Drama Boreale: Abstracts 7 August 2026
Nina Dahl-Tallgren
Forces and f(r)ictions of performative pedagogy: becoming-with performing Arts and curriculum and reconfiguration learning within compulsory education
Performing arts enhance learning, deepen engagement, and foster social, ethical, and participatory competencies. Despite this evidence, performing arts continue to occupy a marginal position within many educational systems, rarely being recognized as autonomous areas of knowledge or as full arts-and-skills subjects.
This keynote asks: What might education become if we allow it to be shaped together through artistic practice?
This keynote explores how performative pedagogy (Dahl-Tallgren, 2024; Jamouchi, 2023; Knudsen & Anundsen, 2024; Slotterøy & Knudsen, 2024; Østern, Dahl et al., 2024; Østern, Illeris et al. 2024) emerges and is reconfigured through the research project Performing Arts in Learning (SMIL), where theatre, drama, dance, circus and literary art are embedded as situated, iterative interventions within compulsory education. Rather than functioning as methodological additions to teaching, these practices are understood as generative forces that actively reshape classroom intra-action, didactic structures, and the conditions for learning. The keynote builds on practice-based and design-oriented research. Theoretically, the keynote draws on performative pedagogy as a relational, embodied and emergent approach to education, and on posthumanist perspectives, particularly Karen Barad’s (2007) concept of intra-action. From this perspective, learning is understood as something that continuously emerges through entanglements of bodies, language, materials, spatial arrangements, and institutional conditions. The classroom is an active material-discursive environment that participates in shaping what learning becomes. Drawing on performative pedagogy and posthumanist thinking, I approach the classroom as an active, living environment where knowledge is constantly being made and remade. Methodologically, the keynote is informed by artography (Irwin & Springgay, 2008) positioning inquiry as an entangled practice of artist, teacher, and researcher. This enables attention to the affective, embodied, and relational dimensions of educational processes, where knowing is inseparable from doing, sensing, and becoming-with practice. The tension between: the artistic and educational logics, representation and experience, and the roles of artist, teacher, and researcher, are productively sustained and reconfigured as part of pedagogical inquiry itself. Empirically, this keynote demonstrates how performative pedagogy generates both enabling forces: such as expanded participation, embodied understanding, and shared meaning-making and productive frictions including tensions between curricular structures and emergent artistic processes, as well as between control, openness, and pedagogical responsibility. These frictions are not treated as obstacles but as constitutive conditions of educational practice. The keynote foregrounds these frictional spaces as central to understanding performative pedagogy: the tensions between control and openness, curriculum and emergence, artistic freedom and educational responsibility.
This keynote argues that performative pedagogy and performing arts reconfigure what knowledge is and how it comes into being. This presentation proposes a shift in perspective: exploring what becomes possible to learn, experience, and understand. In doing so, it positions performative pedagogy and performing arts as a necessary dimension of contemporary education.
References:
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe halfwway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
Dahl-Tallgren, N. (2024). Towards a Performative Pedagogy: An educational design study of three Theatre-In Education programmes. [Doctoral thesis, Åbo Akademi University]
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/189966?locale=lsv
Irwin, R. L. & Springgay, S. (2008). A/r/tography as practice-based research. In StephanieSpringgay, Rita L. Irwin, Carl Leggo & Peter Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with A/r/tography (pp. xiii–xxvii). Rotterdam.
Jamouchi, S. (2023). A performative approach to wool felting: Rhizomatic relations in visual arts making and art education. [Doctoral thesis, Agder University].
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3069978
Knudsen, M.N, & Anundsen, T.W. (2024). Mellom hengivelse og kritisk distanse: Erfaringer fra performative kunstfaglige utdanningsrom. In T.P. Østern, H. Illeris, K. N. Knudsen., S. Jusslin, & K. Holdhus (Eds.), Kunstfagdidaktikk – som kunstnerisk, forskende og oppmerksom undervisningspraksis [Arts education as artistic, research-based and attentive teaching practice] (pp. 117-135). Universitetsbokforlaget.
Slotterøy, R. A. & Knudsen, K. N. (2024). MDD-læreren i et a/r/tografisk perspektiv: Kunstfagdidaktiske mulighetsrom i og gjennom et performativt møte med læreplanen i musikk, dans og drama. In T.P. Østern, H. Illeris, K. N. Knudsen., S. Jusslin, & K. Holdhus (Eds.), Kunstfagdidaktikk – som kunstnerisk, forskende og oppmerksom undervisningspraksis [Arts education as artistic, research-based and attentive teaching practice] (pp. 87-100). Universitetsbokforlaget.
Østern, T.P., Dahl, T., Bjørkøy, I., Hovde, S.S., Golovátina-Mora, P., & Martin, R. (Eds.) (2024). Performativ læring. Skapende og samskapende utdanning [Performative learning. Creative and co-creative education]. Universitetsforlaget.
Østern, T.P., Illeris, H., Knudsen, K.N., Jusslin, S., & Holdhus, K. (Eds.) (2024). Kunstfagdidaktikk som kunstnerisk, forskende og oppmerksom undervisningspraksis [Arts education as artistic, research-based and attentive teaching practice]. Universitetsforlaget.
Joachim Reiss
Advocacy for drama and theatre in education: How to use UNESCO “Framework” for real implementation of drama/theatre in formal education
The Status of theatre in education is very different in our countries, but we have a new tool for our advocacy with the UNESCO Framework, formally decided by all our governments. I will give a short introduction about UNESCO’s steps from 2004 (Finland) – 2006 Lisbon – 2010 Seoul – 2013 Paris – 2019 Frankfurt – 2023 Paris – 2024 Abu Dhabi. Then we will share the situations and our efforts in our different countries according to the implementation of the Framework and discuss successful tactics, next steps and common activities.
Bio
As theatre-teacher in formal education and former president and representative of our national Drama in Schools association BVTS, I was via IDEA actively involved in all UNESCO steps for Arts Education since 2004 in Finland until 2024 in Abu Dhabi. I have always tried to promote in policy and civil Society Networks the implementation of drama/theatre into formal education.
Halldóra Rósa Björnsdóttir, Jóna Guðrún Jónsdóttir, Rannveig Thorkelsdóttir and Berglind Maria Olafsdòttir
Gumpa and Haki Visit Uncle Stone
Gumpa and Haki Visit Uncle Stone is a sound theatre workshop situated within the field of drama education and grounded in performative pedagogical theory. It foregrounds embodied, relational, and collective forms of knowledge production, examining how storytelling, role-play, movement, and sound operate as epistemic practices through which children construct meaning, negotiate perspectives, and exercise agency within a shared aesthetic frame.
Sound theatre and drama education aim to support learners’ critical thinking and expressive capacities by creating participatory environments in which multiple voices are recognised and valued. Within such contexts, children are encouraged to articulate ideas, beliefs, and interpretations, actively contributing to the co-construction of a narrative world. When students narrate and perform stories themselves, they strengthen initiative, ownership, and engagement in the learning process (Thorkelsdóttir, 2020).
