What are the major themes that this project has addressed?
My core questions have been about representation and power structure.
I find that there is a lot of discussion about representation now within performing arts. Can a white man play a black man? Can a male play a female part? Can someone with one ethnicity play another? Do you have a personal experience within what you are doing?
I think that this is a complex question, because what if we do Richard III and he is a murderer., can you then not play the part, if you do not have this experience? What does it actually mean? Can you not play something that was written in the 1400s because you did not live at the time?
I really think the question of representation prompts many questions to investigate, especially when you work with hermetic texts.
Could it be that, when you have knowledge and interest in a topic, that this enough? When you have in-depth knowledge within the field?
The other questions that I have been occupied with; is the power structures in stage art. I come from a tradition and was educated as one who knows it all, and the rest of the functions within the developing and producing period of a play where there to fulfil my visions. Scenographers, actors and technicians.
Since I started teaching at the Danish National school of performing arts, there has been a kind of en garde position towards the directors.
‘Who are they to make all these decisions’? Who decides within stage art? I have found it necessary to find other and supplementary ways or positions for the director to work. I have been on a quest for co-creation methods for a long time. What does it mean to have decision-making power? Do you have decision-making power right from the start and through all the choices, you make, or can you delegate decisions to minor groups? Can it change hands? This question occupies many artists within the field. Who decides what is included in the final piece?
Core Research Questions
Representation:
Power structures in stage art:
