My PhD work has given me the opportunity to experiment with everything from community structures, text understanding, stage presence – to alternative stagings of the text and the actor, both on stage and in public space.

The work has resulted in concepts and strategies that have given the works that I have created as a PhD fellow (The Shining City 2022, Bartleby 2022, Made in China 2024, Brand 2025, Poetic Protest 2024 –) exploratory qualities and defined formal characteristics that together constitute the overall aesthetic framework that I have chosen to call “Future Mythical Theatre”– understood as a theatre that takes its starting point from the actor’s double presence and creative intermediate position in two separate fictional universes at the same time – the textual (ideal) and the spatial (material).

By giving space to the performing actor’s creative activity, I have attempted to challenge the standardized hierarchical organization in the theatre and facilitate a more dynamic and equal balance between text, space and play, which in turn can open up for the sensory and spiritual qualities of theatre to be treated with as much seriousness as the narrative and the psychological. My work has attempted to take text-based theatre seriously as an art form and put form first, or in other words – create a greater awareness of form in text-based theatre, and make form the content itself.

My name is Espen Klouman Høiner (b. 1981), I am currently a research fellow at the Theater Academy v/KhiO (2022-2025) with the project titled: An actor's creative space – artistic strategies in a text-based and futurist mythical theatre

In my artistic work, I combine the roles of stage artist, director, playwright, writer and actor. Although my artistry is interdisciplinary, the core of my work is that of the actor. In my work as a performing and creative actor within the institution and in the independent field, I am experimenting with different acting aesthetics – an experimentation grounded in a willingness to challenge the ideological and methodological structures and conventions that characterize text-based performing arts today.

My main work is as an actor, playwright and director in the performing arts company Klouman/Becker/Barratt-Due, where I make up the trio together with visual artist and scenographer Signe Becker and sound artist and composer Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due. I am also an associated member of the company Verk produksjoner. 

I won the Kanon prize for best actor in 2013 and won the Hedda prize twice. I received the award as an actor in 2013, and as a playwright in 2019.

ENGLISH: This being my 2nd presentation, I want to give a brief account of the work I have already done during my PhD project, and invite the audience to dialogue about possible directions for my last PhD work, which will form the final part of a series of works.

I have followed two tracks so far in my PhD project.

One track has been a practical, aesthetic exploration and awareness of the multi-sensory potential of the actor (and the text) in the theater space. (Double performativity, aesthetics of silence, obscurity). The second track has had a more general function and has been dealing with the function, status and role of the actor both in and outside of the theatre space.

How to unite these tracks in the closing phase?

NORWEGIAN: 

Da dette er min andre presentasjonen vil jeg kort redegjøre for de arbeidene jeg allerede har gjort i løpet av mitt phd-prosjekt, og invitere tilhørere til dialog om mulige retninger for mitt siste phd-verk som vil utgjøre den avsluttende delen av en serie arbeider.

Jeg har fulgt to spor sålangt i ph.d.-prosjektet mitt. 

Den ene sporet har vært en praktisk, estetisk utforskning og bevisstgjøring av skuespilleren (og tekstens) flersanselige potensial i teaterrommet. (Dobbel performativitet, stillhetsestetikk, dunkelhet). Det andre sporet har hatt en mer overordnet funksjon og handlet om skuespillerens status, funksjon og rolle både i teaterrommet og det offentlige rommet. 

Hvordan forene disse sporene i den avsluttende fasen?