Through the eyes of two Icelandic trolls, Gumpa and Haki, the workshop explores Icelandic nature through drama, language and second-language learning, social interaction, mathematical and spatial reasoning, geographical awareness, movement-based learning, and artistic, musical, and sonic expression. The workshop aims to create a brave space that fosters risk-taking, dialogic interaction, and active participation, positioning children as co-creators of knowledge rather than passive recipients. Such spaces are central to democratic, inclusive, and ethically grounded educational practices (Thorkelsdóttir, 2020).
Overall, the workshop positions sound theatre as a research-informed pedagogical practice in which co-creation, embodiment, and performativity are central to educational meaning-making and to children’s lived learning experiences.
Bios
Rannveig Björk Thorkelsdóttir (PhD) is Professor of Drama and Theatre Education at the School of Education, University of Iceland. 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.
Jóna Guðrún Jónsdóttir is an Adjunct Professor of Drama and Theatre Education at the School of Education, University of Iceland. Her work draws on extensive expertise in leading interdisciplinary and collaborative research focused on democracy and citizenship in education, as well as on pedagogical and didactical approaches grounded in artistic practice. Her research and professional practice centre on drama and drama in education, artistic approaches to teaching and learning, and art education.
Halldóra Rósa Björnsdóttir is an adjunct lecturer in drama education at the School of Education, University of Iceland. Her academic and professional interests focus on drama and drama in education. Her work explores the use of drama-based pedagogical approaches and artistic approaches to teaching and learning.
Berglind María Ólafsdóttir is a teacher and adjunct lecturer in drama education in Iceland. She teaches drama and music at the compulsory school level and is an adjunct in drama at the School of Education, University of Iceland. Her interests focus on drama education and life skills, particularly social and emotional development through drama-based pedagogy.
Nina Maunu
Movement and improvisation in language learning (Moving grammar)
The current Finnish National curriculum (2016) emphasizes both movement and drama in action-based learning, which has increasingly gained popularity in Finland and in every educational level. The learner, considered as an active individual, is encouraged to express his/her knowledge and learning also through a variety of physical activities and creative ways. However, soon there will be a new curriculum, and the need of motivating action-drama-based methods have still increased particularly in language learning, including reading and writing. We need motivated, concentrated, happy learners, who know many ways to learn and how to learn together. This workshop introduces ways of making grammar and terms related to it motivating to the learner by embodying grammar as characters and playing with them. Movements, improvisation, and drama activities motivate learners and help them to concentrate, to better understand and remember grammar, and having fun in holistic, collaborative learning. In the future that feeling increases learner´s motivation to develop also their reading and writing skills.
Session objectives are extending learning grammar into fun and joyful experience; Helping to better understand and remember grammar terms and roles; Sharing the joy of learning to make grammar characters in many ways; Increasing self-knowledge and knowledge of other learners; Expressing oneself and being creative while designing grammar worlds; Embodying grammar; Most importantly: introducing more movement and drama into learning, and specifically into learning languages, in order to activate and motivate learners.
In this workshop we test, discuss, and develop different types of movement and drama activities in language learning. Basic activities emphasize various grammar or word roles when using e.g. different types of walks, lines, contact improvisations, plays, games etc. Each one carries a meaning based on words, grammar or feeling, which transfer into different kind of movements and action in a collaborative learning. The aim is to learn through interaction and communication. When a student feels he/she can make some of his/her own choices, this student-oriented learning motivates everyone.
In this workshop we can test many ways how to make a grammar character (by asking questions, embodying characters different ways), how to be a grammar character and how to play and improvise together with other grammar characters, how to have fun in a grammar lesson.
Bio
Nina Maunu, Subject teacher in Finnish language, nominated The Finnish Language Teacher of the Year 2025 due to over 200 teacher trainings all over in Finland and abroad since the year 2010 in all levels of education as an entrepreneur and trainer specialized in action grammar and action drama-based methods in teaching and language learning. Teaching drama in a compulsory-secondary comprehensive school in Espoo, the school which emphasizes drama. Writer of the book and founder of the Facebook group (11 900 members) Toiminnallinen kielenoppiminen (Active language learning).
Adam Cziboly
Mantle of the Expert meets Artificial Intelligence: exploring agency, creativity and ethics in AI literacy
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping education, yet many teachers and students struggle to understand what AI can (and cannot) do. This 60-minute workshop introduces a Mantle of the Expert approach (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995; Allen, n.d.) to developing AI literacy while strengthening human values, ethical reflection, and creative problem-solving. Based on a three-day process designed for Bachelor drama students at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, the workshop places participants inside an imagined international educational think-tank commissioned by UNESCO to explore the question: How can we use AI in teaching while preserving our humanness?
Participants will work through selected moments from the original Mantle, including receiving a formal mandate, investigating the role of emerging AI tools in future classrooms, and engaging with dramatized case studies of lecturers and pupils drawn from real educational concerns. These narrative encounters make complex topics (like AI architectures, ethics, bias, global school systems, and UNESCO’s role in shaping educational policy) accessible, while maintaining a focus on universal human values across cultures and belief systems.
The workshop offers concrete examples of how drama education can support critical digital literacy. It demonstrates how generative AI can be explored not only as a technical tool but as a catalyst for inquiry, empathy, and imagination. The ambitious objective is to explore adaptable strategies for integrating AI discussions into teaching practice, to gain a clearer understanding of current AI capabilities and limitations, and to provide inspiration for fostering thoughtful, values-driven engagement with technology in diverse classrooms.
– Heathcote, D., & Bolton, G. M. (1995). Drama for learning: Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert approach to education. Heinemann.
– Allen, D. (n.d.). Mantle of the Expert Network. https://www.mantlenetwork.com/
Bio
Adam Cziboly is a professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), and the coordinator of Theatre SPACEs (Theatre in Social, Participatory Art, Community and Educational Contexts) Erasmus Mundus Joint Master programme. He is a drama teacher, a psychologist and a cultural manager. He initiated and led the research project DICE with the participation of 12 countries.
You Lyu
Training the Intercultural Physical Body: Theatre Pedagogy from Workshop to Stage
This presentation introduces a reproducible pedagogy for intercultural performance training, developed through my original practice-as-research production Blind Bird and its premiere performances in Birmingham (University of Birmingham, 4–5 June 2025). Aligned with the theme Theatre Pedagogy in the Process of Creating a Performance, the project treats the studio as the engine of creation, moving methods directly from workshop to stage.
The pedagogy interweaves: (1) xiqu- and Kung Fu–derived stylised dagger technique, (2) Jacques Lecoq’s pathway from neutrality to transposition toward the “poetic body,” and (3) touch-based improvisation to cultivate sensitivity and ensemble connection. These strands were structured as a five-step pipeline—teach, improvise, select, refine, stage—and tested with a novice ensemble of diverse, international backgrounds. The group comprised undergraduate performers with mixed prior training, ensuring that clarity, safety, and legibility were embedded from the outset.
