. (with Anna McMullan) Reflections on Beckett
(University of Michigan Press, 2009); and ed. National Theatres in a Changing Europe (Palgrave Macmillan,
2008). Forthcoming books include Deleuze and Beckett, Palgrave Macmillan 2015 and Resisting Biopolitics:
Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies, Routledge, 2015.
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