Pub Date : 2022-03-17DOI: 10.7146/nts.v33i1.131994
O. Nikolaeva
This article explores the creative practice of an independent Russian theatre collective, Soso Daughters. The collective was founded in Moscow by theatredirector and playwright Zhenya Berkovich in 2018 and recently premiered their fourth production. The subjects of the productions the collective performsoften delve into girls’ and women’s lives and traumatic experiences that are constantly undermined, dismissed or ignored. Driven by the feminist ethic ofcare, this article aims to situate Soso Daughters’ creative work in the context of scan-aesthetic across the Nordic and Baltic regions, and to turn scholars andspectators’ attention to the issue of an independent theatre practice in Russia. The article is based on interviews with the collective’s director and scenographer as well as first-hand observations of their productions. The article further explores the possibility of representation of trauma and traumatic experience in The Rhyme, the collective’s first production, grounding the analysis in that the holistic approach to scenography.
{"title":"Keep calm, the corridor will be open soon","authors":"O. Nikolaeva","doi":"10.7146/nts.v33i1.131994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v33i1.131994","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the creative practice of an independent Russian theatre collective, Soso Daughters. The collective was founded in Moscow by theatredirector and playwright Zhenya Berkovich in 2018 and recently premiered their fourth production. The subjects of the productions the collective performsoften delve into girls’ and women’s lives and traumatic experiences that are constantly undermined, dismissed or ignored. Driven by the feminist ethic ofcare, this article aims to situate Soso Daughters’ creative work in the context of scan-aesthetic across the Nordic and Baltic regions, and to turn scholars andspectators’ attention to the issue of an independent theatre practice in Russia. The article is based on interviews with the collective’s director and scenographer as well as first-hand observations of their productions. The article further explores the possibility of representation of trauma and traumatic experience in The Rhyme, the collective’s first production, grounding the analysis in that the holistic approach to scenography.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89435517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-12DOI: 10.7146/nts.v33i1.131993
Luule Epner
The years 1987–92 mark the first or breakthrough stage of the Estonian transition period from being one of the Soviet republics to a newly independentdemocratic state. The cultural processes of the transition are commonly discussed in terms of re-westernization. However, the picture is more complex,as Western influences intertwined with the legacy of the Soviet cultural realm. The article looks into the interplay between various influences, analyzing theemerging independent theatre scene from both institutional and aesthetic perspectives. On the institutional level, a range of small groups emerged thatoften blurred the line between (semi-)professional and amateur theatre. On the aesthetic level, one can identify three main trends: biographical and/or culturalhistorical documentary theatre; theatre based on the ethnic heritage of different (mostly Northern) nations; postmodern aesthetics. Two more general patterns are 1) the radicalization of Soviet-era artistic searches, empowered by the rise of Estonian nationalism, and 2) the advent of postmodernism, triggered by contemporary Western ideas about theatre.
{"title":"The emergence of the independent theatre scene in Estonia (1987–92)","authors":"Luule Epner","doi":"10.7146/nts.v33i1.131993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v33i1.131993","url":null,"abstract":"The years 1987–92 mark the first or breakthrough stage of the Estonian transition period from being one of the Soviet republics to a newly independentdemocratic state. The cultural processes of the transition are commonly discussed in terms of re-westernization. However, the picture is more complex,as Western influences intertwined with the legacy of the Soviet cultural realm. The article looks into the interplay between various influences, analyzing theemerging independent theatre scene from both institutional and aesthetic perspectives. On the institutional level, a range of small groups emerged thatoften blurred the line between (semi-)professional and amateur theatre. On the aesthetic level, one can identify three main trends: biographical and/or culturalhistorical documentary theatre; theatre based on the ethnic heritage of different (mostly Northern) nations; postmodern aesthetics. Two more general patterns are 1) the radicalization of Soviet-era artistic searches, empowered by the rise of Estonian nationalism, and 2) the advent of postmodernism, triggered by contemporary Western ideas about theatre.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79346798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124350
A. V. Rosen, E. Klimova, O. Nikolaeva
This article explores the unlikely collaboration between a Swedish art and dance historian, a Russian amateur historian, and a Russian-Swedish doctoral student to seek out the early career of migrating dancer Anna Robenne (one of her names). The article looks into the activist ways in which the explorers interacted with Russian, Swedish, and Finnish archives in order to both reveal and make accessible cross-border materials and knowledge pertaining to Robenne. To explore the relationship between the Robenne materials, the archival institutions, and the group of collaborating historians, the authors draw on Caswell and Cifor’s notion of “radical empathy”. The article thus brings new archival theory into the performing arts domain and makes a dance contribution to the broader field of critical archival and heritage studies. To cross borders to account for Robenne’s Russian legacy counters previous historiography’s disinterest in following the careers of non-canonized migrating artists in the Nordic-Baltic region.