A core principle fixes attacks (for readability and partner safety) while keeping evasions adaptive (for responsiveness and performer authorship). This grammar yields a legible, non-naturalistic score in which codified form meets imaginative improvisation. Performer interviews and audience questionnaires from the Birmingham performances indicate a shift from planned steps to felt phrasing, enhanced ensemble cohesion via breath and touch, and the emergence of a poetic body capable of transposing lived sensation into expressive image.
Focusing on a case study from Blind Bird—a stylised combat sequence that stages the extinction of the Great Auk—the talk demonstrates how intercultural vocabularies can be fused without flattening difference. I argue that theatre pedagogy gains force when positioned not as preparatory drill but as the compositional motor of performance. The model offers transferable tactics—anchoring timing/spacing with codified phrases, calibrating breath and tactile cues, and scaffolding novice authorship—that educators, devisers, and practitioners can adapt across intercultural training contexts.
Bio
You Lyu is a practice-led PhD candidate in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham and an East Asian theatre practitioner working in the UK. His research develops an intercultural physical theatre methodology that integrates Chinese xiqu and Kung Fu traditions with Western improvisational practices (Lecoq, Frantic Assembly). He has created original productions including An Orphan’s Dream (2023–24) and Blind Bird (2025), which examine how stylised movement and improvisation generate legible stage languages.
Bekka Vik Erlandsen
Children’s Tragedies: Staging the Uncomfortable
This paper introduces the concept of the children’s tragedy, a dramaturgical and analytical framework developed in my forthcoming book The Child Tragedy: Between Fear and Understanding. The project examines how theatre for young audiences can engage with uncomfortable and often taboo subjects such as fear, violence, grief, and psychological control without diluting their emotional impact. Rather than protecting children from difficult themes, the book argues that theatre can offer them meaningful tools for understanding and articulating complex emotions.
Drawing on performance analysis, children’s rights perspectives, and my artistic practice as a playwright and director, I explore how serious and emotionally charged material can be staged ethically, aesthetically, and with respect for children’s lived experiences. Central to the argument is the idea of fear competence: a child’s ability to recognise, process, and reflect on difficult emotions within the safety of an artistic frame. I propose that this competence is strengthened when theatre dares to portray discomfort honestly while still offering artistic clarity and emotional anchoring.
The presentation will outline the theoretical foundation for the children’s tragedy, including influences from Suzanne Osten, applied theatre, and Scandinavian traditions of realism and social engagement. I will also draw on examples from my ongoing artistic work with young performers and audiences, demonstrating how staging the uncomfortable can open space for empathy, critical reflection, and deeper emotional literacy.
By bridging artistic practice and research, this paper challenges dominant assumptions about what children’s theatre should avoid and instead asks what the field might gain by allowing complexity, vulnerability, and emotional truth on stage. The aim is to contribute new perspectives on how theatre can take children seriously—as thinkers, as feelers, and as co-creators of meaning.
Bio
Bekka Vik is a playwright, director and drama pedagogue with a master’s degree in Applied Theatre from Høgskulen på Vestlandet. She is affiliated with the DUSK research group and currently supported by an NFFO writing grant. Her work explores children’s emotional worlds, taboo themes and ethical risk-taking in theatre, and she is developing the concept of the “children’s tragedy” as both genre and method.
Hanne Kusk, Charlotte Olling Rebsdorf and Bettina Herlov Möller
The Ribbon of Nature: Performative walking
In this lecture-performance we invite the participants on a paper-performance-walk, with a focus on art, nature, walking, performance and pedagogy. We walk in the surroundings, close to the Theatre Academy. First stop on the walk is a paper conducted by Hanne Kusk: “Forces and f(r)ictions at performative walking”. In groups the participants explore the surroundings with three stops and performative explorations, mapping and archiving. The last stop is an open discussion around forces, frictions and new understandings in performance-walk, performance-processes, performative-(drama)-pedagogy, mapping, archiving and a/r/tography. The lecture-performance is based in the research project “The Ribbon of nature”, based on an Erasmus+ small scale project, with performative walking with students in Denmark and Spain. The project is international, interprofessional, inter-aesthetic and intra-active in a collaboration between Limfjordsteatret, University Granadad, Tomatierra, and University College of Northern Denmark. Art-pedagogical potentials arising from the performative walks, are explored collectively by researcher, artists, educators, students, and with the more-than-human, nature and art. As a researcher, I participate in the walks and document them by photos, video, sound and drawings. I also collect different materials created by the students in my archive. Inspired by the artists, the nature and the performative walking, I experiment with handmade paper, stories and poems in my research to explore entanglements between art, research, and performative pedagogies. The research is based in a performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry, a/r/tography), and walking methodologies. In the arts-based research the basic research question is: Which new understandings of performative pedagogies arise from performative walking with focus on nature, arts, pedagogy and education?
This performance-walk at Drama Boreale, will be a part of the project, as empiricism with photos, quotes and materials. At the same time, it is research mediation with focus on collaboration, performance, and artfulness. I bring declarations of consent for all participants. Please wear cloth suitable for the weather and for a short walk.
Bios
Hanne Kusk is PhD and senior lecturer at UCN, Denmark. Her research is mainly Arts-based, with a focus on Art-pedagogy, Drama- and theatre pedagogy, and playful aesthetic processes. She leads the Nordic research network BLÆK (Children, Play. Aesthetics and Art) with a focus on early Childhood https://blaek.net
Charlotte Olling Rebsdorf is a theatre pedagogue, performer, and educator based in Denmark. She holds a Master’s degree in Theatre Pedagogy and a Diploma in Drama Pedagogy, and is trained as a biology teacher. Her work focuses on theatre pedagogy, performance-based learning, and aesthetic and participatory processes with children, young people, and educators. Since 2016 she has been working at Limfjordsteatret as a theatre educator and performer, developing workshops, performances, and artistic learning processes.
Betina Herløv Møller is a designer and artist based in Denmark. She finished her MA in Fashion Design from the Product Department of Kolding School of Design in 2010 with focus on sustainable fashion. Her work is rooted in sensoric total designs that attempt to connect humans and nature and is driven by the investigation of how do we give shape to the questions that drive us? From 2007 till present she worked with an international group of people at Carte Blanche and The Art of Listening in the cross field of art and performance theatre in Denmark and around europe. Her work include concept development, costumes, scenography, installation, sculpture, text, sound, video, performance and also a range of artistic workshops with children and youngsters in relation to the art installations and performances. She has been working with Limfjordsteatret since 2025.
Stine Nielsen Ellinggard, Natalia Fuhry, Tanja Frank and Øystein Vestre
Drama and Theatre Pedagogy as Democratic Practice Across Borders: Friction, Community, and Performative Exploration
This workshop explores drama and theatre pedagogy as a democratic practice within an international research and education context. The project Drama/Theatre as Democratic Practice Across Borders investigates how performative methods can strengthen democratic understanding, intercultural dialogue, and artistic development. It is designed as a collaborative research initiative involving students and teachers from OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University – and Ludwigsburg University of Education.
In May 2026, twenty international students as well as two faculty members from OsloMet and two faculty members of Ludwigsburg University of Education will participate in the international children and youth theatre festival Schöne Aussicht in Stuttgart, Germany, organized by Junges Ensemble Stuttgart. The festival theme, What do we share?, invites reflection on community, equality, and opportunities across cultures and generations.
Our workshop at Drama Boreale will share insights from this ongoing research process and invite participants to engage in practical exercises that foreground democratic understanding and collaborative learning. We will address friction-filled processes, risk-taking, and failures as productive forces in artistic and pedagogical work. Diversity, while a resource, also challenges the development of structures for cooperation. By embracing these tensions, we aim to highlight how multi-voiced networks of drama and theatre pedagogues can promote both the social status of theatre and the self-understanding of the field.
The session connects to conference themes such as Theatre Pedagogy and Social Change, Collaborative Learning in Drama and Theatre Pedagogy, and Drama and Theatre Pedagogy as a Source of Empowerment. Through embodied practice and dialogue, the workshop reinforces the power of community and demonstrates how drama and theatre pedagogy can serve as a catalyst for empowerment and social transformation.
We want to share some of our experiences so far with this project.
Bios
Stine Nielsen Ellinggard is an Associate Professor at OsloMet, Department of Art, Design and Drama. Her research focuses on applied theatre, drama pedagogy, school development, drama as a learning method throughout the entire educational trajectory from primary school to higher education, and performativity. Ellinggard is the program coordinator for the Practical Pedagogical Education in Drama and Theatre Communication
Øystein Vestre – assistant professor in Drama and theatre communication, Oslo Metropolitan University. Have been working as a storyteller and drama educator for 25 years. He has been working as a class teacher in different Waldorf Schools, been instructor at different children theater schools, and also worked as a storyteller with his own artistic practice.
Tanja Frank is an academic member at Ludwigsburg University of Education, where she is responsible for the theatre pedagogy component within the Cultural and Media Education degree program (Kultur- und Medienbildung). Her work in research and teaching focuses on theatre in social, inclusive, and performative contexts, particularly at the intersection of democracy and societal transformation. She received her training at the Junges Ensemble Stuttgart (JES) children’s and youth theatre, as well as at the University of Hildesheim and the University of Hamburg, in the degree programs Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice and Performance Studies.
Natalia Fuhry is a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at the Ludwigsburg University of Education. She holds a PhD in theatre studies, with a gender-focused analysis of English and German comedies. She has worked as a dramaturge at theatres in Dortmund and Augsburg and at the Heidenheim Opera Festival. Since 2019, she has been teaching literary and theatre studies and theatre pedagogy at the University of Ludwigsburg. Her research focuses on contemporary theatre productions, gender and theatre, and the relationship between history and literature.
Viorel Cojanu, Radu Apostol and Mihaela Michailov
In Your Own Language: Integrated Theatre and the Creation of Democratic Cultural Spaces
This article examines the creation and aesthetic development of Pe limba ta (In Your Own Language), a bilingual theatre production, integrating Romanian Sign Language (LSR), from the earliest stages of the artistic process till the final design of the show. The survey addresses a persistent gap in European artistic research, concerning the methodology and practices related to the way sign languages shape dramaturgy, actor training, and collaborative authorship in integrated Deaf–hearing ensembles. Using a practice-as-research (PaR) methodology, the article draws on participatory observation in the process of documentation, semi-structured interviews and long-term engagement with Deaf and hard-of-hearing young performers and educators.
The analysis demonstrates how co-creation, embodied translation of the sign language and visual thinking produce a hybrid theatrical language in which accessibility functions not as a technical addition but as an aesthetic and ethical principle. By examining rehearsal practices, the dynamics of embodied negotiation, and the development of new signs and metaphors, the article shows how LSR reconfigures core theatrical concepts such as Gestus, psychological gesture, the construction of scenic action and a new dramaturgical language. The reflection is framed by theories of representation, integrated accessibility, and pedagogies of artistic and emancipatory inclusion, and is enriched by the conceptual lens offered by research on the emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language.
The discoveries of the artistic team position Pe limba ta (In Your Own Language) as a model for equitable collaboration between Deaf and hearing performers, highlighting the transformative potential of sign-language-based dramaturgy for contemporary performance. The article argues that integrated theatre practices generate new aesthetic forms, expand the epistemic scope of PaR, and open essential directions for artistic pedagogy and cultural policy supporting inclusive performance-making.
Bios
Viorel Cojanu is an actor, playwright, cultural manager, and co-founder of the Replika Center, where he serves as executive director. He has extensive experience in developing and implementing socially engaged cultural projects and coordinates the center’s strategic development. Cojanu is also active as an expert advisor on Romanian cultural policy. He is currently pursuing a PhD in cultural management at SNSPA, Bucharest, focusing on institutional resilience within the independent theatre sector.
Radu Apostol is a theatre director, PhD in Performing Arts, and co-founder of the Replika Center for Educational Theatre in Bucharest. His artistic practice is grounded in community-based theatre and educational performance. Apostol’s award-winning productions engage with youth, street children, and marginalized communities, addressing themes of social justice and collective memory. He has conducted artistic residencies and educational projects in Romania, Germany, and the United States, and collaborates regularly with both independent and public theatres.
Mihaela Michailov is a playwright, theatre theorist, and co-founder of the Replika Center for Educational Theatre. She holds a PhD in Theatre Studies and teaches playwriting and critical theory at UNATC Bucharest. Her dramaturgical and academic work investigates educational oppression, children’s rights, and social inequalities. Michailov has authored more than fifteen plays addressing issues such as bullying, migration, and marginalization, and has coordinated numerous creative workshops with youth, teachers, and vulnerable communities.
Elena Perez
Ripple Effects: Forces, Frictions, and Arts-Based Inquiry into Biodiversity Loss
Biodiversity loss is a deeply complex and contested issue, entangled in scientific facts, societal values, and emotional responses. Addressing such a topic requires methodologies that can hold these tensions—forces and frictions—without collapsing them into simplified narratives. The Ripple Effects project explores this challenge through an arts-based approach, creating spaces for dialogue that integrate cognitive, affective, and imaginative dimensions. Developed within an interdisciplinary constellation of theatre practitioners (an artist and a theatre academic), biologists, and engineers, the project employed practice-based research methods to facilitate 2 workshops in a local theatre setting, Rosendal teatre, in Trondheim, Norway. These workshops combined performative storytelling, devised theatre techniques, and station-based installations to invite participants into embodied and reflective engagement with biodiversity loss and its implications for societal safety.
