Abstracts and Speakers

Jaak Tomberg, Unviversity of Tartu
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In his „Antinomies of Realism“ (2013), a book on the poetics of literary realism, cultural and literary theorist Fredric Jameson usefully differentiates between emotion and affect. He redesignates „emotion“ as „named emotion“ and reserves the term affect for those bodily sensations and perceptions that somehow (still) resist symbolic language and meaning. For Jameson, emotion and affect also belong to different temporalities: „named emotion“ is carried by a „coherent“ subject that „meaningfully“ connects the past to the present and the present to the future, whereas affect belongs to pure bodily present of sensations and perceptions that somehow precede or underly subjectivity, symbolic language and meaning.

This presentation is a bystander’s attempt to reappropriate Jameson’s theoretical framework to describe the transformative effect of Karl Saks’ „Planet Alexithymia“ – and by hypothetical extension, of possible other examples of contemporary performance art as well. I claim that the affective space and presence established in „Planet Alexithymia“ has the potential to reduce the viewer to pure bodily present, to a state that precedes language and meaning where subjectivity is temporarily dissolved or taken apart – and later put back together in a reconfigured way when the linguistic apparatus of symbolic meaning inevitably re-establishes itself. Thus, „Planet Alexithymia“ is a good example of how the affective dimension of (performance) art decisively contributes to what Jacques Ranciére called the (re)distribution of the sensible – in other words, how it transforms the ways it is possible to perceive, think, say or do. Transgression, in this sense, is not social, psychological or physical, but ontological.

Biography

Jaak Tomberg is a co-professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Tartu, Estonia. His research focuses on science fiction, utopia, and philosophy of literature. His two monographs focus on the poetics of Science Fiction, and his next one will be about utopian imagination. Besides research, he regularly writes literary criticism.

Katri Tanskanen, University of Helsinki
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“The rest is silence,” are Hamlet’s famous last words. However, E. L. Karhu’s adaptation Princess Hamlet (2017) asks what happens next, for those who need to continue the story after its tragic end. It breaks the silence by offering us a new act during which Princess Hamlet’s body hangs on a meat hook, Horatia dresses up as Hamlet and the post-truth kingdom continues its life in front of a screaming crowd. This presentation explores the strategies that Princess Hamlet uses to exceed the boundaries of tragedy and detect the implicit value-systems and hierarchies, especially in relation to gender. Chris Jenks writes in his book Transgressions (2003, 2) that “[t]ransgression is a deeply reflexive act of denial and affirmation”. The same is true for adaptations that confirm the status of the source text but simultaneously advocate a radical break with that tradition. Adaptation can be an oppositional, subversive or even hostile takeover that reflects and undermines the canon. It demands cultural knowledge on the part of the audience and can be viewed as a conservative and elitist genre, but at the same time the historical awareness of the tradition provides an opportunity for reformulation and expansion, especially with regard to those consigned to its margins or excluded from it. This study explores the connections between transgression and adaptation by investigating how Princess Hamlet raises fundamental questions concerning the categories of genre, gender, normality, and how it rocks the tradition and collective order.

Biography

Katri Tanskanen currently works as a university lecturer in theatre studies at the University of Helsinki. Her main areas of interest include dramaturgy and the politics and ethics of contemporary theatre and drama. She is also an author of several books discussing contemporary performance and drama and Finnish theatre history. She has worked as a cultural journalist as well as a theatre critic and is currently a co-editor of the journal Nordic Theatre Studies.

Hedi-Liis Toome, University of Tartu
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Theatre continues not just to mirror reality but to mediate and shape what we imagine is possible,” states Jill Dolan in her book “The feminist spectator as critic” (2nd edition 2012). Taking this statement as a starting point, the presentation analyzes two recent mainstream performances, “Women of Niskamäe” by Vanemuine Theatre in Estonia and “The Sleepers” by Lithuanian National Theatre from the perspective of how women are represented on stage. The presentation shows that even though the main characters are strong and powerful women, at the same time, their agency is still very much defined by the male directors who staged these productions. How to overcome this issue as a feminist spectator?   

Biography

Hedi-Liis Toome (PhD) is a lecturer of theatre studies at the University of Tartu. Her research interest are the relationship between theatre and society, the functions and values of theatre and reception and audience research. She is also the organizer of an annual Estonian performing arts festival Draama.

Anne-Liis Maripuu, Univeristy of Tartu
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The sociologist Chris Jenks understands transgression as that which exceeds boundaries or exceeds limits. The meaning of an act, Jenks explains, does not reside solely within the intentionality of the actor; indeed, in most instances it resides within the context of the act’s reception.

In the 1920s the Estonian modern dancers Elmerice Parts and Herman Kolt-Oginsky caused a scandal with their dance performances. At the centre of the scandal was the use of ‘erotic’ or ‘acrobatic’ elements on stage. Soon after the first performances the local reviewers found themselves in a heavy dispute. Whilst some of them were convinced that the duo’s dance performances were ‘immoral’; the others praised the artists for ‘rejuvenating’ Estonian dance art.

My presentation consists of two parts. In the first part, I try to create an image of Parts’s and Kolt-Oginsky’s dances performances on the basis of the reviews. How did their dance performances look like? What kind of movements did the performers use? In the second part I go for the meaning and try to understand what the scandal tells us. Where did the borders between ‘moral’ and therefore eligible and ‘immoral’ that is ineligible art lie in Estonia in the 1920s?

Biography

Anne-Liis Maripuu – a PhD student at the University of Tartu. Author of multiple articles dedicated to early modern dance in Estonia. Maripuu has organised a symposium on Rudolf von Laban and two photo exhibitions: Dancing Free (Tantsides vabaks, 2018) and ‘Gerd Neggo: “Dance Only Is Sovereign”’ (‘Gerd Neggo. “Tants ainuüksi on suverään”’, 2021, 2022). Her main research interest is early modern dance in Estonia and Germany.

