Drama Boreale: Abstracts 6 August 2026
Mari Kortelainen and Tero Kaunisvuo
The metamorphic movement and materiality in the context of interdisciplinary arts pedagogy
Bios
Mari Kortelainen has been working as a dancer-choreographer, performance creator, dance educator, and community artist nationally and internationally since 2007. In addition, her work has included various tasks related to promoting accessibility and equality in art and culture. Kortelainen has developed and deepened her artistic and pedagogical practice, which respects bodily experience, for 20 years. She has continuously refined her skills and strengthened her practice by studying for a master’s degree in dance (2022) at the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Theater Academy.
Tero Kaunisvuo has solid experience in interdisciplinary work. He is a professional musician, sound designer, and music educator who boldly navigates the terrain of different musical traditions and experimentation. Kaunisvuo’s special expertise lies in providing and realizing sonic possibilities in productions with art education goals and in supporting the development of a relationship with music in both teaching and lifelong learning.
Ruth Hol Mjanger, Stine Nielsen Ellinggard, Marianne Nødtvedt Knudsen and Mette Bøe Lyngstad
Nordic Release: Dramapodden
In the format of a podcast episode, Ruth Hol Mjanger (Professor at NLA University College) and Stine Nielsen Ellinggard (Associate Professor at OsloMet) will lead the Nordic launch of the Norwegian-produced ‘Dramapodden’. The initiative is the main activity in the project Drama and Theatre in Primary School and Teacher Education, which was initiated in spring 2025 following a matter raised in the National Academic Council for Drama and Theatre Studies in Norway. With the podcast, we aspire to be a scholarly voice that showcases the diversity of practices in drama and theatre in education, highlights the potential to contribute to education pathways, and motivates the field to continue its efforts. In this way, the new initiative addresses all the conference themes.
In the release, Mjanger and Ellinggard, the project lead and deputy lead, will invite guests into the “studio” to present the purpose of the podcast and content from the first episodes. The guests are primarily members of the project’s steering group. Perhaps there will also be a surprise guest? In addition to the lead and deputy lead, the steering group consists of Erle Slagsvold (NLA), Marte Liset (UiT), Marianne Nødtvedt Knudsen (UiS), Linn Terese Bern (INN), Dorthe Gunnhildsdatter Hagen (INN), Mette Bøe Lyngstad (HVL), Wenche Torrissen (NORD, KKS), and Kari Strand (DTP). The presentation will take place in a mix of Norwegian and English.
Bios
Ruth Hol Mjanger is a professor of drama, art, and culture at NLA University College, and has been working in teacher education for more than 20 years. She works at the intersection of art, pedagogy, and artistic research, with particular emphasis on embodied practices, relational encounters, and existential questions. Her artistic research is closely tied to the co-creative work of the duo Frantzsen&Mjanger. Mjanger has extensive experience leading international, interdisciplinary collaborations in teacher education.
Ann Karin Orset
How can participation in mask work develop expressive skills that foster democratic and socially sustainable societies?
The ability to express oneself—verbally and physically—and to understand others’ perspectives is essential for meaningful human interaction. Yet, most educational contexts prioritize verbal language skills over physical and visual expression. This imbalance is concerning, as bodily communication is fundamental to how we connect and collaborate.
Neutral mask training (Lecoq, 2000; Orset, 2017) offers a powerful approach to developing physical expressiveness. A neutral mask is a full-face mask with minimal character, traditionally used in theater training. When wearing the mask, verbal speech and facial expressions are removed, placing full emphasis on the body as a communicative tool. This creates a unique starting point for exploring, observing, and discussing body language. In neutral mask practice, participants alternate between performing, observing others, and reflecting on their experiences—building awareness, insight, and skills for creating meaningful physical expression.
The workshop will provide hands-on experience with neutral mask work and invite participants to reflect on how such practices can serve as arenas for exploring communication, empathy, and perspective-taking—key competencies for democratic participation and socially sustainable communities. Please note: It is desirable that workshop participants attend in dark or black, loose-fitting clothing.
Bio
Ann Karin Orset is Director at the Norwegian Centre for Arts and Culture in Education, Nord University, Norway. She is an Associate Professor in pedagogy and holds a PhD in the science of professions. Her doctoral research examined how theatre pedagogues teach physical expression through neutral mask work. With a background in drama and theatre specializing in physical theatre and mask techniques alongside teacher education, Orset has extensive experience in research, teaching, and supervision in higher education. Her current research focuses on how to create more democrat.
Pilvi Porkola
Four experiments in performance pedagogy on artist pedagogy and practice
How do artists teach? How does artistic thinking become pedagogical practice? What kind of pedagogical and artistic experiments would force social change?
In this presentation, I will talk about my project SOFA – Conversations on Utopias, which was a series of performance discussions in Helsinki in the spring of 2024. The discussions took place in public spaces, in four different locations around Helsinki. Eight invited guests sat on a sofa and shared their thoughts on activism, care, future urban planning, the politics of art, and utopia.
I will follow utopian studies as a theoretical framework to consider the politics of performance pedagogy. Theatre maker and researcher Selina Busby develops utopian pedagogy in the context of applied theatre and defines it as practices of social justice, communal ways of doing, understanding ethical practices, and in the end: practices of hope. In the context of art pedagogy, the concept of utopian pedagogy offers an opportunity to reflect on the politics of art pedagogy as a utopian practice and to examine what could be and make space for what is perhaps coming.
Bio
Dr. Pilvi Porkola is an artist, researcher, pedagogue and writer. Currently she works as a University Researcher at Uniarts, Helsinki. The current topic of her research is Performance Pedagogy – Politics of Art Pedagogy. Her research interests include performance art, performance studies, artistic research, arts-based methods and intersections between arts and sociology. As an artist she is interested in everyday life, performing and objects.
https://pilviporkola.com/
Wenche Torrisen
Truth and reconciliation as part of the Cultural Schoolbag: An exploration of the school performance Fuck, fuck, fuck
This paper explores how theatre can function as a force for engagement and a site of productive friction in educational contexts shaped by historical injustice. It draws on an empirical study of the youth performance Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, commissioned by Troms County (Troms fylkeskommune) in response to Norway’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The production was developed by Beaivváš Sámi National Theatre, Kvääniteatteri, and Hålogaland Teater, and toured to all upper secondary schools in Troms through the Cultural Schoolbag (DKS) in 2024. The paper examines how adolescents experience theatre as a pedagogical intervention in reconciliation processes. The performance was framed as a three-part pedagogical process: classroom preparation, an outdoor theatrical event, and post-performance reflection. Based on analysis of 182 student responses from 12 schools, the paper identifies six youth narratives that articulate ways of relating to theatre, reconciliation and responsibility. These narratives range from experiences of historical learning and affective, bodily engagement, to expressions of uncertainty, resistance to the theatrical form, and scepticism toward reconciliation as a political project. The analysis is informed by theories of moral imagination and relational reconciliation (Lederach), affect and embodiment, and theatre as a public arena for disagreement (Böhnisch). Rather than treating resistance, emotional overload as pedagogical failure, the paper argues that friction, discomfort and unresolved disagreement are central to the educational force of theatre pedagogy in contested social fields. Theatre emerges here not as a tool for consensus or closure, but as a space where young people are invited into a shared, risky and unfinished process of meaning-making. By foregrounding youth perspectives, the paper contributes to discussions on theatre pedagogy and social change, collaborative learning, and the advocacy of drama and theatre pedagogy in formal education. It also raises critical questions about the institutional conditions required for theatre pedagogy to sustain its force.
Bio
Wenche Torrissen is Professor of Theatre at the Norwegian Centre for Arts and Culture in Education, Nord University, and Volda University College. She holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research spans applied theatre, theatre history, and arts & health, focusing on how aesthetic learning can support wellbeing and social change. She has led Scandinavian research projects on theatre in mental health, drama in education, and accessible performance. She co-founded the Nordic Journal of Arts, Culture & Health and was principal editor (2019–2024).
Sonja Kessner
Dark Literacy
Is there a dialectic relationship between dystopian thinking and a potential utopian Political Imaginary and if so – how can this interconnection be implemented into artistic strategies and theatre education?
Even though utopian thought and image production have a long and productive legacy in art history and educational concepts, there seem to remain a list of unsolved problems regarding e.g. positionality and perspective, a suspected incompatibility of freedom and equality, the problem of utopian concepts’ unalterability and the dangers of totalitarianism. Even though dystopian strategies are being valuably critizised in many ways and do not tend to be taken into consideration within the field of theatre education, the presentation follows the hypothesis that dystopian thinking can be especially effective when artistically responding to the highly complex social, political and environmental problems of our times. Reasons for that may lie in dystopian art’s dialectic operating principles that incorporate contradictions and paradoxes and do justice to the urgency of the problems whilst solutions can occur as collective scenarios within the audience’s imagination. Within her PhD project Mapping Dystopia Sonja Kessner therefore engages with dystopian thinking and image production as a strategy for politically engaged performing arts. Her presentation focuses on Dark Literacy, which is a dialectic twist to the concept of Futures Literacy, developed by UNESCO since 2018. Within laboratories, different groups of people are being trained to imagine alternative futures as utopian responses to the complex crises of the present. The concept of Dark Literacy builds on theories and methods of Futures Literacy Laboratories, but shifts the premises and practices towards the dystopian. Based on the assumptions that imagination is the decisive tool for shaping possible futures and that imagining dystopia can enable utopian thinking, the methodological approach of Dark Literacy aims to make an innovative contribution to questions of both knowledge-production and worldmaking. The presentation provides an insight into the project’s theoretical and conceptual background and gives practical examples from Sonja Kessner’s studio work and teaching experiences. This sharing of practice can thus be of interest for both theatre practitioners and pedagogues.
Bio
Sonja Kessner has an education in acting, a Bachelor’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin and a MfA in Performing Arts from Stockholm University of the Arts. She is currently doing her PhD at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK), focusing on dystopian thinking as a strategy for politically engaged performing arts. She works as a dramaturg for puppetry, theatre director and musician and teaches at universities at the interface of art and anthropology.
https://linktr.ee/sonja_kessner
Teemu Mäki, Minna Koskenlahti and Marja Rautakorpi
Kuolemanharjoituksia/Training for Death
Kuolemanharjoituksia/Trainign for Death is a multidisciplinary and participatory live art piece. It’s a flexible and scalable work that always includes a lecture, a poetry reading, a dance segment with live music and participatory physical exercises.
The goal is helping the performers and participants in finding or creating a more peaceful and fruitful connection to their own mortality. Thus its mode is ”learning together”.
The script is by Teemu Mäki, who has performed versions of it with a rotating cast of musicians, dancers, actors and pedagogues. For the Drama Boreale 2026 he offers a 60-minute version with musician Minna Koskenlahti and a dancer/pedagogue. The version will include a short performance lecture, poetry reading, dance solo and participatory physical exercises. The main focus will be in the participatory part, because of the themes of the conference.
The lecture part of the work is an inventory of various ways in which humans have dealt with death: A) religious dreams of everlasting life, B) denial of death (= seeing death purely as the enemy & forgetting death as long as possible), C) technological dreams of everlasting life, D) learning to live with death.
The lecture part ends with this kind of proposal: ”Accept your death and the finiteness of everything, learn to see that not as a source of sorrow, but as the wellspring of meaning and passion, since if there was no death we might not be able to see much value and meaning in anything — and couldn’t be passionate. This is the rational solution… …but it’s not enough. Even if you accept the rational solution, you will still live with fears, frustrations and the constant danger of losing meaning of your life. Thus, something else is needed too. So, we move on by other means…”
The poetry section includes 1-3 poems that deal with the challenge that death proposes to us. The poems are presented either as spoken or as texts projected on the wall. Should the latter method be used it will be done with live music.
The dance solo is with live music.
The participatory part contains 3-6 physical exercises that the performers show and teach to the participants. Most of the exercises are duets, i.e. done with a partner.
1st version of the work was done for the Pispala Church in November 2024. Mäki will be performing new versions of it in 2026 for example in Kirpilä Art Museum and Hietsu Is Happening! concert/performance series in Helsinki.
Read more: Kuolemaharjoituksia / Training for Death
Bios
Teemu Mäki (b.1967, in Lapua, Finland)
I’m a director (theatre/dance/film/opera), visual artist, writer and researcher, based in Helsinki, Finland. A Doctor of Fine Arts from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (2005). Title of Docent in Artistic Research (The Research Institute of the University of Arts, Helsinki, 2025). I’ve been a freelancing artist since 1990, except for the years 2008–2013, when I was the Professor of Visual Art in Aalto University. In other words: I make visual art, write books and scripts and direct works for screen and stage. www.teemumaki.com
Minna Koskenlahti, musician: https://minnakoskenlahti.com/
Marja Rautakorpi, dancer, choreographer, dance teacher: https://maxkatalogi.uniarts.fi/people/marja-rautakorpi/
Siri Ingul
Metamodern Oscillation: Responding to Generation Z’s Longing for Meaning Through Theatre Pedagogy
Theatre students arrive at our university burdened by unprecedented global complexity at the same time as they seem to crave authentic emotional expressions. This presentation examines how aesthetic strategies and pedagogical approaches inspired by meta modernism can address young adults’ profound need for meaning-making through theatre education and production.
Drawing on our production På liv og død with first-year students at the University of Agder in 2025, I investigate how meta modernism’s core aesthetic strategy, oscillation can function as a guiding tool for directing as well as a transformative pedagogical tool in teaching theatre. Metamodern oscillation allows us to navigate between seemingly contradictory poles: emotional engagement and critical distance, naivety and sophistication, individual expression and collective belonging.
Empathetic reflexivity was one of the metamodern strategies that our production employed through revealing narrative construction while deepening emotional investment. Our interdimensional staging visualized oscillation between worlds; and transformed audiences from passive observers to active jurors deciding the protagonist’s fate. When students witnessed that the audience members consistently expressed hope through their voting, they in turn experienced theatre’s capacity for re-enchantment, opening the potential for wonder and transcendent within our secular educational context.
As described, this body of thoughts can provide a potential response to the needing characteristics of Generation Z’s that according to sociologist Emilia von Hauer are vulnerability, community-orientation, and the need for authentic emotional expression and creative outpour. A student theatre production can in other words provide a structured space for students to collaborate and explore linear narratives and emotional truths collectively without intellectual shame, oscillating between complexity and clarity while generating meaning and agency.
A metamodern framework in a student theatre production may in my experience accommodate a laboratory for hope, a space where young people can choose the future, choose to believe something is worth fighting for even in our complex time.
Bio
Siri Ingul is an associated professor at the Department of Performing and Visual Arts at the University of Agder. Her main field of interest is the actor’s craft, and her artistic background includes international collaborations and extensive touring. Her performing past transforms into a broad teaching practice on BA and MA level at UiA. She has also taught in other institutions, among them The University of Copenhagen, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and NORD University. In this context she focuses on metamodern aesthetic strategies.
Erle Slagsvold and Ingrid Thorjussen
Playing our part – Embodying new perspectives or reproducing old patterns? Investigating friction between person and role, as PETE-students work with Forum Play
Playing our part – Embodying new perspectives or reproducing old patterns? Investigating friction between person and role, as PETE-students work with Forum Play.