The installations—ranging from interactive games to sensory exhibits—foregrounded ecological interdependencies, while a performative reading of a devised story provided a narrative anchor for discussion. This format allowed participants to navigate contradictions, express emotions, and articulate ideological positions in ways that conventional scientific discourse often constrains. The arts-based methodology proved vital in transforming abstract ecological risks into tangible, relatable experiences, fostering nuanced conversations about responsibility, vulnerability, and resilience. By embracing friction between disciplinary perspectives and between rationality and affect, Ripple Effects demonstrates how artistic practices can catalyze interdisciplinary inquiry and public engagement on urgent ecological issues.
Bio
Elena Pérez is a researcher and theatre academic at NTNU, working at the intersection of performance, ecology, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her work explores how artistic practices can foster dialogue on complex societal and environmental challenges.
Linn-Terese Bern
From Rehearsal to Stage: Theatre Pedagogy as a Tool for Building Performance Competence
This presentation shares insights from a project where theatre-based work served as a central strategy for developing music and music teacher education students’ communicative and performance competence. The students designed a pilot for an interdisciplinary production aligned with the framework of The Cultural Schoolbag (DKS). Theatre was positioned as a core artistic dimension in dialogue with music, exploring how these disciplines can strengthen students’ ability to convey meaningful artistic and cultural experiences to children and young people.
The study addresses three research questions:
How can theatre pedagogy contribute to the process of creating a stage production with performing musicians?
How can theatre and drama expertise be applied both in students’ teaching and as an artistic resource in developing their artistic, art pedagogical, and professional identity?
How can interdisciplinary collaboration foster experiences of mastery and enhance students’ communicative competence?
The project employs a performative approach (Østern et al., 2021) and practice-led research (Smith & Dean, 2009) to explore the dynamic interplay between students’ emerging artistic expressions, their development of performative skills, and my contribution as a theatre pedagogue. This dual focus highlights how pedagogical expertise in theatre can scaffold students’ creative processes while simultaneously informing the research through embodied practice.
The findings suggest that theatre pedagogy may offer valuable approaches to enrich music education, support students’ developing professional identity, and inspire them to create performances that meaningfully connect artistic expression with school curriculum goals.
Smith, H., & Dean, R. (2009). Introduction: Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice – Towards the Iterative Cyclic Web. In Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts (pp. 1-38). Edinburgh University Press.
Østern, T. P., Jusslin, S., Nødtvedt K. K., Maapalo, P., Bjørkøy, I. (2021) A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry, Qualitative Research. Sage Journals.
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F14687941211027444
Bio
Linn-Terese Bern is an assistant professor in drama at University of Inland, Norway. She teaches drama and theatre across teacher education programs and music education and also contributes to courses in animation and digital art. Bern has extensive experience as a drama teacher in upper secondary school and as a drama pedagogue for children and youth. She holds a cand.philol. degree in Theatre Studies, with additional expertise in storytelling, drama pedagogy, and music pedagogy.
Johanna Ilje-Lien
Inaccessible play transformations? On vulnerability in encounters with performing arts
At the backdrop of heated debates about young people’s negotiation of gender performance in Norway, director and dancer Mariko Miyata-Jancey wanted to create a dance performance. The idea was to strengthen children’s agency and curiosity while reflecting the force and poetic nature of children’s role play as a space to explore and experiment with gender identity. Through collaboration with an early childhood researcher and a dramaturge from Unge Viken Theater, Miyata-Jancey visited two ECEC centers to observe how gender expressions unfold in conversations and play among staff and children. Excerpts of observations were further developed into a performance piece and have since toured kindergartens for almost two years.
The paper revolves around the frictions between the intrinsic value of aesthetic experiences and adult expectations towards qualities and goals in relation to performance art in an early childhood context. The empirical data consists of the researchers’ follow-up interviews with staff in seven ECE centers. In their reflections upon the dance performance was an interesting friction between reporting children’s joy as an answer to the performance, at the same time as proposing the story too difficult for children to understand. During analysis the researcher became curious if this friction conceals a projection of their own uncertainty. Based on excerpts from interviews the paper investigates whether their vulnerability relates to the theme or the abstract form of the performance. The excerpts are examined through the lens of dramatic play theory by Faith Guss (2005) and Sara Ahmed’s (2005, 2019) theories on affect and utility.
References:
Ahmed, S. (2005). The Cultural Politics of Emotion (NED – New edition, 2. utg.). Milton: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700372
Ahmed, S. (2019). What’s the Use?: On the Uses of Use (1. utg.). Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478007210
Guss, F. (2005). Reconceptualizing Play: Aesthetic Self-Definitions. Contemporary issues in early childhood, 6(3), 233-243.
https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2005.6.3.4
Bio
Johanne Ilje-Lien works as an associate professor and teaches pedagogy and educational leadership in art, culture, and creativity. Her research interests are related to cultural diversity, driven by a curiosity about the connections between aesthetics and multilingualism, and since 2021 she has led a Scandinavian research network for multilingualism, aesthetics, and diversity (FEM). For nearly two years she has collaborated with Unge Viken Teater, researching how to best support children’s art encounters.
Nóra Varga
Puppetry – the performative arts’ gateway drug
Offering free theatre workshops on the outskirts of Helsinki sounds wonderful in theory, but in practice it often feels like being a vacuum cleaner salesperson. Refusal is a daily experience; many teenagers carry strong preconceptions about theatre, and the work can be humiliating. Yet, every now and then, something unexpectedly rewarding shines through those awkward moments.
Alongside my colleagues, I have a brilliant partner in crime to help spark curiosity: my creepily human like puppet Mary Lou. In her absurd existence she creates friction, disturbance, and what Skregelid (2024) calls a pedagogy of dissensus.
This lecture workshop asks how object theatre and puppetry can become a low threshold entry point for teenagers who are shy, who carry layers of performance related shame, or who come from cultures where performing publicly is discouraged — and what happens when language barriers add another layer. What can puppetry teach us about our bodies, our shared space, and our ways of working together?
In this 60 minutes session, I introduce puppetry based exercises that helped form a new theatre hobby community among participants with limited experience, including those that succeeded, those that failed, and those that generated productive friction. Alongside the workshop, I also share research supporting the use of object theatre and puppetry in art education.
Bio
Nóra Varga is a Helsinki-based theatre pedagogue, researcher, and theatre artist originally from Hungary. She earned her MA in Theatre Pedagogy from the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2021 and is currently a doctoral researcher at Åbo Akademi University, investigating how art pedagogy can combat racism and antisemitism. Her artistic practice is rooted in visual storytelling and puppet theatre. Nóri’s work explores the intersection of education, performance, and minority inclusion in democratic societies.
Tamara Pomoriški
Collective Dramaturgy in Devising Theatre: A Case Study of Youth Performances Inspired by WWII Oral Histories
This presentation explores the intersection of historical memory, intergenerational dialogue, and collective dramaturgy within the context of youth devising theatre. The presentation is based on an ongoing PhD research project analysing seven site-specific productions created between 2018 and 2025. This research examines a unique methodology originally rooted in the Dutch “Theater Na de Dam” initiative, which has been adapted and developed for the Czech socio-cultural landscape.