Riina Oruaas, University of Tartu
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During the war in Ukraine, activists have protested against the war and European countries supporting Russian Federation in war economically all over Europe, finding performative ways to express their position. In April 13, a group of women gathered in front of embassy of Russian Federation in Tallinn. They stood still in a row, heads in black plastic bags, hands tied behind their backs, bare legs and backsides covered with red paint, marking blood. A few days before, first photos of massacre in towns of Kyiv outskirts in Ukraine, had spread over the world media, including images of dead people lying down, hands tied behind their backs, heads in black plastic bags. A few days after the protest in Tallinn, women repeated the acts against war rape in Vilnius, Riga and other cities around Europe.

As performative acts these protests are 1) actual bodies that bring a sign of the most stigmatized crime into the public sphere; 2) re-enactments of actual victims; 3) sources of new bodily and visual representations and re-enactments in public sphere; 4) media images. Ukraine war is also a media and information war and as transgressive images, the photos of protesting women create a zone of disturbance both in the public space and sphere.

Jacques Ranciére’s essay “Intolerable image” states: only the one who does not want to witness, is the witness. Rancière discusses in the essay the ethics of being a spectator of war images or political art of photography, and ask questions of acceptability, the visible and the invisible. An intolerable image is in a complex relation to the intolerable reality. I’ll discuss in the paper, what the protest acts can make, and how do they make us witness the war crimes against women.

Biography

Riina Oruaas is Lecturer and PhD candidate in theatre research at the Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu. Her research is focused on transforming aesthetics in Estonian theatre since 1990s, including dramaturgy, performing, scenography, and intermediality. She gives courses on theatre history, textual and performance analysis, has also taught in Estonian Academy of Arts and Tallinn University Baltic Film, Media and Arts School. Oruaas has worked as a visiting scholar at University of Surrey in 2015, has been chairing and board member of the Estonian Association of Theatre Researchers and Theatre Critics (2012–2015, since 2020) and co-edited the book Views on Contemporary Estonian Theatre (original title: Vaateid Eesti nüüdisteatrile, University of Tartu Press 2016), and co-curated arts festival Tartu Interdistsiplinaar (2022)

Kristi Pappel, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
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In Estonia, activity in the field of musical theatre seems to take place in two parallel worlds (without diving in to questions of terminology, I consider the wider term of musical theatre to embrace opera as well). Opera performances are staged in National Opera Estonia and in the multi-genre theatre Vanemuine. Especially the National Opera Estonia stands out as conservative in its choice of repertoire as well as opera directing. When the renowned German opera director Tobias Kratzer staged 2016 Verdi`s “Aida” at the National Opera without the typical Egyptian attributes, whilst also including more physical expression, a large part of the audience as well as the critics saw it as crossing the borderline. A different attitude rules outside institutionalised theatre and especially in the case of new productions, where at least nearing the borders is acceptable and new performative solutions are being sought. The presentation uses case studies to analyse the setting of borders in institutional and non-institutional musical theatre productions and asks what it would take to cross those borders.

Biography

Kristel Pappel, Estonian musicologist, special research areas (1) history and theory of the opera and musical theatre, (2) history of the nineteenth-century music. Studied violin and musicology at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT), PhD 2004 („Opera in Tallinn in the Nineteenth Century“). Professor for music history and since 2015 head of the Centre for Doctoral Studies at the EAMT. Several research scholarships (Stadt Lübeck; Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater, Universität Bayreuth; International Wagner Society; Viro-Säätiö Helsinki etc.). 2011–2014 guest lecturer and guest professor for music theatre at the Vienna University; guest lectures at the universities of Göttingen, Dresden, Tartu etc

Lauma Mellēna-Bartkeviča, Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music
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The paper aims to tackle the project that was initially planned as interactive music theatre production that turned into opera-film due to Covid-19 circumstances and restrictions. Anyway, in case of “Baņuta” we deal with officially 1st Latvian original opera deconstructed and transformed into a new movie-opera form in the 21st century, proving that such transformation does not necessarily mean the mocking of national romanticism or culture values. German director Franziska Kronfoth has found a key that surprisingly resonates with social contexts of 21st century and in particular in 2022. The recontextualized story founds new audiences and new perception contexts without violating the original idea, although it is undoubtedly innovative and transgressive, bringing in such issues women’s experience at war and questioning of traditions both in terms of contents and form.

A hundred years after the premiere of Alfrēds Kalniņš’ “Baņuta” in 1920, comes the opera film – an international project that melts opera, musical performance, the conditionality of the performing arts and contemporary performativity. Director Franziska Kronfoth and dramaturg Evarts Melnalksnis bring together Latvian artists and the German musical theatre collective “Hauen und Stechen” to interpret the dramatic message, which they do without sentimentality, playing with time and shattering space into pieces. The trauma and violence of war and personal relationships is an important leitmotif – Baņuta takes part in partisan battles, bringing with her the collective experience of the women who have suffered through the wars in 20th century Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, mixing the boundaries between genres, a paradoxical sense of humor seeps into the tragedy, while characters stuck deep in the centuries strive to break the fourth wall. This example brings the theory of performativity into practice and challenging the museum value of the piece opens new horizons and contexts for the subject treated within.

Biography

Lauma Mellēna-Bartkeviča holds a PhD degree in Arts by the University of Latvia (2018), she is a researcher of Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (since 2020), music and theatre critic. Head of Latvian National Section of International Theatre Critics’ Association AICT/IACT and coordinator of international relations in Latvian Theatre Labour Association, editor of the musicology magazine “Mūzikas akadēmijas raksti” and co-editor of Latvian theatre website Kroders.lv. As a freelancer she has worked for “Neatkariga Rita avize”, the 2 nd largest daily newspaper of Latvia, covering themes related to classical music, opera and theatre since 2004 to 2020. Regularly publishes articles in national magazines of music and theatre. In 2022 works in the jury of the Great Music Award of Latvia and as an expert invited by radio “ Latvian Radio 3 Klasika”.

Eva-Liisa Linder, Tallinn University
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During the transition period, Estonian society started to return towards the Western semiosphere. As censorship was abolished at the end of the 1980s, a wave of memory theatre and the theatre of the absurd flooded the stages. It enabled a distanced view at the totalitarian past. A vision for the future was displayed in contemporary Western dramaturgy along with impulses of political theatre.

