In the lecture THE THEATRE MACHINE AND THE POST-DRAMATIC PARADOX, Knut Ove Arntzen focuses on ‘marginal theatre’, which can be both the theatre of entertainment as well as theatre that is presenting a social context. Marginal theatre is context-related, which resides in the highlycharged area between the theatre machine and artistic theatre. It encourages a changing context for the artistic work, by challenging the traditional parameters of theatre production and thus creating alternatives to the mainstream. The lecture will look at whether the relationship between the theatre machine and artistic theatre makes it possible to adopt a new perspective to the conflict between the melodramatic tradition and the post-dramatic. This will be illustrated with examples from new productions from Nordic performance and director’s theatre.
Knut Ove Arntzen, born 1950, professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is a theatre critic and has been a scientific consultant to the Bergen International Theatre and Les 20 Jours du Théâtre à Risque in Canada. Arntzen has been a regular visiting professor to teach postmodern theatre at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania as well as to the Theatre Academies in Helsinki and Oslo, and he published his latest book in 2007 in Norwegian on a theatre of marginality, on directing and ambient strategies in a Nordic perspective.