Examining three student cases in an interdisciplinary collaboration between theatre pedagogy and physical education: Looking at how Forum Play mediate friction between person and role and may challenge, raise awareness of, or reproduce existing attitudes toward diversity and inclusion among PETE students.
The concept of f(r)iction highlights the tension revealed through aesthetic doubling as students act both in role and as individuals, navigating group dynamics and inner role-conflicts. Also raising questions of multiple levels of consciousness that emerge during performative exploration of diversity and inclusion. Framed by Boal’s social coding (Engelstad, 2001), Szatkowski’s concept of aesthetic doubling (Szatkowski, 1985) and Stanislavski’s inner world, illuminating internal forces shaping experience and agency (Stanislavski, 2017).
Teacher education curates an important arena for developing students’ critical awareness regarding exclusion and marginalization in the face of diversity. Research show that exclusionary practices, such as pedagogies privileging sport and competition, persist despite curriculum goals emphasizing collaboration, respect for diversity, and lifelong enjoyment of movement (Furulund, & Bjørke, 2024). Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) constitutes a space to discuss and explore possible actions for a more inclusive practice, creating an arena for practicing and changing the roles students inhabit dealing with this subject. Looking into how frictions between person and role influence students’ awareness of diversity and inclusion as prospective teachers. Also critically reflecting on the teacher’s role: To what extent the learning environment allowed students to act differently or reinforced the issue the project seek to address.
The project has been conducted three times; This paper focuses on the most recent session in November, with follow-up interviews in December. Analysis is ongoing, and no conclusion has yet been reached. Using a narrative inquiry approach, data has been collected through researcher logs, audio recordings, student reflections, and individual interviews.
Bios
Erle Slagsvold: Lecturer in Drama and Theatre, Department of Teacher Education, at NLA University College. Her research and teaching focus on the interplay between theatre pedagogy, embodied experience, and psychological well-being in education and society. She employs practice-based artistic research methodologies.
Ingfrid M. Torjussen: Associate Professor at Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Department of Teacher Education and Outdoor Studies. Her research and teaching focus on Physical education, diversity, and inclusion, with a specialization in outdoor education and the sociology of sport.
Sharon Coyne
Theatre Pedagogy and Social Change. Theatre of the Lost and Found.
Can creating and performing a play really be transformative for hard-to-reach young people?
How can creating a play with a group of young people who are struggling at school, on the cusp of exclusion or are in alternative education, such as Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), really support their grow as young people?
This paper focuses on a case study of one group: the Penwithen Boys. These seven young lads were all excluded from mainstream schools and have criminal records. The paper tells the unlikely story of the Penwithen Boys project. It describes how they created a play reflecting their lives, and how they performed it in Latvia at ’The Festival of Love.’ This study highlights the power of drama intervention at a critical time in adolescence. It explores the impact of excluding young people from mainstream education and shows how they may respond differently in a drama environment compared to formal educational or institutional settings. During the project, I saw how theatre improved the boys’ self-esteem, engagement, collaboration, and resilience.
Significantly, the paper also shares how I tried after a gap of 17-years to track down the same boys and understand what, if any, effect the drama project had on their lives. It notes theatre strategies that I used to empower young people with challenging situations and is a reminder of the importance of theatre work as a dialogue and a platform to give young people a voice.
This paper is not a fairy story but illustrates the realities of trying to teach drama to those who have often been failed by society. How we judge our success is also an important element of this presentation.
Bio
Dr. Sharon Coyne applied theatre practitioner, playwright and Artistic Director of Vita Nova, a community theatre group for those in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. Her work with marginalised communities has included Refugees, Gypsies and Travellers and excluded young people. She sees theatre as a way of celebrating those who have often been left behind. She is Theatre Officer for National Drama. Her book Theatre of the Lost and Found: Drama Education with Marginalised Youth will be published by Routledge 2026.
Sanna Saarela, Tinja Sinivuori, Sanna Pennanen and Karoliina Salmi
Inclusive theatre: Building Accessible Practices with Disabled Performers
This presentation is based on the forthcoming book (working tittle) Kaikkien teatteri, written together with my colleague and published in early 2026. The book explores the founding and facilitation of a theatre group for disabled performers. It offers both practical tools and theoretical background for inclusive theatre-making, grounded in developmental and pedagogical approaches.
The work covers topics such as group curriculum, accessibility, sensory sensitivity, clear communication, the role of assistants, and the structure of teaching sessions. It also presents a variety of drama exercises—games, improvisation, movement work, and process drama—adapted to support diverse participants. The final chapter describes a performance process created with the group, emphasizing collective ownership.
Trust, safety, and individual attention are central throughout. Facilitators are encouraged to reflect on their role not as directors, but as co-creators who foster a space of equality and creativity.
The book will be made freely available to all readers, and we aim to translate it into English within a year, pending funding. Through this work, we want to promote inclusive theatre both in Finland and internationally, including via the ongoing Nordic Inclusive project.
In the presentation, I have a possibility to be joined by 1–3 disabled actors from our group. They will share their personal perspectives on why theatre matters to them, and how participation has impacted their lives. Their voices are important to this work and essential in challenging ableist structures within the performing arts.
Bios
Sanna Saarela is the Executive Director of the Finnish Amateur Theatre Association and a long-time advocate for inclusive theatre. She has extensive experience in working with disabled theatre groups and recently led the first group of disabled students to complete extensive basic education in theatre arts in Finland. Their final performance was presented in Norway and received wide media attention throughout the process.
Tinja Sinivuori, Sanna Pennanen & Karoliina Salmi are disabled actors who graduated in spring 2025 from the first Finnish group of disabled students to complete extensive basic education in theatre arts. Tinja has also acted on television and continues her professional artistic work. Sanna and Karoliina are now taking their first steps into the cultural field by working as producers for the Finnish Amateur Theatre Association’s Erityinen event, which is inclusive theatre festival.
Andrei Levent Atabay, Ioana Rufu and Varty Mihail
Sensitivity and Inner Mask through Commedia dell’Arte
The workshop proposes a practical exploration of the relationship between the self and the inner mask, inspired by the principles of Commedia dell’Arte and the activation of sensory awareness. The approach aims to identify and explore the archetypal mask as a manifestation of inner impulses pre-existing within the participant’s bodily structure. The working process integrates physical exercises and sensory explorations designed to develop listening, responsiveness, and physical availability. Sensory awareness is activated through direct contact with the environment and its stimuli, fostering an immediate and unmediated relationship with bodily experience.
The encounter with the mask is conceived as a process of discovery rather than rational selection. The mask functions as a revelatory device that facilitates the emergence of organic structures already present, amplified through prior sensory experience. In this context, the study of the mask does not aim at representation or character construction, but at the recognition and support of authentic presence.
The workshop is conceived as a practice-as-research approach, grounded in two methodological pillars: Commedia dell’Arte and sensory theatre, employed as working tools within theatre education. Elements from the natural environment are integrated as support for the experimental process, without constituting a thematic focus in themselves, providing the conditions for direct and authentic contact with inner impulse. The primary objective of the workshop is the development of conscious sensory awareness, understood as an essential component of self-discovery and artistic formation.
The workshop is addressed to theatre practitioners, educators, educational facilitators, trainers, and coordinators of educational programs interested in somatic, sensory, experiential, and artistic methods in processes of development and learning.
Keywords: Inner mask, Commedia dell’Arte, Sensory theatre, Practice-as-research, Embodied practice, Theatre education, Experiential learning
Bios
Andrei Atabay holds a BA in Acting and an MA in Theatre Pedagogy from I.L. Caragiale National University of Theatre and Film, Bucharest, where he is currently an Teaching Assistant. He has performed in numerous state and independent theatre productions and has 10 years of experience as a drama teacher, leading workshops and personal development sessions for children, youth, and adults. He currently teaches drama and Improvisation at Bravissimo Art School and Buluc Company.
