In Dialogue with Society: Democratic Engagement through Theatre
(2025)
author(s): Jörgen Dahlqvist
published in: Research Catalogue
This research project explores how theatre can contribute to democratic engagement. The starting point was artistic probes investigating aspects of democracy: participation, deliberation and inclusion. The probes resulted in three productions presented at theatre institutions in Sweden. In Skapa Demokrati (Creating Democracy), participation was promoted by encouraging the audience members to create a democracy together. The performance thus allowed participants to experience a democratic process by actively engaging in the making of a constitution. In Öva Demokrati (Practicing Democracy), deliberation was in focus. The performance allowed the audience to deliberate on suggestions for strengthening Swedish democracy. Through methods inspired by political science, the audience was invited to speak and listen to arguments for the different proposals. In the performance, they were also presented with a variety of ways of voting to illustrate how different electoral systems can encourage engagement and give minorities a chance to be heard. In Monument, different strategies were used to promote inclusion. The project started with the idea that monuments say something about society. The monuments were used as vehicles to include voices from the residents of Helsingborg. The artwork presented these different experiences through a multi-perspective script. Other outreach activities also helped enable inclusion. Narrative analysis for theatre was used to reflect on these probes, allowing for a deeper understanding of how performances were conceptualised and structured, and how they made meaning for the audience. Lastly, the performance Ibsendekonstruktion II: Brand was written and staged to reflect on how the research has changed the artistic practice. The research has resulted in strategies for inclusion and a novel theatre format, the conversational theatre, which encourages participation and deliberation. These outcomes provide the theatre with methods to be in dialogue with society.
Co-authoring the Future: Stories from the Road
(2022)
author(s): Jessica Renfro
published in: Research Catalogue
Framed by the metaphor of a road trip, this exposition explores the use of participatory performance in building cultural discourse about decision-making during the climate crisis. Using Rancière’s concept of the emancipated spectator, common human experiences such as childhood development of subjectivity (acquired through Lacan’s mirror phase and symbolic order) and image schemas (as discussed in Mark Turner’s The Literary Mind) are explored as possible strategies for co-authoring an artistic landscape alongside spectators. An audio narration accompanies the written work, attempting to explore these theories in the form of a correspondence between the author and her elusive self-awareness. Each track reflects on these individual-but-common experiences as a method for creation. The author concludes that a co-authored artistic landscape may only be accessible to participants who are enticed to set aside limiting social norms in order to explore it, and this is the challenge of the artist.
Taking Place: Parrhesiastic Theater as a model for artistic practice
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Eleni Kamma
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This research project of Eleni Kamma adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater—by which I mean events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously speak their minds through scenes of excess and laughter, that take place in public view and incite the spectator’s agency to speak their own minds—possibly relate to and/or provide new insights into critical artistic practices today. In this context, the project also examines the place and role of caricature today.I approach the issue as an artist-researcher concerned with socially engaged artistic practices. The experience of the playful, humorous, and sharply critical attitude of Gezi Park protesters speaking their minds in Istanbul in 2013 led me to critically reconsider my own courage in positioning myself within contemporary artistic production. Throughout the dissertation I work along a Moebius strip schema, which continually shifts from me as individual artist to dialogic collaborations to writing about the process. The research subject is investigated through a circulation process within which concepts such as communication, dialogue, and listening are continuously performed and put to the test. The dissertation aspires to provide new insights into how tensions between the roles of individual and group, “I” and “we,” may open up a parrhesiastic space for critical artistic practices.