QUEER

11.30 -1.30 PM

Pelle Haneus (Sweden) The bridge between Cerebral Palsy, queer perspectives and acting training 

My research aims to find out how acting training for a norm-critical theatre is best combined with situation- and action-based methods of acting training in the Stanislavskij tradition. In this first stage of the work, I give a personal background to my ideas and values, and share some of my methods. I hope to receive feedback from colleagues, that will help me develop my methods. 

Pelle Hanæus is an actor/director/teacher from Stockholm, Sweden. He co-founded the queer theatre Komonq in 1999, travelled the world with the NGO Clowns without Borders, worked as Artistic Director of a regional theatre, acted on stage and television, directed shows and led many workshops in gender aware-acting, internationally. He’s currently leading the BA acting program at Malmö Theatre Academy in Sweden. 

Hubert Sulima (Poland) Let’s get lost 

Hubert Sulima was born in Bielawa, Poland in 1989 and works in the fields of theatre, performance and dramaturgy. In 2017, he graduated from the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Krakow. But before that after being expelled he moved to Vilnius, Lithuania where he worked in the foster home and the Day Centre “Sviesa ” where therapists work through art with people with special needs, intellectual disabilities, learning difficulties, autism, down syndrome or cerebral palsy. In 2018 his play “Litwa is my life” was translated into Lithuanian and presented in the National Lithuanian Drama Theatre in Vilnius.  

After coming back to Poland and graduating (with the master thesis titled “Art of failure”) he created an artistic duo with director Jędrzej Piaskowski. As a collective they created a number of performances, which were praised for their search for new theatrical qualities, languages and topics, as well as for their “extraordinary sensitivity towards characters, actors and viewers”. Their work earned them invitations to many festivals, awards and mentions. In 2020 and 2021 the duo was nominated for one of the most important Polish art awards “Paszport Polityki”. In 2020 Sulima was awarded the scholarship by Nowy Teatr in Warsaw “for outstandingly talented young artists”.    

His main fields of interest are: the new folk and working class art, the queer art of failure and dramaturgy as a tool for new possibilities. Since 2022 he is a lecturer at the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Wroclaw, where he lives.  

 

Szymon Adamczak (Netherlands/Poland) Decision to Be Queer

 In this contribution I wish to revisit my dramaturgical and pedagogical practice as an example of queer positionality. While approaching queerness as an expansive framework of reference, I am drawn to the understanding of “queer” as ideological and political commitment (Richard Ford). In articulating this attitude, I am indebted to understanding of the queer self as one that “has to invent its place to speak and to thrive and to live” (bell hooks), one that makes itself present via “queer structure of feeling”, which is “forged through resistance to heterosexist society” (Gregg Bordowitz). 

Thinking through queer positionality in the context of performing arts and artistic education, I want to attend to the transformative potential of both theatre making and queerness as I recall autobiographically. By inviting notions of becoming and orientation (Sarah Ahmed), I am going to contextualize my performative and dramaturgical work within contemporary cultural production in relation to HIV, and in a playful opposition of notions of “queer theatre” and “straight theatre”.  

I will be reflecting on a number of artistic processes I have been involved with in recent years as a dramaturg and advisor, both in Poland and in the Netherlands, including performances “An Ongoing Song” (2017-2021) and “Kolorowe sny” (2022). This transnational perspective is both in dialogue with the lived experience and cultural aspects of working in these countries under neoliberal capitalism and critically informed by varying societal and legislative standards and expectations regarding the livelihood and well-being of LGBTQ+ people. 

Szymon Adamczak (PL/NL) is a dramaturg, writer, theatre and performance maker working across disciplines. He has a vital interest in HIV-related culture and transnational queer activism. Alum of DAS Theatre and a current fellow of THIRD, a program for artist-researchers offered by DAS Research. As a dramaturg he specializes in designing artistic processes, non-verbal, intimate and documentary work. In his own creations, Szymon weaves poetic imagination, visual sensitivity, theory and physical performance. 

On Reorientation, Becoming and Artistic Positioning 

 

Discussion moderated by Bernhard Siebert (Germany)