The arrival of sexually liberal dramaturgy has so far been largely overlooked. In it, crucially, emerged queer dramaturgy, a litmus test of democracy. The first, subdued homosexual characters reached Estonian stages in the Anglo-American dramaturgy, e.g. by Delaney and Williams, around the time homosexuality was decriminalized (1992).

The first openly queer and widely discussed production “Angels in America” (1996) was directed by Georg Malvius from liberal Sweden. Despite the contradictory reception to the long-time taboo topic, Malvius went on with queer classics like “Bent” and “Cabaret”. He stressed the need to cultivate pluralism, equality and tolerance in the xenophobic post-Soviet society. Although his thematic and aesthetic breakthrough was received by many as too foreign, didactic and shocking, his technical skills could not be overlooked. He was appreciated for his masterful productions full of performative scenes. However, his innovation in queer aesthetics with transgressive bodily messages, fight with prejudices and attempt to legitimize the plurality of sexual identities have not been recognized.

Later, others developed queer theatre from gay to queer, trans and drag issues, using a variety of styles and techniques from original full-length plays, devised and documentary theatre to dance shows. On a metalevel these productions have contributed to the breaking of the mental iron curtain, left from the post-communist times.

Until now, queer theatre in Estonia has remained politicized and poorly covered. Therefore, the current presentation aims to give one of the first overviews of it, drawing inspiration from the history of queer theatre and the ethical turn in theatre studies.

Biography

Eva-Liisa Linder is a theatre researcher at the Drama School of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. She holds an MA in theatre studies from the University of Tartu and continues her studies at Tallinn University, where her research is focused on the changing theatrical public sphere during the transition period of Estonia. As a freelance editor and critic, she has edited collections on theatre history and pedagogy, and published several articles.

Justina Paltanavičiūtė, Vilnius University
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The opera genre is considered to be an artistic, namely a hermetic domain. Yet, since the very first examples, the production principles of the opera were controlled by the authorities, consenquently opera reflected the dominant political powers and ideologies (Rabb, 2006, p. 322-323; Hanning, 1979, p. 590; Hume, 1998, p. 29). Gradually the subsequent comic forms of the opera genre enabled a creative criticism of the dominant political power and the prevailing socio-political system (Gabriel, 2006, p. 6; Muir, 2006, p. 331-333; Rosand, 2006, p. 413). In order to draw the public attention to the issues of social distinction and to empower socially vulnerable groups of society, opera composers and librettists appropriated different kinds of aesthetics of lower class society (Cowart, 2001, p. 273-285; Cowart, 2001, p. 272; Morrissey, 1971; Pettegree, 2012). Although various examples of the opera genre from G. B. Pergolesi to A. Piazolla represent the appropriation of the performativity of lower class of society, the actual response of people, represented in the opera genre and considered as socially vulnerable, has never been investigated emipircally. This research aims to reveal whether the representation of the performativity of socially vulnerable society groups affects and empowers individuals considered as socially vulnerable. The example of the opera by composer L. Lapelytė, librettist V. Grainytė and director R. Barzdžiukaitė “Have A Good Day!” (2011) was deliberately chosen as the research object. The research was performed while carrying out the social experiment: the opera “Have A Good Day!”, fictionally representing cashiers of the supermarket, was shown to the participants of the social experiment who work as cashiers. Consequently, the participants were interviewed, qualitative content analysis of the gathered data was performed. In order to address the general topic of performativity and transgression, the problematics of ethics and possibly transgressive behaviour of the authors of the opera is also discussed.

Biography

Justina Paltanavičiūtė Department of Digital Cultures and Communication, Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University, Saulėtekio av. 9, House 1–603, 10222 Vilnius, Lithuania Justina Paltanavičiūtė is a musicologist, music journalist, the editor-in-chief of the virtual platform of the Music and Information Center, which is the main organisation promoting Lithuanian music culture in Lithuania and abroad. Justina is currently a lecturer and a doctoral student of Vilnius University, Faculty of Communication, focusing on various aspects of opera and politics. Publications on the theatre research: Paltanavičiūtė, J. (2022). Creativity As Social Critique: A Case Study Of The Opera Have A Good Day! Creativity Studies, 15(1). 233-245. https://doi.org/10.3846/cs.2022.15026

Hanna Korsberg, University of Helsinki
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In my presentation I will discuss debated boundaries and strategies of transgression in performing arts. I am looking at a production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Dirty Hands at the Finnish National Theatre and discussing the political context of transgression. What were the boundaries the production broke and the strategies the theatre negotiated with the transgression.

The Finnish premiere of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mains Sales or Dirty Hands took place on 8 October 1948 at the Finnish National Theatre. The production was directed by the director of the theatre Eino Kalima and the part of Hoederer was played by Aku Korhonen, a well-known actor and a board member of the Finnish National Theatre. It also included two very prominent young actors Kyllikki Forssell as Jessica and Rauli Tuomi as Hugo.

The play received considerable attention from the critics as well as from the audience. Especially the performance of Hoederer cut a dash. As a member of the audience recalled later concerning the moment at the end of act II (the third episode) when Hoederer entered: [there] was a total silence and then everybody was thinking how did the ensemble dare? The reason for the shock was that the character Hoederer was masked to look like Joseph V. Stalin, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union. The production run for less than two months before the Finnish National Theatre was forced to close it.

Performing Dirty Hands the way the Finnish National Theatre did in 1948 was a courageous act. After the WWII the political situation in Finland remained critical for years. For example, the Control Commission, with mainly Soviet members, stayed in Helsinki until 1947 when the final peace treaty was signed in Paris. The years the Control Commission stayed in Helsinki, have often been characterized as an extremely hard time for Finland. Even after the ratification of the Paris peace treaty and when the control commission had left Finland in the autumn of 1947 the conditions in the country did not return to their pre-war conditions. There were constant negotiations about what was allowed and what was forbidden in relation to the Soviet Union to keep independence and avoid a Soviet military takeover. Simply by performing Dirty Hands the Finnish National Theatre became part in these negotiations.