Dr. Ioana Rufu is an actress and University Lecturer in Commedia dell’Arte and Movement at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” (UNATC), Bucharest. She specialized in Commedia dell’Arte techniques in Venice and studied theatre pedagogy. Her teaching includes Commedia dell’Arte, movement, clown, biomechanics and mask work.
Varty Mihail is an actress, drama teacher and researcher in socially relevant theatre. A graduate of UNATC “I.L. Caragiale” in Acting and Theatre Pedagogy, she is currently a third-year PhD candidate in Theatre and Performing Arts, researching theatre as a tool for intervention, transformation, and social support.
Kristian Knudsen, Marianne Nødtvedt Knudsen, Remi André Slotterøy, Christer Fredriksen and Kjetil Kro Sørborg
Sounds of frictions – exploring transdisciplinary practices in upper-secondary arts-education in Norway
The starting point for this presentation, is two workshops with upper-secondary students in music, dance and drama in Norway. Our focus is directed towards what emerges in the spaces between curricula, students, teachers and materials, when they intra-act in transdisciplinary ways (Østern et. al., 2019). We understand these entangled spaces as spaces of friction, that are affecting not only artistic outcomes but also teaching practices, student participation and the agency of materials. For instance, curricula become a fluid matter, rather than fixed, and teachers create a transdisciplinary practice across guiding, co-creating and responding to artistic dialogues. By implementing an a/r/tographic approach to how teaching practices are produced through the practices of artmaking, researching and teaching (Triggs & Irwin, 2019), we take a closer look at moments from the workshops, where friction was created. These moments are presented through sound and text examples created by both students and teachers (Kvile et. al, 2025) and we ask; What does a transdisciplinary practice sound like, and how might text take shape when it is made across art subjects?
The presentation is part of a broader inquiry in the research project KUSK // The Art of developing Competence and Knowledge for the future at the University of Agder, where we explore how concepts such as deep learning, transdisciplinary and performative approaches to learning may revitalize arts pedagogy for the future, with inviting more open, experimental and relational forms of teaching and learning.
References:
Kvile, S., Jenssen, R. H., Storsve, G., Fjeldstad, M. Y., & Sæterdal, I. D. (2025). Pushing Paradigms: Feminist Posthumanist Theories and Storytelling in Music Education Research. Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education, 9(2), 62–80.
https://doi.org/10.23865/jased.v9.6905
Triggs, V. & Irwin, R. L. (2019). Pedagogy and the Artographic invitation. In R. Hickman. J. Baldacchino, K. Freedman, E. Hall and N. Meager (Eds). The International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education(pp. 1-16). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Østern, T. P., Dahl, T., Strømme, A., Petersen, J., Østern, A. L. & Selander, S. (2019).
Dybde//læring – en flerfaglig, relasjonell og skapende tilnærming. Universitetsforlaget.
Bios
Kristian is Knudsen a Professor in Drama/Theatre at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, University of Agder. His main research areas are arts-based research research and applied drama/theatre. He is the Head of the researchgroup ”Music, Dance, Drama – Interdisciplinary Practices and Educational Discourses” with a focus on arts education in upper secondary schools in Norway. Kristian has also been editor of the journal ”Jased – Journal for research in arts and sport education” and books on arts education (such as; Østern & Knudsen, 2019; Skregelid & Knudsen, 2022).
Marianne Nødtvedt Knudsen is Associate Professor (MA) in Drama and Theatre at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Agder. She teaches and supervises in contemporary theatre, MA in Fine Arts, and drama and theatre in teacher education. She has worked artistically and process-oriented with different citizen groups like prisoners, children, youths, immigrant girls and women, older people etc. She runs Gatelangs tehatercompany. Her artistic research interests are in social art practice, a/r/tography, performative learning skills, site specific art/performance/theatre.
Remi André Slotterøy (MA) is a PhD Research Fellow in drama and theatre at the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Agder (UiA). He has experience as a university lecturer at UiA, drama and music teacher in upper secondary school, guitar teacher in municipal culture schools, musician and stage artist. His doctoral project explores how a performative approach to drama education and the new national curriculum can create potentials for drama educational designs in Norwegian upper-secondary schools.
Christer Fredriksen is a Norwegian guitarist, composer, and educator whose work is situated within sound-based artistic research. His practice combines elements from jazz, ambient, and experimental music, with an emphasis on timbre, spatial awareness, and listening as an embodied and reflective process. He teaches music, composition, and guitar at Vågsbygd Upper Secondary School, where his pedagogical practice intersects with his artistic research. Fredriksen’s work is engagement with soundscape ecology and deep listening, approaching sound as a relational phenomenon shaped by environmental, social, and perceptual contexts.
Kjetil Kro Sørborg is a lecturer in theatre at Vågsbygd Upper Secondary School. He is active as a freelancer in performing arts projects, working as a director, dramaturg, mentor, and performer. Sørborg holds an educational background in theatre and music. His artistic and pedagogical work spans a wide range of performance practices, including documentary performance, dance theatre, collective devised theatre, music theatre, text-based forms. Much of his work has been rooted in interdisciplinarity, collaborating across dance, music, visual arts, and literature.
Mette Lyngstad and Silje Folkedal
What are the motivating factors in a processdrama for young students
How does the Teacher-in-role (TIR) in a process drama help creating connections between the students life and their roles; What is the difference of playing an archer in the Sherwood Forest oppose to playing an archer in Sherwood Forest who has to make sure everyone has pointed their arrows in case some strangers come in? Through the process drama The Outlaws we explore the Second dimension of role according to Gavin Boltons theory. In this presentation we will explore the staring passage of the drama using the teacher in role as a main angle.
Bios
Mette Bøe Lyngstad, is a professor in drama and applied theatre at Western Norway University of Applied sciences. Her interest is drama in the classroom, and drama and theatre in the applied field. She is a narrative researcher, and a research leader for the research group Negotiating Neglected Narratives.
Silke Birgitte Folkedal: Silje is an associate professor in drama and applied theatre at Western Norway University of Applied sciences. Her special interest is drama, acting, voice and movement. Her experience for teaching in different level and in different institution are important for her international work in: Theatre in Mathematics (TIM).
Elin Thoresen and Linda Rios
The Theatre Wardeobe – Spatial Aesthetics and Fictional Framing in Children´s Dramatic Play
This study examines how aesthetically staged environments function as catalytic agents in shaping children’s play, narrative production, and sustained engagement with fictional frameworks. The Theatre Wardrobe is conceptualised as an arts‑based pedagogical laboratory wherein spatial aesthetics, material affordances, and dramaturgical design operate not merely as contextual backdrops, but as constitutive forces that participate in meaning‑making. The project is situated within research traditions that theorise space as performative, relational, and co‑creative, and positions the pedagogue as an aesthetic interlocutor whose embodied and imaginative engagements influence the emergent dynamics of play.
Employing a multi‑modal, longitudinal methodological design, the study integrates systematic observation, photographic documentation, group conversations, and children’s reconstruction of spatial arrangements as forms of narrative inquiry. These data enable an analysis of “aesthetic traces”—physical residues, spatial transformations, performative gestures, and evolving storylines—as indicators of how children negotiate, stabilise, and reconfigure fictional worlds over time. The project interrogates the impulses that initiate play in staged environments, the temporal evolution of children’s spatial practices, and the ways in which children re‑mediate their experiences through reenactment, extension, and imaginative elaboration.