{"title":"Russian Relations","authors":"A. V. Rosen, E. Klimova, O. Nikolaeva","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124350","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the unlikely collaboration between a Swedish art and dance historian, a Russian amateur historian, and a Russian-Swedish doctoral student to seek out the early career of migrating dancer Anna Robenne (one of her names). The article looks into the activist ways in which the explorers interacted with Russian, Swedish, and Finnish archives in order to both reveal and make accessible cross-border materials and knowledge pertaining to Robenne. To explore the relationship between the Robenne materials, the archival institutions, and the group of collaborating historians, the authors draw on Caswell and Cifor’s notion of “radical empathy”. The article thus brings new archival theory into the performing arts domain and makes a dance contribution to the broader field of critical archival and heritage studies. To cross borders to account for Robenne’s Russian legacy counters previous historiography’s disinterest in following the careers of non-canonized migrating artists in the Nordic-Baltic region.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"190 1","pages":"89-105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76848245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124348
Helena Ohlsson
This study is an intersectional investigation of how the first two international Swedish superstars, Jenny Lind (1820–1887) and Christina Nilsson (1843–1921), performed gender, race, nationalism, and class during their respective tours of the United States of America in 1850–1852 and 1870–1872. The purpose is to chart early transatlantic performances of Nordic white femininity and Swedishness as well as to discuss the symbolical values and associations that it signaled. I will argue that Lind and Nilsson set out a template of idealized Nordic white femininity in the U.S. and that they contributed to the growing identity and self-awareness of Swedish-Americans.
{"title":"Performing Nordic White Femininity","authors":"Helena Ohlsson","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124348","url":null,"abstract":"This study is an intersectional investigation of how the first two international Swedish superstars, Jenny Lind (1820–1887) and Christina Nilsson (1843–1921), performed gender, race, nationalism, and class during their respective tours of the United States of America in 1850–1852 and 1870–1872. The purpose is to chart early transatlantic performances of Nordic white femininity and Swedishness as well as to discuss the symbolical values and associations that it signaled. I will argue that Lind and Nilsson set out a template of idealized Nordic white femininity in the U.S. and that they contributed to the growing identity and self-awareness of Swedish-Americans.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"54-70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76252578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124346
Pirkko Koski
This article surveys the performance of the play Departure (Lahto in Finnish, Minek in Estonian) by Estonian Rein Saluri at the Finnish National Theatre in 1988 during the last few years of the Cold War. The play depicts the deportation of an Estonian family to Siberia in the fall of 1946. The Finnish National Theatre invited Estonian Mati Unt to act as the director. The actors were Finnish, as were the audience, apart from a few individual spectators and during a short visit when Departure was performed in Estonia. The aim is to analyze how a theatre performance connected with an aspect of Estonian traumatic history and national memory was understood and felt by a country with a different historical and contemporary background. The performances of Departure show the ways in which repetition, memory, and re-appearance work and function in the theatre. Departure as theatre had power over history in its ability to reshape the image of the past through physical presence and affection. It increased in Finland the knowledge of and empathy toward Estonia and the presence of Estonian culture before the great political upheavals. However, the Finnish audience constructed the meanings of the play without the interaction between the collective memory, that is, the Finnish “memory” was historical and theatrical. Concerning national collective memory, it was not possible to cross the border.