Biography

Hanna Korsberg has been Professor of Theatre Research at the University of Helsinki since 2008. Her research interests include the relationship between theatre and politics in Finland, a topic which she has studied in two monographs. She is also the author of several articles discussing theatre history, historiography and performance. She has been an active member of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) Historiography Working Group since 2001, anexecutive committee member in 2007–2015 and Vice President during 2015–2019. She has served as a member of the advisory boards for Contemporary Theatre Review and Nordic Theatre Studies. She is also a member of the Teachers’ Academy at the University of Helsinki.

Ildikó Sirató, Hungarian Dance University
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The paper refers to the contemporary performances using distinctive name of Physical Theatre. What does that concept mean in comparison to stage genres that are (more) traditional (dance, movement performance, wordless theatre, voice-performance, etc.)? What are the topical features of practice of Physical Theatre performances, focusing e.g. on performers’ tasks, text and textures of content, analytic and/or symbolic characters and gestures, technics and methods of multiplication of characters?

There are some basic and newer literature on the theory of Physical Theatre as well as the practice of performances. As the concepts of ritual syncretism as well as of Gesamtkunstwerk are well known in the history of arts and theatre, man can consider the movement of Physical Theatre form the 1970s defining itself as a contemporary part of a historical process of renewing those earlier concepts and features. At the same time as a cross-over contemporary genre, performances labelled Physical Theatre unify some important for authors and public possibilities. As e.g. use of contemporary technologies, conceptual elements and forms, as well as inventions in expression of time-space frames too.

These special cross-over or transgressive features we could show via some performance analyses. Man could get familiar with some Hungarian examples from last decades until the recent days Physical Theatre productions in the mirror of theories and histories.

In Hungary, the first special Physical Theatre performance has been staged in 2008. On the first night of the play named and based (partly) on Kalevala made by choreographer Csaba Horváth and his troupe ForteDanse (lately Forte Company https://www.fortecompany.hu/). Their latest performance (premièred 26.3.2022) was the Cross Cantatas (J. S. Bach https://www.opera.hu/en/programme/megtekint/keresztkantatak-2021/) in the former industrial space of Eiffel Art Studios https://www.opera.hu/en/about-us/building/eiffel/, which is running as the contemporary performing venue (real space of transgressions) of Hungarian State Opera having two traditional houses, too. In this performance, we could consider different types of transgressions: in between genres oratory and opera (with contemporary dance scenes), in between music and movement-theatre performance etc. There are dancers who sing, singers who move, musicians moving set and property, stage personnel used as set elements, choir sitting (or standing) in auditorium side etc.

There are some other type Physical Theatre performances on Hungarian stages too, which are dealing with societal issues of people on the peripheries of community, e.g. performances of (mentally) disabled professional actors (Baltazár Theatre or MáSzínház – AnotherTheatre) you could get some information too.

Biography

Ms. Ildiko Sirato Ph. D. theatre and literature researcher from Budapest, Hungary. Working in Collection of Theatre History at Hungarian National Széchényi Library; associate professor at Hungarian Dance University, and lecturer at different Universities and Doctoral Schools in Hungary and abroad (Austria, Finland etc.). Theatrical activities as stage director and dramaturg. Research fields: comparative theatre research, dramaturgy, history of Hungarian theatre and the national type of theatres of Europe. Author of books e.g. A Short History of Hungarian Theatre, 2017; National Theatres in Europe. Institution of National Theatre, Comparative Studies on Theatre History, 2007; Theatre in the Northern Light. Estonian and Finnish Drama on the Hungarian Stage, 2005; editor of Hungarian Theatre Lexicon, 1992; book-series Studia Theatralica, and journal Színpad [Stage]. Membership in ITI, IFTR/FIRT, ASSITEJ, OISTAT, TeaTS (Finland), and others. Permanent guest at DRAAMA festivals in Estonia since 2003.

Daria Skjoldager-Nielsen, Stockholm University
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When a colleague asked me: “Do you know that we are staging a performance in Polish in the Reykjavík City Theatre?”, my mind immediately exploded with all the questions: why? How is it possible? Who is responsible for that? And most importantly, how is it going? After all, it is not that often to see a performance in a foreign language to be part of the regular repertoire of the city theatre. As a guest performance – yes; as part of the immigrant institution (e.g., polnisches theater kiel – Polish Theatre in Kiel, Germany) – yes; as a performance in an official minority language (e.g., Finnish in Sweden) – yes. But the forementioned example does not belong to any of those cases: the City Theatre invited foreign artists to perform in their mother tongue and included the result of their work in the regular repertoire available to all the Reykjavík residents.

In my paper I will deliberate on how performances by PóliS theatre group in Reykjavík cross the cultural boundaries of the theatre institution. I will look at them as an example of the Third Space [Bhabha] – a space where cultures interact that supports creative processes. In my discussion I will include the terms transculturation (i.e., reciprocal processes that appear during the meeting of two cultures [Ortiz and Taylor]) and acculturation (i.e., engaging in the intercultural contact [Berry]) that may help to better understand what effect the staging of the performances in Polish may have on local audiences. I will also consider whether such an event can contribute to a cultural transfer [Prykowska-Michalak] or rather serves as a theatrical experiment.

