Thirty years after staging Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, the Swedish choreographer Mårten Spångberg with renewed enthusiasm approaches theatre—again with a sustained attentiveness to the differences between theatre’s poetic genealogy and the aesthetic emergence through dance. What if theatre is no longer about expression, conflict, or moral dilemma—elements from which the audience is expected to excavate meaning—but instead an unfolding landscape through which each spectator generates their own experience and meaning? Can theatre and its framing be shifted away from extractivist histories in favour of a lateral or horizontal exchange, in which the spectator navigates, rather than being guided through a convincing story, characters, and additive dramaturgies? Having assembled the text—and himself on stage—Mårten Spångberg’s theatre becomes an invitation to listen for the possibility of stories to appear.
with and by: Mårten Spångberg, Supported by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin, ARKO, Seoul, as part of Festa, a project initiated by XING, Bologna, Nomad Dance Academy/JSKD, Ljubljana and Kulturstiftung Vega, Lärbro.