Theoretically, the study draws on autographic perspectives that foreground the entanglement of artistic, pedagogical, and research practices, as well as hermeneutic and play‑theoretical frameworks that understand play as a mode of being‑in‑the‑world. Within this context, the pedagogue is examined as a co‑performer whose aesthetic choices and facilitative stance shape the conditions for role‑taking, immersion, and dramatic exploration without imposing narrative direction.
Conducted in collaboration with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Barnas kulturhus, and partnering early childhood institutions, the project also investigates how The Theatre Wardrobe may function as a transferable model for extending aesthetic and dramaturgical practices into everyday educational settings. By foregrounding the interplay between spatial design, artistic intervention, and children’s imaginative agency, the study contributes to broader discussions on the role of aesthetic environments in education.
Bios
Elin Thoresen is an Associate Professor in Drama and Applied Theatre, originally trained as an Early Childhood Education teacher. Since 2004, she has worked in higher education, contributing to the development of pedagogical practices and arts-based learning environments. Her academic interests center on exploratory teaching and learning, communal and relational learning, and artistic and arts-based research. Elin’s work emphasizes creative inquiry and collaborative processes, often placing children and students at the heart of educational exploration.
Linda Rios is an Associate Professor in Drama and Applied Theatre, originally trained as an Early Childhood Education teacher. She has extensive experience as an Art Educator, an Art Facilitator and as a Storyteller. She has developed and conducted a variety of Arts based programs for Children in Bergen. Rios has also extensive work experience within the field of Early Childhood and has worked as an Early Childhood Education Teacher and Supervisor in Norway.
Riikka Talvitie
Collaborative Learning in Opera Creation
The traditions of theatre and opera creation differ strikingly: in theatre, a performance is often understood as an interaction between performers and the audience, whereas in opera the starting point is primarily the composer’s score. A similar distinction can be observed in the pedagogical practices underlying both fields.
Opera as a Multiartistic Collaboration is a year-long course that has been organized twice at the University of the Arts Helsinki. It brings together students of composition, vocal music, and classical instrumental music from the Sibelius Academy, as well as students of dramaturgy, directing, and stage design from the Theatre Academy. On both occasions, the course began with an open opera seminar, continued throughout the year in the form of workshops, and culminated in three approximately 20-minute demo performances. The course is a joint effort of several educational programs.
This presentation examines the course from the perspective of collaborative learning. The course offers multidisciplinary encounters that challenge traditional pedagogical approaches and foster new forms of artistic collaboration. The analysis is based on student feedback and participant interviews, complemented by the teacher’s reflections on co-teaching.
The University of the Arts has not previously implemented a similar process in which creating a new opera would include teaching libretto writing, composition, and directing. Since collaboration between educational programs brings structural challenges, the aim of this study is to develop the course practices and integrate research-based multidisciplinary reflection into its structure when it resumes in autumn 2026.
Keywords: collaborative learning, contemporary music, co-teaching, opera, theatre pedagogy
Bio
Composer Riikka Talvitie completed her artistic doctorate The Composer in Flux: Towards Dialogic Practice at Uniarts Helsinki in 2023. Talvitie’s artistic works often integrates text, dramaturgy, and multimedia techniques. From 2021 to 2025, Talvitie served as a composition lecturer at Uniarts. Her achievements include the State Prize for Music (2022) and the International Prize for Artistic Research in Music (2025). She is currently conducting a research project funded by the Kone Foundation The Legacy of Modernism – A Case Study of Individual Teaching in Music Composition.
Aase-Hilde Brekke
Children and Cultural Heritage
The entire course of education from kindergarten, primary school to teacher education in Norway are built on humanistic and Christian values and cultural heritage. In addition, Norwegian and Sami traditions are referred to as our common cultural heritage, and we have five National Minorities: Kvens/Norwegian Finns (people of Finnish descent in Northern Norway), Jews, Forest Finns, Roma and Romani people/Taters. The teacher education shall also teach students how to strengthen international and multicultural perspectives in the school’s work, and stimulate democratic participation and sustainable development.
The challenge is among others that the teacher education doesn´t have mandatory teachings in any aesthetic subjects, which means there is no requirement to teach about the storytelling, songs, theatre traditions, dances, literature, poems, fine art traditions, handicraft traditions etc., from different cultures and peoples.
The paper suggests how storytelling through drama and theatre can give some tools to learn more about our own cultural heritage, as well as we can learn more about other cultures. Cultural heritage and storytelling are important ways to empower children and youths, and the paper will show some examples of this kind of work.
Bio
Aase-Hilde Brekke grew up in the Northern part of Norway. Brek has been working with film, theatre and photography and as a visual – and performance artist since 1992, and exhibits art worldwide. MA with the title “Meditative Presence,” a survey of the performance ”The Artist Is Present”, by Marina Abramović, in the light of Tibetan Vajrāyāna Buddhism. She has done research, films and photo exhibitions of Tibetan Ritual Masked Dance Cham, on the UNESCOs List of World Heritage in Danger. Expert member i ICICH International committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Heli Aaltonen, Anna Maapalo and Pauliina Maapalo
Agential Forces and F(r)ictions in Performance-Based Arts for the Wellbeing of Seabird
Between 1950 and 2010, approximately 70% of the world’s avian populations have disappeared. A similar trend is evident in Norway, where seabird populations have been monitored by SEAPOP since the 1970s and many species are now classified as endangered. The causes of seabird decline are complex and interrelated, including the loss of their homes and access to food. This presentation examines agential forces and f(r)ictions in two site-specific, community-based performance projects conducted in Nesna and Trondheim, focusing on two seabird species: the Great Cormorant and the Mew Gull.
The projects involved partnerships with Trondheim International School, Rotvoll Steiner School, Nesna Kindergarten, and the Zahl Children and Youth Theatre Group in Nesna. The overall aim was to experiment with play and performance-based practices in order to challenge anthropocentric understanding of identity and foster ecocultural identity. Historically, seabirds have been vital to human survival along the Atlantic coast, giving rise to diverse traditions, narratives, rituals, and festivities. However, from an eco-phenomenological perspective, there is an urgent need to revise harmful traditions and to re-story coastal landscapes and relationships between human and more-than-human worlds. These two Norwegian case studies form part of the Norwegian Research Council-funded project CoastARTS, which positions the humanities as a critical response to contemporary coastal crises.
The presentation discusses how avian knowledge and performance-based practices—such as storytelling, documentary filmmaking, puppetry, multimedia art, and applied theatre—can open potential spaces for change. By organizing interdisciplinary workshops and public events involving artists, ornithologists, children, and educators, the local cases aim to cultivate hope, build resilience, and empower local communities to advocate for seabirds.
This f(r)iction-led and diffractive research emerged through entanglements of multiple agential forces, frictions, and fiction-making processes. Methodologically, the research draws on the performative research paradigm and is informed by post-qualitative, new materialist, and critical posthumanist theories, emphasizing material-discursive and affective engagements between humans and seabirds.
Keywords: Great Cormorant, Mew Gull, performative research paradigm, performance-based methodology, coastal crises, slow hope, agential realism, CoastARTS.
Bio
Associate professor in drama and theatre, PhD, Heli Aaltonen teaches drama and theatre for bachelor and master students at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim. During the last 10 years she has been developing a post-humanist approach in applied drama work. In 2025 she started as principal investigator in a three-year long European research project, CoastARTS: Coastlines as Zones of Ecocultural Crises – Shaping Resilience through Transnational Performance-based Arts: https://chanse.org/coastarts/ and https://www.ntnu.edu/ikm/research/coastarts.