Biography

Daria Skjoldager-Nielsen, Stockholm University. Also publishes as Daria S. Nielsen. Holder of two MA degrees from the University of Lodz: in marketing and theatre studies. PhD candidate in theatre studies at Stockholm University. Lecturer at University of Lodz. Member of the IFTR working group The Theatrical Event. Vice chairwoman of Rococo Foundation researching cultural institutions’ management and performance. Research interests: the theatrical event; new approaches to audience development; marketing and theatre; audience research. Recent publications: “The (Ir)replaceable Master Director – Considering the Case of the Odin Teatret” with Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen, in Zarządzanie w kulturze 2020, Tom 21, Numer 2, “Para-Anthropo(s)cene Aesthetics Between Despair and Beauty: A Matter of Response-Ability” with Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen, in Nordic Theatre Studies 2020, 32(1)

Karl Saks, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
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My proposal for the conference would be a presentation on the topic of sound art and performativity. In the context of my artistic research as a sound artist, I participated in Johhan Rosenberg’s solo work “Traps”, where I was interested in the audible components of the work and their relationship with the dramatic structure and choreographic material of the production, as well as communication with the author during the production process and presentation. A very strong detail that emerged from the performances was the fact that I did not just make sound design, but I accompanied Johhan’s performance in real time. For that I had to fully understand and even emerge into Johhan’s performance, physically, mentally and linguistically. My presentation would be about the difficulties and possibilities of accompanying a performer in real time, including the complexity of the performers identity changes during the work. “traps” can be seen as a confluence of different actions, dragged by linguistic elements. A hypnotic zoo invites the viewer into its trap. By featuring the unknown as a source of compositional information, where words, bodies and configurations morph, a collective playground is created. It is not a game, but rather an overt observation of a hidden manifesto.” Johhan Rosenberg

Biography

Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Artistic research : “Compositional and conceptual tools of a sound artist in the context of postdramatic theater” cubuslarvik@gmail.com

Madli Pesti, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
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The presentation will look into the perception and reception of transgressive performances. I will analyse the case of the Theatre NO99. Theatre NO99 (2005–2018) was an Estonian contemporary theatre that was founded by the director Tiit Ojasoo, the director and scenographer Ene-Liis Semper and the dramaturg Eero Epner. The theatre created performances that crossed both aesthetic and thematic boundaries compared to traditional theatre. NO99 became a frequent visitor at theatres and theatre festivals across Europe. The presentation focuses on two productions that represent transgressive political theatre and that created most controversy and debate in the European media. The first example is the production “NO88 GEP. Hot Estonian Guys” (2007) that tackles the problem of Estonian demography: Estonians are dying out, there are not enough children. The situation in the play is as follows: a group of young Estonian men decide to start making babies to Estonian women. Their action is morally unacceptable and ethically dubious, but raises discussions. The devised production won several international awards and travelled to many countries: Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Finland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Another debated production I will focus on, is “NO69 Three Kingdoms” (2011), an international collaboration between the Theatre NO99, Münchner Kammerspiele (Germany) and Lyric Hammersmith (UK). Directed by Sebastian Nübling, one of the most innovative and intuitive directors in contemporary Germany, „Three Kingdoms“ was a crime thriller whose plot followed an investigation that goes from England to Estonia, from Western Europe to Eastern Europe. This long mystical journey across the continent was written by the British playwright Simon Stephens especially for this director and these actors. It dealt with what it means to be European. It brought together actors and arstists from across Europe – from Estonia, Germany and United Kingdom. It brought together and merged three distinct acting traditions and the result was fascinating for the different audiences around Europe (it was played in Tallinn, London, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna). In London it caused something one might call “revolution” as younger generation of theatre makers greeted it with exultation, but part of the reception denied that kind of theatre completely. In Germany it was highlighted as one of the most remarkable international co-productions in German theatre history.

Biography

Madli Pesti (b. 1980) holds a PhD in theatre research from Tartu University, Estonia (Political Theatre and its Strategies in the Estonian and Western Cultures, 2016). She is currently working as a senior researcher in the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, where she runs the practice-as-research PhD programme. Her research areas are performance analysis and theory, political and applied theatre, and contemporary theatre. In 2018 she published the book 100 Years of Estonian Theatre. She has also been writing theatre reviews since 2002, winning the award as best theatre critic at the Estonian Annual Theatre Awards in 2019. She was head of the Estonian Theatre Researchers’ and Critics’ Association (2015) and curated the programme of the new performing arts centre Open Space (Vaba Lava) in Tallinn between 2015 and 2017

Karin Allik, University of Tartu
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Juhan Ulfsak has been present and well-received in the Estonian theatre field for more than two decades, working both as an actor and as a director. His works can be described as daring and original, but more importantly, often transgressive. In my presentation, I would like focus on three of his pieces – NO36 The Dreamers (2017), Rather Not (2020) and Melancholia (2022), which I regard to have transgressive elements – and study how the transgressive elements in the productions potentially influence the dynamics between the actors and the audience, transforming the viewers into co-subjects. The theoretical framework for the presentation mainly relies on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s influential The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2008). According to Fischer-Lichte, the stage actions that trigger physiological, affective, volitional, energetic, and motor reactions also establish the relationship between the actors and the audience as oscillatory. I believe this type of stage actions can often be considered as transgressive, including in the works of Juhan Ulfsak. The research would be carried out as a performance analysis, relying both on my experience from the performances and on the reception of the works in Estonian theatre criticism.

Biography

Karin Allik (1998) is a freelance theatre critic, currently studying theatre research (MA) in the University of Tartu and working in the Estonian Theatre Agency. She holds a BA degree in theatre research and is a member of the Union of Students of Theatre Research, the Union of Estonian Theatre Researchers and Critics as well as the Estonian Theatre Union. Allik actively publishes theatre reviews in Estonian media, including newspapers like Postimees, Sirp, Eesti Päevaleht, and participates in the work of the juries for the Estonian theatre awards.

Kitija Balcare, University of Latvia
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The aim of the paper is to analyze econarratives in productions of ecotheatre in Latvia looking for interconnections, represented in various forms and on various stages, between humans and non-human entities, whether plant, animal, biotope or any other form of life. Paper highlights how do theatre practitioners in Latvia represent care for nature – emotional and also physical – that goes beyond the human meanwhile turning ecotheatre into environmental activism. One of the major environmental challenges nowadays is the biodiversity loss. The world of theatre has long been human-centred: so far non-human entities in performing arts mostly were used as metaphores and symbols of the wild rather than actants with their own identities to be accepted. The theatre studies scholar Una Chaudhuri proposes term zooesis referring it to discourse of species in art, media and culture looking how animal is constructed, represented, understood and misunderstood. With the development of ecodramaturgy (May, 2005) and ecodirecting (Cless, 2010), turning anthropocentric point of view to the ecocentric, non-human entities are becoming bioperformative. In late years theatre practitioners in Latvia put at the spotlight non-humans: bees, trees, plants, birds, river, forest, even mycelia. That requires not only overcoming of the physical boundaries of actors but also new artistic strategies which comes together with new forms.