The core of the research lies in the process of “organic growth”—how young participants (adolescents) transform their personal encounters with survivors and their authentic, often traumatic testimonies into poetic and performative structures. The presentation focuses on the “Collective Dramaturgy” model, examining how the roles of the dramaturg, director, and participants shift and overlap. A key tension explored is the balance between spontaneous artistic expression and the necessity for a logical narrative structure.
Crucially, the projects do not remain in the past; they use historical inspiration to identify and address urgent, “burning” issues relevant to today’s youth. By bridging historical trauma with contemporary struggles, the creative process becomes an act of advocacy for human rights. Furthermore, the research reflects an ecological consciousness, considering the sustainability of artistic practice within our environment.
By analysing specific site-specific interventions—such as railway stations or the crypt of the St. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral—the session will demonstrate how the environment influences dramaturgical decisions. Methodologically, the study is anchored in qualitative research and detailed case studies, including interviews with participants and experts. The aim is to offer innovative strategies for “sensitive memory work,” bridging the gap between historical “forces” and contemporary artistic and social “frictions.”
Detailed documentation and visual archives of the seven analysed productions can be accessed here: https://tinyurl.com/r8nnhk44
Bio
PhD candidate at DAMU, Prague, specializing in collective dramaturgy and historical memory. From 2019 to 2025, Tamara Pomoriški served as Artistic Director at Memory of Nations Theatre (Post Bellum), developing methodologies for innovative theatre projects focused on social justice and oral history. With 15+ years of experience as a director and dramaturg, Tamara Pomoriški has led numerous international workshops and presented at conferences (Dublin, Vienna, Rome) on intergenerational dialogue and sensitive memory work, bridging historical trauma with contemporary human rights advocacy
Kristina Johnstone and Lelia Bester
Theatre-making, speculative histories and rehearsing the future: The creative process of Automaton(tik) (2025)
This paper considers the pedagogical and theatre-making process of Automaton(tik) (2025) which took place in 2025 at the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Automaton(tik) was created as an extension of a book of poetry by the same name (du Plessis 2025), written in remembrance of the patients of the Fort England Psychiatric Hospital, which opened in 1875 in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), South Africa.
The book stems from the study of hospital archives in the form of doctors’ case files of patients housed there in the early twentieth century. The case files and surrounding writings reveal prevailing views, steeped in scientific norms and colonial practices of the time, of patients with dementia and chronic mental illnesses as ‘hopeless incurables’ and ‘permanently deadened’ (in du Plessis 2025:xviii). Noting that ‘the overwhelming majority of the case file entries dehumanize the patients’, the book searches for fragments that offer glances of individuality and agency to create counter-narratives and restore dignity to the patients.
This paper reflects on how the theatre-making process of Automaton(tik) continues the ‘critical fabulation’ or speculative narrative methods set up by the book, which refuses ‘the possibility of recovery … and yet [labours] to paint as full a picture as possible’ (Guilmette 2023:441). Through an embodied research and pedagogical process, using script-writing, and physical and sonic devising, we propose that performance becomes a mode of reordering and confronting the past in order to rehearse better and more just futures. By speculating beyond captured details through performance, the student performers and creative team are simultaneously invited to reflect on past and contemporary views and tragedies surrounding patients with chronic mental illnesses. By exploring the frictions between known and unknowable archives, we ask how theatre may offer creative tools for cultural resistance and living beyond inequality.
Bios
Kristina Johnstone is a Senior Lecturer at University of Pretoria, School of the Arts, where she teaches movement and physical theatre. She holds a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and is a Certified Movement Analyst in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies. She has lectured part-time at the University of Cape Town and the Makerere University Department of Performing Arts and Film (Uganda). Her research interests stem from a desire to trouble colonial practices and epistemologies in performance and movement education.
Lelia Bester (PhD) lectures Acting and Voice at the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria. She is a certified Lessac Kinesensics speech, body and voice trainer. Her research and teaching centre around the performance shifts actors must make to perform effectively in a variety of media. She has published on place making in selected television series and on emotional induction for film actors. Her creative research includes collaborative devising in theatre as well as directing and performing for radio.
Grant Frost
The Art of Assessment: Designing defensible drama assessments without sacrificing student creativity
Drama is a course that inspires creativity, develops communication skills, and requires the ability to work well with others. An effective drama class is a beehive of activity, with students actively engaged in the art form. However, at the end of the day, teachers must ultimately put a number on that engagement. That poses a fairly problematic question for many drama educators: How does one put a mark on drama? How do you score a student performance? Maybe more importantly, how do educators create marks that are concrete enough to be defensible while at the same time being flexible enough to allow for student growth? In this one hour interactive session, participants will learn how one Canadian educator breaks drama down into its fundamental components in order to streamline and simplify assessment. Participants will leave with a model unit they can incorporate at any level, and a better sense of how to quantify excellence without sacrificing student creativity.
Bio
Grant Frost is a Canadian drama teacher with 30 years experience. He has written drama curriculum, consulted on textbooks, and has been widely published in Canada. His presentation “The Art of Assessment” was given at the I.D.E.A World congress in Reykjavik in 2022.
Anna Lehtonen
Exploring more-than-human relations through forum play
The current nested sustainability crises can be seen to stem from anthropocentrism, lacking connections between self, others and nature, which becomes often amplified through our scientific methodologies and practices. Planetary wellbeing, promoting wellbeing of other species and ecosystems calls for widening perspectives to more-than-human interconnectedness, intra-actions and conflicts. The thinking behind this workshop derives from education for planetary wellbeing (Aaltonen et. al. 2023) that emphasizes dialogical ontology and pedagogy.
Applied drama practices can provide an interconnecting space for creative dialogue on sustainability issues and performative inquiries where embodied, emotional, imaginative and cognitive knowing become intertwined and manifested in open-ended processes. When the collectively created fictive drama worlds enable anything to happen without the restrictions of reality, this encourages free imagination and the testing of alternative realities and imaginary roles.
In this session, we explore more-than-human perspectives in an embodied by using methods that were developed for both pedagogy and research and tested with doctoral candidates in interdisciplinary environmental sciences. The workshop begins with a short outdoors observation practice, and an applied forum play by Augusto Boal. The idea is to catalyse sense of empathy and connectedness with self (emotions and body) and other species through bringing different perspectives together. The aim is to make the complexity of sustainability problems and conflicting needs of humans and other species’ needs through embodied and performative practices and thus, concretize abstract sustainability issues, and allow creative and free thinking beyond the cognitive mind. This session also provides a chance to consider ourselves as situated in the multi-species world.
Recent research (Wall, Österlind, Lehtonen, et al., 2025) has indicated the potential of applied drama related to learning sustainability competences defined in GreenComp, the European Sustainability Competence Framework – this framework is introduced in the workshop as a reference for reflection of learning experiences.