Heidi-Tuulia Eklund
What do teachers learn from drama? – Teachers’ professional growth and the development of pedagogical skills in drama and theatre education processes
In this presentation, the focus will be on research findings on teachers’ experiences of incorporating drama/theatre conventions into their teaching. The research material consists of interviews with 13 teachers from different levels of education, conducted in 2023/2024. The teachers’ experiences are approached from the perspectives of artistic and experiential learning (Kolb, 2006) based on Korthagen’s theory of professional development (Korthagen & Nuijten, 2022) and professional identity development (Beijaard et al., 2017). The ethnographic-narrative research approach has been well suited for analysing interviews and examining professional identity, as ethnography allows for shift between art and social experience, thereby producing stories about those in teaching (Douglas & Carless, 2009; Heikkinen, 2015; Viirret, 2020; Mönkkönen et al., 2024).
In the present author’s doctoral research, recurring themes were identified in the narratives of in-service teachers who teach drama and theatre. These themes included personal growth as a person and as a teacher, the desire to teach holistically, and the desire to create a safe learning environment for learners. Moreover, teachers’ concerns regarding the status of arts subjects in society, and the well-being of young people, are reflected in the narratives. Teaching drama and theatre has developed teachers’ listening and interaction skills, their ability to adapt to changing situations, and their understanding of their learners’ needs and the importance of a supportive learning environment (Eklund, 2024). Drama teachers’ professional growth is an overall multisensory reflection, in which personal experiences, emotions, values and beliefs are interwoven, raising awareness of lifelong learning (Eisner, 2002).
The findings indicate that comprehensive and long-term professional development opportunities are necessary for the formation of art teachers. This requires balance between arts education expertise and drama pedagogy skills, as well as a shared dialogue on the significance of the arts in learning.
Bio
Heidi-Tuulia Eklund is a professional vocal pedagogue and lecturer in music and drama. She has directed to the stage, written scripts, created process dramas for and with her students, and trained teachers in using drama in the classroom. She is a Ph.D. student at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Music, Arts and Culture Studies, majoring in Art Education. The focus of her dissertation is on teachers’ professional growth, and the development of their pedagogical skills in the processes of drama and theatre education from primary to upper secondary levels.
Kari Strand
Join the book – series of process drama for elementary school
Bli med inn i boka is a project that consists of a learning resource for teachers with a series of process drama. Books are brought to life through process drama, where pupils actively participate in practical learning, play and creative exploration. Step-by-step recipes and inspirational short videos provide everything needed for teachers to carry out process drama with their pupils.
In addition to the learning resource, Bli med inn i boka has been on tour to 44 classes in first and fourth grade in Primary school in 2025 and will continue touring in 2026. The school tour is combing outreach with process drama in school – and inspiration and competency building for teachers in their own classroom.
Bli med inn i boka aims to give pupils a desire to read and to practice reading comprehension. The goals were set by the Norwegian Directorate of Education, which is funding the project.
The project has been developed by the association Drama- og teaterpedagogene. At Drama Boreale we will share experiences from the development phase of the project and the school tour to (44 classes/1100 pupils/40 teachers)
Bio
Kari Strand works as the general manager of the Norwegian association Drama- og teaterpedagogene (DTP). In parallel with her position at DTP, she has toured periodically in Den Kulturelle skolesekken for 12 years with a number of art-projects in which pupils actively participate. Strand has a bachelor in Drama and Theatre Communication from OsloMET, and is a graduate of the Norwegian School of Economics with a specialization (siviløkonomutredning) on audience development for the National Theatre. She also has further education in Contemporary Literature for Children.
Laura Tikka
Inside Circus Arts Higher Education: Teachers’ Perspectives on Teaching Practices in an International Context
Modern circus, an art form with a 250-year history, is enjoying growing global popularity. Although circus skills were traditionally transmitted within families, since the 1980s training has shifted from apprenticeship models to formal education, leading to the first higher-education programs. Despite this development, research on circus education remains scarce, and remarkably little attention has been given to the perspectives of circus teachers (Funk, 2017; Langlois, 2014). This gap highlights the need for updated insights into the profession of circus educators, who play a crucial role in students’ pathways toward becoming professional performers.
This study explores higher education in circus arts from teachers’ perspectives in an international context. Drawing on theories of skill acquisition and student-centred, constructivist learning, it examines pedagogical practices as well as the skills and competences required of teachers. Furthermore, the study investigates the unique teacher–student relationship in circus education, a learning environment characterized by physical risk and trust.
Sixteen higher education institutions offering a BA degree in circus arts worldwide were invited to participate in the research. In autumn 2025, empirical data were collected through semi-structured online interviews with 17 teachers from nine circus schools across the world. The data have been analysed thematically, and the findings will be published in a series of articles.
This research aims to deepen understanding of circus education globally from teachers’ perspectives. The findings are expected to inform the development of circus pedagogy, advance circus education, and support teacher training programs.
Additionally, this study contributes to the field of performing arts higher education research and more broadly to arts education.
Bio
Laura Tikka is a doctoral researcher at the University of Turku with over 25 years of experience as a circus performer and teacher. She holds an MA in educational sciences and is a qualified professional teacher and circus arts performer. She has contributed both to the European Core Curriculum for Youth and Social Circus Pedagogy and to the local Finnish Basic Arts Education curricula. Her doctoral research examines higher education in circus arts from teachers’ perspectives in an international context, with a particular focus on pedagogical practices.
Elsa Szatek and Nina Dahl-Tallgren
Epistemological f(r)ictions and potentials when striving towards a performative pedagogy
Following Hanna Kaihovirtas & Nina Dahl-Tallgrens presentation, this paper explores how the empirical material produced in the Smil project is filled with contradictions. The empirical material consists of teachers’ logbooks and interviews collected across pre-primary, Grade 4, and Grade 7 classrooms participating in a two-year design-based research process (Bakker, 2019; McKenney & Reeves, 2019). In this presentation, the focus is on the teachers’ perspective as they describe how concepts such as role, fiction, and playfulness enable alternative pathways for learning and relationality in the classroom. Although the benefits of a performative pedagogy are many, the empirical material also exposes a notable hesitation among teachers to implement performing arts more fully in their everyday practice. In dialogue with posthuman perspectives (Barad, 2007; Ringrose m.fl., 2019) we will pay attention to some of these frictions and tensions. A point of departure for this is the writings of philosopher Anne-Marie Mol (2002;115) who states that ‘frictions are vital elements of wholes’. With this in mind, we will discuss what these frictions produce as different epistemological trajectories simultaneously clash, resonate, and co-exist smoothly in the intra-action of performing arts and school. This study contributes to the symposium theme by illuminating how performing arts can transform learning environments while also generating contradictions that must be negotiated. We also wish to put forward a discussion on how the researcher can embody an aesthetics of care (Thompson, 2015) when initiating creative processes that, among other things, create spaces of insecurities.
References:
Bakker, A. (2019). Design research in education: A practical guide for early career researchers. Routledge.
Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2019). Conducting Educational Design Research (2nd edition.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315105642
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press.
Ringrose, J., Warfield, K., & Zarabadi, S. (2019). Feminist posthumanisms, new materialisms and education. Routledge.
Thompson, J. (2015). Towards an aesthetics of care. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 20(4), 430–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2015.1068109
Bios
Elsa Szatek Ph.D. / post doc./ lecturer in teaching and learning in drama and theatre at the university of Gothenburg, Academy of Music and Drama. Since 2024 Szatek is also part of the Nordic performing Arts research team. In her research, Szatek is especially interested in theatre practices situated at the intersection of art, education and social change. Theoretically most of her work is informed by spatial and posthuman theories. She is currently undertaking a post doc in applied theatre, focusing on community theatre.