{"title":"National Trauma on a Foreign Stage","authors":"Pirkko Koski","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124346","url":null,"abstract":"This article surveys the performance of the play Departure (Lahto in Finnish, Minek in Estonian) by Estonian Rein Saluri at the Finnish National Theatre in 1988 during the last few years of the Cold War. The play depicts the deportation of an Estonian family to Siberia in the fall of 1946. The Finnish National Theatre invited Estonian Mati Unt to act as the director. The actors were Finnish, as were the audience, apart from a few individual spectators and during a short visit when Departure was performed in Estonia. The aim is to analyze how a theatre performance connected with an aspect of Estonian traumatic history and national memory was understood and felt by a country with a different historical and contemporary background. The performances of Departure show the ways in which repetition, memory, and re-appearance work and function in the theatre. Departure as theatre had power over history in its ability to reshape the image of the past through physical presence and affection. It increased in Finland the knowledge of and empathy toward Estonia and the presence of Estonian culture before the great political upheavals. However, the Finnish audience constructed the meanings of the play without the interaction between the collective memory, that is, the Finnish “memory” was historical and theatrical. Concerning national collective memory, it was not possible to cross the border.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"46 1","pages":"26-39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74092225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124345
Zoltán Imre
The Budapest premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s Kisertetek (Gengangere) was on 17 October 1908 by the Thalia Tarsasag, a Hungarian independent theatre. Though banned earlier, by 1908, Ibsen’s text had already been played all over Europe. Between 1880 and 1908, the search of IbsenStage indicates 402 records, but probably the actual performance number was higher. The popularity of the text can be seen in the fact that all the independent theatres staged it, and most of the famous and less famous travelling companies and travelling stars also kept it in their repertoires. Though, usually, the high-artistic independent and the commercial international and regional travelling companies are treated separately, here, I argue for their close real and/or virtual interconnections, creating such a theatrical and cultural network, in which the local, the regional, the national, and the transnational interacted with and were influenced by each other. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such interaction among different forces and agents on different levels was one of the special features of cultural mobility (Greenblatt) which characterized intercultural theatre culture, existing in Europe and America, and extending its influence almost all over the globe.
{"title":"Cultural Mobility, Networks, and Theatre","authors":"Zoltán Imre","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124345","url":null,"abstract":"The Budapest premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s Kisertetek (Gengangere) was on 17 October 1908 by the Thalia Tarsasag, a Hungarian independent theatre. Though banned earlier, by 1908, Ibsen’s text had already been played all over Europe. Between 1880 and 1908, the search of IbsenStage indicates 402 records, but probably the actual performance number was higher. The popularity of the text can be seen in the fact that all the independent theatres staged it, and most of the famous and less famous travelling companies and travelling stars also kept it in their repertoires. Though, usually, the high-artistic independent and the commercial international and regional travelling companies are treated separately, here, I argue for their close real and/or virtual interconnections, creating such a theatrical and cultural network, in which the local, the regional, the national, and the transnational interacted with and were influenced by each other. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such interaction among different forces and agents on different levels was one of the special features of cultural mobility (Greenblatt) which characterized intercultural theatre culture, existing in Europe and America, and extending its influence almost all over the globe.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"6-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82604719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124302
Hanna Korsberg, A. Saro, M. Seppälä
The Budapest premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s Kísértetek (Gengangere) was on 17 October 1908 by the Thália Társaság, a Hungarian independent theatre. Though banned earlier, by 1908, Ibsen’s text had already been played all over Europe. Between 1880 and 1908, the search of IbsenStage indicates 402 records, but probably the actual performance number was higher. The popularity of the text can be seen in the fact that all the independent theatres staged it, and most of the famous and less famous travelling companies and travelling stars also kept it in their repertoires. Though, usually, the high-artistic independent and the commercial international and regional travelling companies are treated separately, here, I argue for their close real and/or virtual interconnections, creating such a theatrical and cultural network, in which the local, the regional, the national, and the transnational interacted with and were influenced by each other. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such interaction among different forces and agents on different levels was one of the special features of cultural mobility (Greenblatt) which characterized intercultural theatre culture, existing in Europe and America, and extending its influence almost all over the globe.