References:
Aaltonen, V. A. et al. (2023). Education for planetary well-being. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being, 246-258.
Wall, T., Österlind, E., Lehtonen, A. et al. (2025). Drama as a transformational capability of sustainability science. Sustainability Science.
Bio
Anna Lehtonen is an educational scientist specialized in sustainability education working with creative approaches to sustainability education. In her PhD she has applied drama practices to address climate change education. Recently, she has worked on the ECF4CLIM EU Horizon 2020 project promoting sustainability competences on primary, secondary and higher education through participatory action research. Currently she works for the CREA+BIRD project that develops creative pedagogies with Birds as Messengers and Greenversity developing effective sustainability pedagogies.
Johanna Sofia Gullberg
Stranger Habits: An Architectural Play for Daring Learners
In Stranger Habits: An Architectural Play for Daring Learners, I – Johanna Gullberg – turn my doctoral research project into a theatre play for reimagining architectural education and the role of the architect. The play is to be published as a book by dpr-barcelona (https://dpr-barcelona.com/), with support from Statens kunstnerstipend – Government Grants for Artists, Norway.
My thesis in architectural theory is called “Cogenerating Spaces of Learning: The Aesthetic Experience of Materiality and Its Transformative Potential within Architectural Education” (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, 2021, https://ntnuopen.ntnu.no/ntnu-xmlui/handle/11250/2740718). The action research case study at the core of the thesis was done in a collaboration between the theatre company Cirka Teater (https://cirkateater.no/#/) and the educational environment Making is Thinking at NTNU (https://makingisthinking.net/). Inspired by this collaboration, the play is intended as a pedagogical tool for experimenting with materiality, corporeality, and risk-taking as triggers of critical thinking and making in aesthetic education.
In the play, the learners Alice and Cyndyn enter an architecture course to which Professor Kokoaja, an architect and educator in crisis, has invited the performance artist Monsieur Farfel. As the play evolves, shifting environments for learning as well as architectural drawings and models come alive. The play is a dialogue in 9 scenes, with 8 full-spread illustrations drawn by the author.
The process behind the play was presented at the conference Learnings/Unlearnings in 2024 (https://urgentpedagogies.iaspis.se/learnings-unlearnings-transgressing-conversing-performing/). In May 2026 the new book will be released and the play tested out in a workshop with theatre colleagues as part of the arts biennial Trondheimsbiennalen. For Drama Boreale 2026, I would like to share the book, reflect upon the first test of implementing it at Trondheimsbiennalen, and on how the play as workshop can be further developed.
Bio
Johanna Gullberg (b. 1980, Stockholm) is a freelance architect and critic based in Trondheim. Gullberg works at the intersection of architecture and art. She has extensive teaching experience from Umeå School of Architecture and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), writes for ArtScene Trondheim (https://artscene.no/author/johanna-gullberg/), and has worked at several architectural firms. She is currently part of the NTNU-funded artistic research project Learning from Svartlamon, and is also working on public art proposals with artist Line Anda Dalmar.
Leonard Cruz
Resonant Pathways: Embodying Liminal Space in Performance and Daily Life
This interactive workshop explores Indigenous storytelling as a performative and pedagogical practice that inherently incorporates and activates all art forms—movement, sound, voice, image, space, ritual, and relational presence. Drawing from Indigenous epistemologies in which story is not a fixed narrative but a living, embodied event, the workshop proposes that all artistic disciplines are fundamentally analogous to performance: they unfold in time, require witnessing, and emerge through relational exchange.
Participants will engage in embodied, creative, and reflective exercises that activate storytelling through multiple artistic languages, including movement, vocalization, visual mark-making, spatial composition, and collective improvisation. Rather than privileging verbal narration, the workshop emphasizes story as action—a process shaped by listening, responsiveness, memory, and communal meaning-making. This approach positions theatre pedagogy not merely as a tool for representation, but as a method of knowing, remembering, and transmitting cultural knowledge.
The workshop foregrounds Indigenous storytelling practices as sites of agency, resistance, and care, particularly within contexts marked by colonial disruption, fragmentation, and silencing. Participants will reflect on friction-filled processes, risk-taking, and moments of not-knowing as productive forces within creative and pedagogical work. Through guided exchanges, participants will examine how storytelling across artistic modalities can foster collaborative learning, ethical engagement, and empowerment in educational, community, and artistic contexts.
By situating storytelling at the intersection of drama, theatre pedagogy, and interdisciplinary arts practice, this workshop contributes to emerging practices that challenge hierarchical distinctions between disciplines. It invites participants to reconsider performance not as a discrete genre, but as a shared condition across the arts—one that emphasizes presence, relationality, and transformation. The session concludes with collective reflection on how Indigenous storytelling methodologies can inform socially engaged theatre pedagogy and advocacy today.
Bio
Prof. Dr. Leonard Cruz is an international dancer, choreographer, educator, and scholar whose work bridges performing arts, social justice, and decolonial pedagogy. He is Professor and Director of Dance and Theatre in Social Fields at Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg (Germany), and Co-Director of the Institute for Artistic Therapies and Research. His research focuses on embodied storytelling, Indigenous and diasporic knowledge systems, equity in arts education, and performance as social practice.
Katja Paakki
Amateur theatre teamwork card deck
Teamwork Card Deck for Amateur Theatre is the result of my thesis on cultural well-being.
The purpose of my thesis was to study the dialogue of the future in amateur theatre and to find ways to respond to future needs and to develop operating methods for practising dialogue skills. The development work was carried out using futures design during the manufacturing process of the amateur theatre. The importance of the individual as part of the group was highlighted. Building a well-functioning team was considered the most important task in the future, where the individual has significant responsibility. The new operating method was the Amateur Theatre’s deck of teamwork cards. With the help of a deck of cards, both the individual and the group’s actions can be taken into account during the manufacturing process.
The deck of cards contains 30 cards and five different themes:
Play- Dialogue for building a functional team
Stage- Team’s joint dialogue in the rehearsal process
Props- Internal dialogue
Whisperer- Strengthening the team
Blackout – Disturbance in the team.
The deck of cards can be used from three different perspectives. The instructor strengthens the team’s work at different stages of the manufacturing process. The group builds the basis for joint work and a common agreement for the work. For the hobbyist, the importance of the team and the course of the manufacturing process are more clearly revealed.
The purpose of the workshop is to learn about the deck of cards and how it can be used in the work of an amateur theatre or other artistic and dramatic group. The workshop consists of functional exercises.
Bio
Katja Paakki started theatre as a hobby when she was 11 years old. Katja Paakki has studied a hairdresser and an Artenom in Theatre Technology. She has worked in the field in theatre. Returning to home she makes drama studies, and at the same time she started directing drama for special groups and amateur musical theatre,
Now, Katja Paakki works as a vocational teacher. She teaches in the field of education and guidance. She is responsible for the Education in Performance and Theatre Technology. Katja Paakki has a master’s degree in education and a master’s degree in arts. She still work as a musical theatre director.