Nina Dahl Tallgren is a post doc researcher in the master’s programme in Theatre Education at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her work focuses on performative pedagogy, artistic research, and participatory practices in education. She is project leader of the SMIL research project, which explores creative and embodied learning processes through drama and performance-based methods, and she leads the NPARN researcher network.
Rannveig Thorkelsdóttir
Performative Methods in Education: Theatre as a Pedagogical Space Paper presentation
As artists and researcher–practitioners, we understand research and practice as interconnected processes, continually shaping, challenging, and expanding each other. In our ongoing research project, The Space Between (2020–2026), we draw on Lynn Fels’ (2012) framework for performative inquiry. The study has two main aims: first, to investigate whether—and in what ways—drama or performance can be conceptualised as a meaningful mode of learning. Second, to examine and critically reflect on our own practices as artists and researcher-practitioners, thereby constructing bridges between pedagogical and theoretical dimensions of teaching and learning. This exploration of Space Between is what we expect from our teacher trainees. The study is situated within a performative research paradigm, which is recognised as a force that can bring about change and development in both artistic and educational practices (Bolt, 2016; Haseman, 2010; Schoonenboom, 2017; Østern et al., 2021). According to Fels (2012), performative inquiry is a way of being engaged in research on stage, in the classroom, in relationships with one another, and in the environments within which we find ourselves, both collectively and individually. With this in mind, we created a Chamber Theatre performance with our teacher trainees at the University of Iceland, aiming for the performance to serve as a learning site for classroom learning.
Bio
Rannveig Björk Thorkelsdóttir (PhD) is Professor of Drama and Theatre Education at the University of Iceland, School of Education. She is an experienced educator in drama teacher education. Here, primary research areas focus on drama and performative approaches to teaching and learning, as well as the impact of theatrical performances on children’s learning. She currently serves as Chair of the Research Centre for Drama and Theatre at the University of Iceland
Kristian Knudsen
Moments of dissonance and Harmony – Developing performative practices across arts education in upper-secondary school
In this workshop we will explore, how the performative researcher can navigate in the complexity of engaging in performative research processes. Based on theories from postqualitative research and new-masterialism, the performative researcher understands knowledge as knowledge-in-becoming and as the constant creation of difference through researcher entanglement with the research phenomenon and wider world. Such an approach to knowledge and research might create frictions within long-established notions about what research is and should be, however it can also be viewed as an opportunity to develop research projects that lies outside both quantative and qualitative research paradigmes.
After a short introduction to the theoretical backdrop of a performative approach to ABR, the participants’ own ongoing research- projects and/or interests will be subject to the exploration of how their research can be approached performatively.
Bio
Kristian Knudsen is a Professor in Drama/Theatre at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, University of Agder. His main research areas are performative research, Arts Based Research and applied drama/theatre. He has been Co-editor for the journal “JASEd – journal for research in Arts and Sports Education” and other books related to Arts Education and the role of Art in contemporary society. He is also Head of the researchgroup ”Musikk, Dans, Drama – tverrkunstneriske praksiser og utdanningsdiskurser ” with a focus on arts education in upper secondary schools in Norway
Åsa Backéus
”When I was eight years old, I left my home, never to return”
The Tolerance Project is a long-term initiative for social sustainability. It is about helping young people find their role and identity within a positive social context.
Within the Tolerance Project, students learn about human rights, the consequences of intolerance, and the conditions necessary for democracy and coexistence, reflect upon ethical dilemmas and personal responsibility. It is a form of learning that uses history as a frame of reference, constantly connecting the “there and then” to the “here and now.” In our youngest group (ages 11–12), we work with Sámi history and contemporary Sámi issues, while with the older youth we use the Holocaust as an historical backdrop.
The teaching of The Tolerance Project combines lectures, storytelling, discussions, reflection and creative work, with drama pedagogy playing a central role. In this workshop, you will take part in elements of a process drama exploring the nomad schools that Sámi children were compelled to attend during much of the 20th century. The purpose of the drama is to deepen understanding and insight into oppression and the dynamics of power, both historically and in the present.
Bio
My name is Åsa Backéus, and for more than 20 years I have worked as a drama pedagogue at Kulturcentrum Asken in Borlänge, Sweden. In my work I meet children and young people aged 3–16, as well as their teachers, in a varied practice where drama serves a range of functions. Over the years, I have focused increasingly on drama for language development and on strengthening democratic values.
Hannah Kaihovirta and Nina Dahl-Tallgren
Transformative Encounters: students becoming-with Performing Arts and Performative Pedagogy in Finnish Schools
We as an artist, teacher and researcher examines how performative pedagogy can act as a transformative force in primary and secondary education, drawing on empirical material from the ongoing Finnish research and development project SMIL – Performing arts within learning (2023–2026), conducted in Finland. Performing arts in this context refers to theatre, drama, dance, circus and literary arts. The study investigates how students’ experiences performing arts in school becoming-with bodies, emotions, materials, and relations in the classroom. How does performing arts reconfigure learning environments, pupils’ experiences of agency, creativity and belonging?
Grounded in a performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry (Østern et al., 2021) and inspired by Barad’s (2007) agential realism, we examine how pupils’ voices and actions intra-act with phenomenon-based and interdisciplinary arts engagements. This approach aims to expand learners’ epistemic repertoires by integrating multimodal expression with critical reflection, enabling students to navigate complex concepts through relational, culturally grounded practices. Through phenomenon-based learning and interdisciplinary engagements that merge literacy, social justice, STEM, and community arts practices, school students co-construct learning experiences that foreground interpretation, perspective taking, and creative risk. Ultimately, this work proposes performative pedagogy as a transformative design for equitable educational innovation, fostering agency, authenticity, and imaginative citizenship across diverse school communities.
References:
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
Østern, T. P., Jusslin, S., Nødtvedt Knudsen, K., Maapalo, P., & Bjørkøy, I. (2021). A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Research, 23(2), (p. 272-289).
Bios
Dr. Hannah Kaihovirta is a Senior Lecturer and Docent in arts education at Faculty of Educational Sciences at University of Helsinki. Her research is art-informed, focusing on speculative inquiry, visual literacy, and visual practices in higher education, with particular interest in diversity, multilingualism, and social justice as learning. She is currently PI for VISLU Research, PI for Art Interventions in Schools, and PI for SKAPA KHRIZOME, and a member of SMIL steering group.
Nina Dahl Tallgren is a post doc researcher in the master’s programme in Theatre Education at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her work focuses on performative pedagogy, artistic research, and participatory practices in education. She is project leader of the SMIL research project, which explores creative and embodied learning processes through drama and performance-based methods, and she leads the NPARN researcher network.
Remi Slotterøy
Towards a Performative Drama Educational Practice: Entangling Time, Space, Body and Text
This paper presentation examines how a performative approach (Østern et al., 2024) can contribute to emerging drama educational practices. The presentation builds upon Slotterøy’s article “Towards a Performative Drama Educational Practice: Entangling Time, Space, Body and Texts” (in progress), which is part of his ongoing PhD project. Through practical examples from teaching in the subject Theatre Ensemble with 1st-year pupils in a Norwegian upper-secondary school, the presentation will highlight how a drama educational potential can emerge from a teaching design where time, body, space, and text are not treated as stable categories, but as fluid, entangled, and co-constituted through performative processes. In the project, we also ask; what can time, text, space and text be(come)?
Drawing on Karen Barad’s concept of performativity, the presentation emphasizes how learning emerges through intra-actions between human and non-human actors (Barad, 2003;2007; Szatek, 2023), and proposes a drama educational framework that embraces uncertainty, materiality, co-agency, and frictions. The presentation will explore how a performative approach disrupts and challenges traditional reform pedagogy, drawing on John Dewey (1916) and established drama education frameworks (Heggstad & Heggstad, 2022; Kirk & Krøgholt, 2018; Sæbø, 2016). This opens a space for re-thinking drama education as a relational, aesthetic, and artistic event rather than a representational practice.