Biography

Kitija Balcare (Mg.sc.hum.) is a theatre critic for major performing arts periodicals and online media in Latvia; as a journalist specializes in sustainability and environmental issues. Main research interests are posthumanism, ecocriticism, particuliarly – ecotheatre, econarratives and sustainability in the performing arts. Currently working on a PhD degree in environmental humanities at the University of Latvia. Member of Latvian Theatre Union.

Jüri Nael, Estoninan Academy of Theatre and Music
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It could be argued that one of the main aims of performer training is their growth through transformative learning experience. Transgressive pedagogy, both in the context or education and artistic practice, in the era of #metoo movement, has a danger of becoming endangered practice as the tutors/artists have become more aware of the possible consequences of their pedagogical strategies. Transformation, by definition, is not necessarily a pleasant experience when the student/performer/artist is pushed beyond their physical and emotional comfort zones and perceived limits, and yet several well-known artists have in recent years faced accusations of violence, harassment, and abuse in their artistic practice. By definition, transgressive pedagogy involves pushing beyond and through one’s inhabited sociocultural framework, leading to extra-daily and extra-ordinary discoveries, situations, states, revelations and understandings. This presentation will investigate opportunities and ethical concerns related to transgressive pedagogy in the context of new international MA in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) programme at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.

Keywords: transgressive pedagogy, transformative learning, performer training, higher education, ethics.

Ulla Kallenbach, University of Bergen
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In this paper, I will discuss the Royal Danish Theatre’s practices of international travelling and its impact on the national repertoire and aesthetics in the long nineteenth century. The paper will present work in progress from the research project Artistic Exchanges: The Royal Danish Theatre and Europe (Aarhus University/University of Bergen, 2021-2024).The Royal Danish Theatre, founded in 1748, was a key site for cultivating and examining Danish national identity, but the significance of the theatre owed to a marked international outlook and artistic exchange. The transgression of borders was from the onset, integral to the theatre’s institutional identity, since the multilingual kingdom of Denmark in varying constellations also has included Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Schleswig-Holstein and overseas colonies. Furthermore, the theatre was both founded by, and relied on inviting artists from, abroad. Several of the first ballet masters, dancers, theatre painters, musicians, technicians and even directors came from France, Germany and Italy, including Vincenzo Galeotti, who created the first Nordic-themed ballet, Lagherta (1801). Likewise, the Danish performing artists travelled Europe extensively – often encouraged and funded by the theatre – drawing inspiration from leading European artists and aesthetic currents. Dramatist and theatre director Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s (1791-1860) stays in Paris and Kiel, for example, inspired his development of the Danish vaudeville, and ballet master August Bournonville’s (1805-79) studies of European folkloric dances were highpoints in his ballets, even becoming (and still being perceived as) quintessentially “Danish”, such as the ballet Napoli (1842). The artists practices of transgressing national borders, thus also became aesthetic practices of transgression, transferring cultures from one domain to another, which in turn would transgress (ideas of) nationalities.

Biography

Ulla Kallenbach, PhD, is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies, University of Bergen, Norway. Her principal field of research is the cultural history of imagination and dramaturgy, particularly the performativity of drama and the point of view of the spectator. Her monograph, The Theatre of Imagining – A Cultural History of Imagination in the Mind and on the Stage, (Palgrave 2018) was the first comprehensive study of the cultural history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Kallenbach is President of the Association for Nordic Theatre Scholars, Head of the Norwegian research group for theatre history and dramaturgy, and steering committee member of the Centre for Historical Performance Practice, Aarhus University, Denmark. She currently heads the research project Artistic Exchanges: The Royal Danish Theatre and Europe, which develops digital methods for investigating artistic exchange and performative representations of Europe through the the unique archive of the Royal Danish Theatre.

ullakallenbach.net

Liina Lukas, University of Tartu
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“I love all strange instances/cases; they are the sign of not mean hearts. I can’t stand a quarter of an hour with anyone who trots along the beaten track”. These are the words Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, the son of the pastor of Tartu’s (Dorpat’s) St John’s Church, wrote to his friend, the German writer Sophie von La Roche, from Strasbourg in July 1775. The strange instances that often provocatively test and possibly transgress the norms and boundaries of the social or moral order are also treated by Lenz in his work. Lenz is a transgressive author par exzellence, if one understands by transgression the transgression of a norm, law or taboo (in terms of Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault and others). A subject of his time, burdened with taboos and norms, which occupies a very important place in his work, is sexuality. In both his theoretical and fictional works, Lenz treats this theme with a directness that was rare until then.

In my paper, I explore the representation of transgressions in the realm of the sexual in Lenz’s work. I focus primarily on his most transgressive work, the comedy “Der Hofmeister, oder Vorteile einer Privaterziehung” (1774).  

Biography

Liina Lukas is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Tartu. Her research focuses on literary relations in the multilingual Baltic cultural area, especially from the 18th to the early 20th century. Since 2001, he has organised international symposia on Baltic literary culture, which have brought together scholars from different disciplines interested in Baltic cultural history. He is the editor-in-chief of the eight-volume collective monograph “The History of Baltic Literary Culture” (Volume 1 was published 2021) and has been the director of EEVA, a digital text collection of early Estonian literature, for 20 years.

She is the head of the Estonian Comparative Literature Association and of the Estonian Goethe-Society; she is the corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.

