POSTHUMAN THEATRE

POSTHUMAN THEATRE

Posthuman Theatre is an experimental performance project organised in collaboration between LUST Association and the Other Spaces Live Art collective during the year 2019. The facilitator of the project is Esa Kirkkopelto, performing artist, philosopher and the founding member of the Other Spaces collective.

The aim of the project is to develop the idea of the non-human acting in practice: how is it possible, what does it require from a performer and what kind of theatre will it produce? The topic and its mode of implementation correspond to the ethical and ecological challenges performing arts face today. The project is motivated by a view according to which performing arts should shift towards a less anthropocentric direction and take place in the future between different kinds of bodies, phenomena and creatures. Before non-human theatre becomes possible, one has to solve a series of problems, the most fundamental of them being the physical limits of the human body as well as the anthropomorphism which tends to dominate our imagination. Non-human acting requires new kinds of body techniques, new kind of corporeal thinking and dramaturgy. The project aims at inventing, developing and demonstrating these kinds of means.

The project – addressed to the professionals in performing arts, actors, dancers and performance artists – started by two workshops on 25–30 March and 24-28 June. On the basis of the first workshop 8 participants were selected who took charge of the continuation of the project. It included a workshop organised in November at the Kiasma Theatre. As the outcome of the project the performance Studies in Non-Human Acting was seen on 15 and 16 November at the Kiasma Theatre.