{"title":"Transnational Influences","authors":"Hanna Korsberg, A. Saro, M. Seppälä","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124302","url":null,"abstract":"The Budapest premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s Kísértetek (Gengangere) was on 17 October 1908 by the Thália Társaság, a Hungarian independent theatre. Though banned earlier, by 1908, Ibsen’s text had already been played all over Europe. Between 1880 and 1908, the search of IbsenStage indicates 402 records, but probably the actual performance number was higher. The popularity of the text can be seen in the fact that all the independent theatres staged it, and most of the famous and less famous travelling companies and travelling stars also kept it in their repertoires. Though, usually, the high-artistic independent and the commercial international and regional travelling companies are treated separately, here, I argue for their close real and/or virtual interconnections, creating such a theatrical and cultural network, in which the local, the regional, the national, and the transnational interacted with and were influenced by each other. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such interaction among different forces and agents on different levels was one of the special features of cultural mobility (Greenblatt) which characterized intercultural theatre culture, existing in Europe and America, and extending its influence almost all over the globe.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"212 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79452025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124357
Edgaras Klivis
After the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Russian Federation in 2014, the attitude of Baltic theatre producers and artists towards cultural and institutional partnerships with Russian theatres and their involvement in the mutual artistic exchanges, tours, common projects, and networking changed; not only due to these exchanges becoming a controversial issue in the public eye, but also due to the polarization they caused in the artistic community itself. Some artists, like Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis, have decisively terminated all their previous creative partnerships, arrangements and tours, calling also other theatre artists “to take sides”. Others, like Russian stage and film director Kirill Serebrennikov who, for years, had been involved with Baltic theatres, would regard taking sides as a disastrous yielding of culture to the logic of war – theatre should be kept as the last link between societies gradually separated by reciprocal propaganda insanity. Building upon these conflicts describing the changes in intercultural theatrical cooperation between Russian and Baltic theatres, the article focuses on the analysis of three productions: Dreams of Rainis by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Latvian National Theatre (2015), Alexander Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov directed by Eimuntas Nekrošius at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre (2015) and Brodsky/Baryshnikov staged by Alvis Hermanis at the New Riga Theatre in 2016. All of the performances refused to stay inside the frameworks marked for them by the regimes of propaganda wars, public diplomacy, or dispositif of security, but focused instead on the possibilities of intellectual disobedience.
{"title":"Inside Frozen Geographies","authors":"Edgaras Klivis","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124357","url":null,"abstract":"After the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Russian Federation in 2014, the attitude of Baltic theatre producers and artists towards cultural and institutional partnerships with Russian theatres and their involvement in the mutual artistic exchanges, tours, common projects, and networking changed; not only due to these exchanges becoming a controversial issue in the public eye, but also due to the polarization they caused in the artistic community itself. Some artists, like Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis, have decisively terminated all their previous creative partnerships, arrangements and tours, calling also other theatre artists “to take sides”. Others, like Russian stage and film director Kirill Serebrennikov who, for years, had been involved with Baltic theatres, would regard taking sides as a disastrous yielding of culture to the logic of war – theatre should be kept as the last link between societies gradually separated by reciprocal propaganda insanity. Building upon these conflicts describing the changes in intercultural theatrical cooperation between Russian and Baltic theatres, the article focuses on the analysis of three productions: Dreams of Rainis by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Latvian National Theatre (2015), Alexander Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov directed by Eimuntas Nekrošius at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre (2015) and Brodsky/Baryshnikov staged by Alvis Hermanis at the New Riga Theatre in 2016. All of the performances refused to stay inside the frameworks marked for them by the regimes of propaganda wars, public diplomacy, or dispositif of security, but focused instead on the possibilities of intellectual disobedience.","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"92 1","pages":"138-155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77270094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-22DOI: 10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124359
Annelis Kuhlmann
{"title":"Mästerregissören. När Ludvig Josephson tog Europa till Sverige","authors":"Annelis Kuhlmann","doi":"10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/NTS.V32I2.124359","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53807,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Theatre Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"174-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73662328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}