Biography English version

I am a stage artist and producer educated at Danshögskolan and Teaterhögskolan in Stockholm, now UNIARTS. The teacher was Stanislav Brosowski, founder of Mime education. His method was my point of departure from where I have learned various performative practices. I move professionally between mime, dance, acting, choreographing, directing, writing, dramaturgy, coaching and producing. During the mime education the whole class worked in parallel at the Royal Opera and Dramaten, Sweden’s national scen for theatre, where Stanislav Brosowski was the choreographer.

 

My first job, after the education, was at MDT, Modern Dance Theatre, as dancer choreographed by Margareta Åsberg. Her method of staying present in the room, relating to the body positioning, the distance between dancer and the space, became another building block for my artistry. In parallel I worked as a leader to maintain and rehearse mime choreographies for different Opera productions,1982-2005 repertoires. I have been a mime teacher for the Acting students at Teaterhögskolan and Teaterverkstan SKH, Stockholm University of Art. Since 1998 I started to produce for other free theatre groups and since 2003 I have realized and participated as an actor, writer, choreographer in self-initiated stage art.

 

During the Master program New Performative Practices 2011-2013 I began to make tailor-made lecture-performances on the topic of shame. In this period, I manufactured video art, and visual art objects that choreographed curiosity. During my artistic research, in the master program at UNIARTS, it became clear to me how methods and practices embed history and ideological values and therefore should be critically reviewed.

 

I have also been actor pedagogue at SKH for the directing students Johan Paus, Johanna Sandström Letho and lately for the new directing class’ students, under the supervision of Anja Susa, professor of directing at SKH.

 

In the last years I have done acting, two monologs with extensive text. ‘Röda Rummet’ directed by Anna Wallander at Strindbergs Intima Teater, under the tutorship of PHD Anna Petterson and the play ‘Wilhelm Edstetd, karolin och man’ a crossdressing piece at Hamn Museum with the director Voula Kereklidou.

 

Currently, Voula and me are developing a new multidisciplinary play ‘Jag ljuger hela tiden’.

My productions aim to be critical, analytical, political and feministic. I endeavour to work against discrimination of HBTQ and people of colour, sexism, racism and antisemitism.

 

Mime artists of my generation were proud to perform in the streets. If we could captivate the audiences in very difficult conditions we thought we could perform anywhere! Of course, we found out that different form and content needed various contracts with the audience.

 

At the Festivals of Fools in Copenhagen we learned not only to perform and compete with other street artists but we became conscious of the international physical theatres scen. Mime artists were inspired by Marcel Marceau, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor and Fura dels Baus among others. We were educated in an era when physical theatre freed itself from the traditional theatre and we became avant-garde.  As an educator I strive for the coming generations to find a new élan to expand their own timeframe, comfort zone, boundaries so a shift of perspective can be achieved and new creative views of our society can emerge. With art as a changemaking tool.

 

This summer I have worked as a mime theatre director for a fringe performance in Västerås alongside the Theatre Biennale; the performance ROSEMARY was a group statement for necessity of mime artistry and bigger ensembles. In our piece I reclaimed the artform’s craftmanship through a choreography performed in silence, a classical mime with a contemporary ideological content. I believe that the knowledge and mime technique can be of significant value in stage art and need to take bigger space. Much shame has been projected into the mime artistry and I believe we need to discuss how to free the artform so it may become contemporary and audacious.

 

When directing and choreographing mime actors I witnessed a lack of professional core knowledge of mime technique. Maybe it is a consequence of the lower positioning in the stage arts hierarchy.

When I was young working at Dramaten I met the recently deceased actor Rolf Skouglund. He told me that when he saw us mime actors, he envied our daily discipline, since an actor was never better than his last performance. Maybe he just wanted to encourage a young mime artist. However, I have carried that sentence with me since then. When self-confidence fails, one has to be able to go back to the discipline. Now not necessarily the mime technique but the discipline itself. If I didn’t have the movement discipline, I probably would never have lasted in the industry for so long. Having said this, I now want to underscore that discipline is not enough by itself.

 

My artistic research has evolved around building awareness of the internal and external emotional landscape. To be able to communicate critique and still hold a safe space, the knowledge about shame and pride reactions are fundamental.

 

As a producer, director and choreographer I have learned about group dynamic.  I’m trained in several group dialog methods to keep the communication flowing. I know how to read a budget and monitor its evolution in order to achieve its promise.