With the new Norwegian curriculum (LK20) emphasis on exploration and creativity, this also seeks to contribute to understanding how drama educational practices can transform, be transformed, and contribute to curriculum implementation. This shall be explored through the following question: How can performative approaches to time, space, body, and text re-imagine drama educational practices in upper-secondary school? Further, this work seeks to contribute to international debates on the role of drama education, offering ways to understand teaching and learning as open-ended and dynamically unfolding processes.
Bio
Remi André Slotterøy (MA) is a PhD Research Fellow in drama and theatre at the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Agder (UiA). He has experience as a university lecturer at UiA, drama and music teacher in upper secondary school, guitar teacher in municipal culture schools, musician and stage artist. His doctoral project explores how a performative approach to drama education and the new national curriculum can create potentials for drama educational designs in Norwegian upper-secondary schools
Andreea Jicman and Bogdana Adina Cretu
Theatre Education in Romania: a brief overview of the steps taken by UNATC over the last 10 years
This presentation aims to highlight the steps taken by UNATC over the past ten years in implementing theatre education for different age groups and diverse target audiences, emphasizing its educational, social, and therapeutic value.
Starting from the premise that a central goal of education is to prepare individuals for life, and that theatre contributes to this by fostering empathy, a non-judgmental attitude, teamwork, creativity, and personal expression—both literally, through diction exercises, and metaphorically—the university has initiated a wide range of activities, projects, and programs involving both students and faculty. These initiatives also support the development of skills for managing stress and conflict within group dynamics.
The research activity has been carried out along several directions, including:
(1) theatre as a strategy for improving teaching, learning, and assessment processes in pre-university education;
(2) theatre as a form of extracurricular activity in pre-university education;
(3) theatre as a subject within the national curriculum;
(4) theatre as a strategy for improving teaching, learning, and assessment processes in higher education;
(5) theatre as a form of cultural engagement for students in partner universities;
(6) theatre as a method for developing social coexistence skills among children and young people, supporting their inclusion in the community;
(7) theatre as a means of building communication bridges between artists and children and young people nationwide and internationally, through an (inter)national caravan;
(8) applied theatre as a form of reintegration for people deprived of liberty;
(9) applied theatre as a means of improving the quality of life of hospitalized children;
(10) applied theatre as a strategy for the integration of refugee children;
(11) theatre as a method for developing communication and interpersonal skills among gifted children and young people;
(12) continuing education programs for pre-university teachers and theatre graduates.
Bios
Dr. Andreea-Diana Jicman is Assistant Professor and Head of the Centre for Pedagogic and Didactic Training at UNATC “I.L. Caragiale”. She has studies in communication, theatre pedagogy, psycho-pedagogy and she is involved in various research projects and in the publication of resources in the field of theatre education.
Dr. Bogdana Darie is Professor and Dean of the Theatre Faculty at UNATC; she is currently teaching acting at the BA course and Theatre Didactics at the Department of Doctoral Studies. She is also the author of books and academic courses, and she coordinates several projects within the university, such as the “UNATC Junior” project.
Mark O’Thomas
Forces and F(r)ictions in the Drama School: Pedagogical Ecologies and Institutional Tensions
Drama schools, understood here as higher education institutions devoted to professional actor and theatre-making training—often situated within or alongside a university framework—exist within a constant play of forces: between art and education, tradition and innovation, autonomy and accountability. This paper, drawn from my forthcoming monograph What’s the Point of the Drama School?, examines the contemporary drama school as a dynamic site of both friction and creativity, where pedagogical ideals collide with institutional realities.
Focusing on recent shifts in actor and theatre-making training in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other parts of the world, I analyse how drama schools negotiate competing demands—professional employability, inclusion, artistic freedom, and public value—while maintaining their distinctive pedagogical identities. Through a comparative lens, I ask how friction can be understood not as failure but as a generative pedagogical condition: a productive tension that produces new knowledge, artistic practices, and communities of learning.
Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Erika Fischer-Lichte’s concept of the autopoietic feedback loop (2008), Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the field of cultural production (1993), and Judith Butler’s idea of performative agency (1997), I frame the drama school as a site where aesthetic, institutional, and social forces intersect to produce embodied forms of knowledge. Methodologically, the paper combines qualitative data—including interviews with educators, institutional documents, and reflective practitioner inquiry—with conceptual analysis. It argues for conceiving drama schools as pedagogical ecologies sustained by the very frictions they seek to resolve, and for recognising friction as both a creative and ethical force through which arts institutions can remain sites of experimentation and democratic learning within an increasingly instrumentalised educational landscape.
Bio
Professor Mark O’Thomas is Principal and Chief Executive Officer of the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA),. A theatre scholar, practitioner, and translator, he has held senior academic positions including Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Greenwich and Dean at Newcastle University. He previously worked as a director at the BBC and as a dramaturg at the Royal Court Theatre. His research explores the intersections of performance, pedagogy, and institutional culture, with a particular focus on the civic and ethical purposes of actor training.
Carly Everaert and Mira Thompson
Interdependence On Disability Justice and the (Performing) Arts, a Crip-Centered Collaborative Learning Practice
In this 60-minute session, we share how we teach in the performing arts by centring disability, chronic illness, and interdependence. We do not treat these as topics but as ways to create knowledge together. Our approach is rooted in disability justice, regenerative artistic research, and Everaert’s concept of altarscenography, which defines spaces of care, solidarity, and attention.
It is important to us that we actively take participants’ access needs into account. While we recognise that no space can ever be fully accessible to everyone, we aim to create a space where people arrive feeling welcome, warm, and at ease. For us, this means participants are explicitly invited to relax both their bodies and their minds, while remaining open to information, reflection, and thinking together. In our sessions, people have chosen to lie on the floor, lean back, or find any position that feels good for their body. We see this as a way to include the body in learning, not as a sign of disengagement.
Mira Thompson will join our session online to demonstrate how hybrid formats can support access, authorship, and presence. We will engage in a shared reading of Mia Mingus’ Access Intimacy during the session, as it has been central to our work. This reading is a way to begin thinking about interdependence as a foundation for learning and living together.
Through guided reflection, Mira will share an example of when she experienced access intimacy, and we will invite you to share yours. This will show how friction between bodies, technologies, and institutions can be a resource rather than a barrier. We invite you to experience learning as something we do together, not just something passed from one person to another.
Bios
Carly Everaert is an acclaimed costume scenographer and educator, winner of the 2022 Proscenium Prize. Since 2009, Everaert has taught at Amsterdam’s Academy of Theatre and Dance, focusing on costume, sustainability, and embodiment. They champion inclusive theatre education and curate the ”Radical Thinking” course on socio-political embodiment. Recent work includes Disability Justice teaching materials and research on robotics. Everaert’s innovative, inclusive work makes them a leading voice in theatre education.
Mira Thompson is a singer-songwriter rooted in vocal jazz and narrative songwriting. She studied voice at HKU Utrecht Conservatory, exploring language as a tool for emotion and wit. Her debut EP “Festina Lente” (2019) led to performances at Mozaïek Theatre, Frascati, Casco Art Institute, and tours in Germany and France. Central to her work is cross-disciplinary collaboration. Mira writes on disability, language, and activism (Metropolis M, Parool, Change Now, IDFA, OneWorld), and lectures on accessibility and disability justice. She teaches at the Amsterdam University of the Arts and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Mira is a member of Feminists Against Ableism and provides access services, including voice narration, image descriptions, and live captions. She is a leading voice in disability justice and accessibility in the arts.