Anneli Saro, University of Tartu
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The Greek word theatron referred to a place for viewing and viewing is still the core of communication in performing arts. Nevertheless, viewing or a gaze can be perceived also as a performative or transgressive act, since it is an implicit extension of the viewer’s body that touches or even penetrates the object viewed. In the paper, I am going to analyse what kind of gazes, when and why could be considered transgressive, making first a distinction between neutral and performative, and secondly between theatrical and extra-theatrical gazes.Since many theatrical languages rely to a considerable extent on everyday behaviour, I start my analysis from such transgressive examples, making use of studies by philosophers, psychologists and feminist theorists. Nevertheless, in theatrical communication frame, daily gazes are often recontextualised and magnified, which might make a neutral gaze performative. For analysis of different types of performative gazes in theatre, I use Ene-Liis Semper’s and Tiit Ojasoo’s production 72 days (2022) as an example.

Biography

Anneli Saro is Professor of Theatre Research at the University of Tartu (Estonia). In 2010-2014, she was Lecturer of Estonian Culture at the University of Helsinki. Saro has published articles and books on Estonian theatre history and system, performance theory and audience research. Currently she is working on two projects: comparative analysis of amateur theatre fields in small European countries and poetics of playing. Saro has been a convener of the international working groups Project on European Theatre Systems (2004-2008, 2017-) and Theatrical Event (2011-2017). She has been active as the Editor-in-Chief of Nordic Theatre Studies (2013-2015) and as a member of the executive committee of the International Federation for Theatre Research (2007-2015). She also served the University of Tartu as Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs and as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanitie

Luule Epner, Tallinn University
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Established in 1992, Von Krahl Theatre is the first permanently operating private theatre in re-independent Estonia. In the 1990s it acted as an open platform for diverse experimental theatre projects. At the turn of the century, Von Krahl theatre hired a small permanent troupe and intensely developed international collaboration. The paper takes look at two collaborative productions that premiered in 2001. Connecting People, directed by Finnish guest director Erik Söderblom from Q-Teatteri, was the world premiere of Jouko Turkka’s controversial play Osta pientä ihmistä. Production was received as a social critical performance, missing in Estonian theatre of the time, and it generated debates revolving around ethical and political issues. Pirates, the collaboration of Von Krahl Theatre and Showcase Beat le Mot from Hamburg, was one of the first examples of performance-theatre in Estonia. In criticism, it was called “an underground outbreak teasing official theatre culture and acts like a vagabond invading a nunnery”.

In the social and theatrical context of post-Soviet Estonia, these collaborations questioned established norms and values. Very likely the social and aesthetic impulses, at least in part, came from the theatrical cultures with which Von Krahl collaborated, and where social and artistic boundaries may have been drawn differently. This raises the question of whether or in what respect transgressions were perceived as a kind of imported phenomenon.  The paper discusses the reception of the above-mentioned productions in Estonia, and more generally, the interplay of different contexts and its effect on the perception of transgressivity.

Biography

Luule Epner, PhD, is an Estonian theatre and literary researcher. She is Associate Professor at the School of Humanities of Tallinn University. Her main research fields are Estonian theatre history, theory and practices of postdramatic theatre, and drama theory. She has published widely in different journals. She is the author of Draamateooria probleeme I-II (Problems of Drama Theory, 1992, 1994), and the co-author of Eesti kirjanduslugu (Estonian Literary History, 2001) and Eesti sõnateater 1965–1985 (Estonian Dramatic Theatre 1965–1985, 2015). Her most recent book, Mängitud maailmad (Worlds in Play), was published in 2018.

Stephen Elliot Wilmer, Trinity College Dublin
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Despite the UN Declaration on Human Rights that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum”, Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière have commented on the lack of human rights of the refugee. They argue that, while the nation-state privileges the rights of its citizens, it arbitrarily undermines the status of the refugee. According to Arendt, “The great danger arising from the existence of people forced to live outside the common world is that… they begin to belong to the human race in much the same world as animals belong to a specific animal species … forcing millions of people into … the conditions of savages.” (Origin of Totalitarianism, p. 30). In this article I explore not only the mechanisms by which the nation-state transgresses the rights of the non-citizen and the philosophical commentary on this by Arendt, Agamben and Rancière, but also the ways in which theatre performances can transgress the disenfranchising actions of the nation-state. Such performances as Letters Home by the Refugee Club Impulse in Berlin and their street campaign “My Right is Your Right” have challenged the disempowering practices of the nation-state, and reaffirmed, as in the UN Declaration, “the right [of refugees] to have rights” (Origin of Totalitarianism, p. 296).

Biography 

S.E. Wilmer is Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin, where he was Head of the School of Drama, Film and Music. He has served on the executive committees of the American Society for Theatre Research and the International Federation for Theatre Studies and on the board of Nordic Theatre Studies and was Editor in Chief of Nordic Theatre Studies from 2018 to 2020. He has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, and as a Research Fellow at the Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has written and edited twenty books and co-edited a special topic on “Theatre and Statelessness in Europe” for Critical Stages in 2016. His latest books are Performing Statelessness in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He is currently co-editing Life in the Posthuman Condition (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming in 2022) and the Palgrave Handbook on Theatre and Migration (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2023).

Pirkko Koski, Univeristy of Helsinki
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I will examine the role that contemporary society plays in politicising theatrical events and themes. I have chosen to survey Hagar Olsson’s 1939 play Lumisota (Snowball Fight) which tells about a fictional Finnish Prime Minister’s family in that same year: negotiations with the Soviet Union and political tensions of the family. The play is intimately bound up with contemporary societal tensions, but its theme has also been activated in 2022.

Contextual reality was able to fully penetrate fiction (created during spring 1939) in Lumisota as societal events kept escalating to mirror the events in the play during autumn rehearsals. The (real) Ministry of Foreign Affairs prohibited the play from being performed before its opening night as the play was deemed detrimental to (real) ongoing fateful conversations with the Soviet Union that would determine Finland’s future. Finland was attacked shortly after the performance embargo, and the Winter War began.

I will also shortly discuss few later productions of the play, as well as American Robert Sherwood’s Winter War play There Shall Be No Night (1940), to give a broader view to the ways of politicising drama.

In my chosen examples, the focus is firmly on theatrical references to wider contemporary society, and I will be examining both the forms that the process of fictionalization (according to Dorrit Cohn) takes under such circumstances, as well as its inherent power. I will be referencing Jonathan Charteris-Black’s Politicians and Rhetoric (2004) and the way in which political speech and its mechanisms are analyzed, such as listener persuasion through metaphor and the power of myth as a messenger for an idea.

