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  • Vanja Hamidi Isacson
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• abstract
  "The potential of multilingualism in dramatic works" is an artistic research project that aims to investigate, develop and deepen the practice of writing multilingual drama for an imagined audience in Sweden. Through placing significant focus on the playwright's practice, the goal is to contribute to the artistic development of dramatic writing in Sweden and in other Swedish-speaking contexts. By using sociolinguistic theories and terms around multilingualism, both the artistic practice and the discourse surrounding it are developed and challenged. Through the application of an integrated ideology of multilingualism, language ideologies based on a monolingual norm are contradicted. In this way, the project makes room for silenced and marginalized voices and perspectives that rarely take or receive a place in Swedish performing arts contexts. Considering language, and thus multilingualism, as social practice and action is the starting point for the research. This post-structuralist approach is in line with the theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and language theorist Michael Bakhtin. In this research drama is considered as both practice and as action. Central concepts are linguistic repertoires, translingualism and speech acts. Within the project, two dramatic works have been created, ASIA/ÄRENDE and UniZona & PolyZona. These constitute the artistic result of the research and can both be described as dialogical polyvocal plays. Common and central to both works is that multilingualism permeates them and constitutes their formal core. The multilingualism has consequences that affect the dramaturgical and musical structures. The creation of the works has taken place in dialogue and collaboration with multilingual actors, directors and translators in Sweden and Finland. The form of the artistic work has been conversations, workshops and periods of writing, translation and design. Through these processes and works, the issues have been successively investigated. As tools for analysis, reflection and discussion, four categories have been created: dramaturgical, political, emotional and communicative potential. With the help of these, the concrete functions of multilingualism in both dramatic works are examined with the aim of making visible the potential of multilingualism in dramatic works. The project demonstrates that multilingual dramatic writing requires different, less traditional approaches and in this way contributes to an expanded practice for the playwright. The methods used in the creation of the works have been collaborative, transcultural and dialogic, shifting between practices and acts of listening and composing. "The potential of multilingualism in dramatic works" aims to show the enormous artistic, creative, political, emotional and communicative potential that multilingualism can bring to the dramatic work and, by extension, the performing arts.
• Vanja Hamidi Isacson - The potential of multilingualism in dramatic works - 2022
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