Peter Sigurdson Lunga, Barbro Børli Løkken and Siri Skar
Drama for Historical Empathy: Exploring the forces and f(r)ictions of history and drama didactics
This paper explores how aesthetic learning processes through drama can foster historical empathy in lower secondary social studies through collaborative learning, using the drama sequence “The French Revolution” as a case study. The drama sequence was designed for the 8th grade under the Norwegian curriculum (LK20), which emphasizes critical thinking and historical empathy, using teacher-in-role and reflective guidance outside the dramatic fiction as tools. We discuss the extent to which our design will contribute to the development of historical empathy, with students engaging bodily, cognitively, and emotionally in historical inquiry.
Methodologically, we apply dramaturgical production analysis with elements of idea analysis to examine three selected “scopes of opportunity” in the sequence: (1) encountering primary sources in role (Tennis court oath episode), (2) constructing historical identities through role work, and (3) negotiating actual and counterfactual choices in the Storming of the Bastille episode. These scopes of opportunity demonstrate synergies between drama and history education, where collaborative role-play and aesthetic doubling enable students to experience belonging, dialogue, and co-creation. Simultaneously, frictions emerge from the process of exploring historical events and individuals through dramatic fiction. Such tensions surface in compromising historical fidelity in the dramaturgical need for affective involvement in immersive fiction. Another risk is that such involvement produces either “strategies of resistance” among students (Harnes 2020, p. x) or an oversimplified understanding of historical events (Allern 2015, p. 135).
Our findings suggest that drama’s collaborative and embodied practices can promote historical empathy, democratic participation, and historical reasoning. At the same time, the productive frictions from drama in history teaching challenge teachers to balance emotional involvement with critical reflection. We conclude that in these scopes of opportunity, aesthetic learning processes through drama contribute to developing both cognitive and affective historical empathy.
Bios
Peter Sigurdson Lunga is an associate professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) where he teaches history, history didactics, forum theatre and didactic roleplay in the Master’s programme of Primary and Lower Secondary Teachers. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and has published articles on English and Scandinavian medieval history. At NTNU he is the leader of the Medieval Didactics research group and has been organizing projects on South Saami history and the use of drama as a didactic tool.
Barbro Børli Løkken is an assistant professor in Drama and Theatre at USN. She teaches drama in primary and kindergarten teacher education and leads interdisciplinary workshops using drama to explore aesthetic learning processes and psychosocial learning environments. She has experience as a lower secondary teacher and theatre instructor. Her interests are drama, aesthetic learning processes, theatrical communication, didactics, dramaturgy, interdisciplinarity and applied theatre. She is part of the ForEst research group.
Siri Skar is an assistant professor in drama at the University of Stavanger and part-time lecturer at Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in theatre from the University of Agder and is a certified psychodrama leader. Skar has experience teaching children, youth, and adults, and her research focuses on aesthetic learning processes, psychodrama, and the relationship between art and health.
Rannveig Thorkelsdóttir
Exploring the career paths of drama teachers in Iceland
The research that this paper is based on aimed to examine the professional status and experiences of drama teachers working in primary schools in Iceland (ages 6-16 years old), especially since drama has become a subject of its own in Iceland’s compulsory education. A key focus is on developing a shared vision and understanding of what defines quality in drama teacher education. Few studies concentrate on the transition from pre-service drama teachers to practice. The research on which this paper is based intends to fill this gap by exploring the professional development experiences of drama teachers who graduated from the University of Iceland with a specialisation in drama education; additionally, we seek a deeper understanding of drama teaching practices in the field. The project methodology is based on qualitative research, as the subject matter concerns individuals’ attitudes, experiences, and interpretations of a particular phenomenon. Data was collected through interviews.
The following research questions guided this research:
1. How do novice drama teachers perceive and experience their first years of teaching?
2. What types of support are viewed as most effective during this early stage of their careers?
The findings have provided valuable insights into drama teachers teaching in compulsory education. Highlighting the lack of drama rooms and loneliness? Furthermore, the research has influenced the teacher training programs by encouraging stronger collaborations between universities and compulsory schools and improving the overall quality of teacher education.
Bio
Rannveig Björk Thorkelsdóttir is a professor in drama and theatre education at the University of Iceland. She has extensive experience working with collaborative and research projects in higher education. She focuses on drama and theatre approaches to arts education and arts-based research in her research and practice.
Hanna Pulkkinen and Sanna Saarela
Measuring the Societal Impact of Cultural Hobbies: Why Participating in Culture Matters
The Study Centre Citizen’s Forum (Kansalaisfoorumi) is an educational institution for cultural associations. In 2022 and 2024, we conducted surveys on the experienced effects of participating in cultural hobbies in collaboration with our member associations like the Finnish Amateur Theatre Association. Over 1,300 participants in theatre, circus, dance, music, and visual arts took part in the surveys.
In this presentation, we will explain how we created the measurement framework and how we see it, along with the surveys, as valuable tool for highlighting the societal impacts of cultural participation. We used national and international studies in developing the measurement framework. Numerous studies on cultural well-being have explored the effects of consuming culture. However, we wanted to focus on the experiences of those who actively create culture. What kinds of impacts arise when people gather together night after night and year after year, to engage in theater, dance, or circus, to practice new skills, to create performances, and to perform for others?
Our work is based on the understanding that cultural hobbies foster important social connections and shared meanings, which benefit both participants and society. These impacts, however, are often underappreciated. To secure more support for cultural activities, we need clear evidence of their societal value.
We looked at impacts in five areas: social, community, learning, psychological, and physical. The most significant impact that emerges is the reduction of loneliness and social isolation. As many as 97.7% of respondents reported having made new friends through their hobby. Cultural participation strengthens communities, builds trust, and promotes social stability and democracy. It also fosters positive attitudes towards learning, increases self-confidence, and enhances creativity, with effects that extend to education, work, and civic engagement.
These surveys and our measurement framework are key tools for Kansalaisfoorumi and its member organizations in advocacy work. Our framework is freely available online. We encourage all organizations involved in cultural activities to use the framework we have developed. Using the same tool makes it possible to collect shared data, compare results, and build larger datasets that make the impacts of cultural participation more visible.
Bios
Hanna Pulkkinen works as an Education Planner at the Study Centre Citizen’s Forum. She holds two Master’s degrees in art education (University of Jyväskylä and Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture). Pulkkinen has worked for decades as an art and drama educator, particularly with adults. She is especially interested in interdisciplinary arts practice and in the arts as a force for social change.
Sanna Saarela is the Executive Director of the Finnish Amateur Theatre Association. Saarela holds a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts, and her professional background includes theatre education, directing, and senior management in youth theatre. Her work focuses on strengthening the operational conditions of amateur theatre, advancing accessibility to the arts, and promoting equality and diversity across the cultural field. She actively contributes to professional and public discourse on the societal role and significance of amateur theatre.