Biography

Pirkko Koski is Helsinki University’s professor emerita of theatre research. She has specialized in theatre performance analysis and historiography, as well as historical analysis of the Finnish theatre. She has written and edited several articles and books for the domestic and international market. Her most recent work includes 2019’s monograph Suomen Kansallisteatteri ristipaineissa (“The National Theatre of Finland meeting pressure conflicts”), 2013’s monograph Näyttelijänä Suomessa (“Being an actor in Finland”), and monograph Finland’s National Theatre 1974-1991. The Two Decades of Generational Contests, Cultural Upheavals, and International Cold War Politics in 2022.

Sigríður Lára Sigurjónsdóttir, University of Iceland
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Protest movements in Iceland have been experimenting with different forms of street actions to make their dissidence known. Street performance is by no means a big part of Icelandic culture but a few distinct events have still made history there. Some are monumental ones that made a lot of difference, such as the Women’s Holiday on November 24th 1975, when Icelandic women in Reykjavík took a day off and flocked to the streets and made a big impact on the fight for women’s rights in Iceland.On November 8th, 2008, protests in the aftermath of the economic collapse in Iceland were happening every weekend. This particular Saturday was unusually eventful at Austurvöllur, the square in front of the house of congress, for many reasons. A few thousand people gathered there for a protest meet that was interspersed with a few unusually transgressive acts. In my paper I will go into a few key points of what happened that day, look at their historical significance and the performative part of the transgression. In this paper I will look at a few symbols and actions that have been key figures in these protest performances, in short, who does what, where and what might it mean? That is, what do we do/can we do with the relatively simple act of putting our bodies and other things in “different” places?

Tiit Ojasoo, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
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Loads of creators, artists, theatre makers are busy from day to day finding where is the fruitful border to cross and become if not immortal, then at least recognised and maybe even remembered. Who doesn’t want to make “a cut into canvas” like Lucio Fontana, penetrate the surface, acknowledge the border by crossing it. When I saw my first Fontanas pierced canvas in Madrid, without much historical background, just being astonished by the act of opening new dimension by the artist, the very next moment there was a little group of American teenagers, spending their quality time in museum. One of them gifted a glance to Fontana and shouted immediately: “I can do that!”. Although it happened years ago, the sound of her voice is still with me, and also the voice from my head, which said: no, you can not! Question is, why she can’t? Years ago, when Theatre NO99 started its international touring, my professor Ingo Normat from theatre school said: yes very good, of course, but you do not do anything particulary new, you just act on better level, thats why you are invited. Another bothering voice in my head. I think he was right and wrong in the same time – yes, we didn’t really brought any new dimension to the field of political theatre at this point, but what we clearly did, we crossed the border between actors and spectators, we recognised ourselves as members of the society. We acknowledged, that there was a border before. And yes, our actors were good, making some “quality acting”. Over following years we gazed several times into abyss of society and as it was predicted, abyss gazed into us, not always in a pleasant way. But that’s another story. Here I would like to concentrate on the quality of performative act itself as the base for any kind of transgression. I will be using our recent production “72 days” as a case-study to describe a few principles in the work with the performers.

Biography 

Tiit Ojasoo (b. 1977) Estonian theatre director and teacher. Graduated from Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre he worked in most of Estonian theatres. On 2005 he and Ene-Liis Semper created Theatre NO99, a serial art project, lasted until 2018. During that time his works were presented in numerous stages over Europe, including Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Festival d’Avignon, Wiener Festwochen, NET Festival Moscow etc. His recent international works were in Burgtheater Wien and Great Drama Theatre St. Petersburg.

Sanni Lindroos, Stockholm University
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In the early afternoon of the 17th of January 1987, an auditorium at the Oulu City Theatre in Finland is filled with theatre professionals and representatives of the cultural field. Four students from the Helsinki Theatre Academy who call themselves the Theater of God (Jumalan Teatteri) are about to present to the theatre festival audience what they have declared as a manifest about “what theatre can nowadays be, and what it cannot be” (Hotinen, 1987, 390). Four young men enter the stage and proceed to cause a chaotic scene by throwing yoghurt and feces at the audience, discharging a fire extinguisher and one of the performers cutting his wrist with a razor blade. The audience escapes and the members of the Theater of God are soon arrested. A nation-wide scandal is born, and the two-minute act radically shifts the public discourse on the state of theatre and professional actor training in Finland. The Theater of God’s Oulu act has been categorized as everything from an avant-garde performance to an act of terrorism. This paper approaches the happening as a transgressive performative and explores its aftermath through the framework of anthropologist Victor Turner’s conceptual social drama. Turner defines social dramas as “units of aharmonic or disharmonic process, arising in conflict situations” which consists of four chronological phases of public action: breach, crisis, redressive action and finally reintegration or schism (1974, 37). The paper investigates how transgression manifested in the Theatre of God’s Oulu act through the breakage of corporeal, psychological as well as performative boundaries. Recognizing the Oulu act as the breach in the social drama which unfolded, the crisis phase is discussed in the specific context of the cultural tensions of Finland in the 1980’s and the Theatre Academy’s controversial training methods at the time. The extensive redressive actions, from legal processes to probations and terminations of employment, are discussed together with the “sub-breaches” which appeared as protests against the redressive actions and maintained the crisis phase. Finally, the paper addresses the complexity of determining whether the social drama resulted in reintegration or a schism. 

Hotinen, Juha-Pekka. ”Jumalan teatteri.” Mitä-Missä-Milloin, Kansalaisen vuosikirja 1988. Helsinki: Otava, 1987

Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. 

Biography

Sanni Lindroos received her Master’s degree in Performance Studies from Stockholm University in January 2022. Her thesis “A Number, A Noose, A Nipple: Three Interventions in the Construction of Performative Nationhood During the Finnish Independence Day Reception” investigated embodied acts of protest in the context of performative nation-building. Her research usually gravitates towards the construction of scandals in the Finnish society.