John Hanse 75% PhD seminar. March 16

Participating:
John Hanse, PhD student, Malmö Theatre Academy,
Tore Vagn Lid, professor The Academy of Theatre at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (opponent),
Kent Sjöström, associate Professor, Malmö Theatre Academy (supervisor),
Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk, Guest Professor, Malmö Theatre Academy (supervisor)

This is an open public event.

Link to the seminar on Zoom:
https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/64213467221

About the event

The focus of my research is to develop methods for the creation of new learning plays. This is done by practical artistic work that stretches from initial initiative, and organisation of the artistic work process, to discussions with the audience at the end of each performance. What I propose for the 75%-seminar is how the two learning plays, and the methods developed through the work process, can be documented and discussed. 

I've been a part of the collective work process of two new learning plays. The first learning play is Violence & Learning (valdochpedagogik.se/en, English, new window) performed in places organised by activists from social movements. The second learning play is Corpus & Punishment  (kroppochstraff.se, Swedish, new window), performed at Inkonst in Malmö with an audience consisting of different kinds of groups that could be considered potential targets for a possible future right wing populist government. 

Biography John Hanse

John Hanse is a director and an artistic PhD student at Malmö Theatre Academy, Sweden. One focal point  of his artistic practice is to investigate how a combination of theatre practice and different levels of physical engagement of the audience can be used to perform, examine and discuss collective action. Directing and writing Violence & Learning and Corpus & Punishment is a part of John Hanses PhD, and the performances are developed and performed by a team of scholars and artists. Violence & Learning was awarded for “originality in creating rooms for reflection” by the Swedish Performance Festival (Scenkonstgalan) 2016 and was chosen to perform at the International Brecht Society Symposium in Oxford 2016 and at the the 3rd biennial Performance Philosophy conference in Prague 2017. John is engaged in the free theater group Banditsagor (banditsagor.com/vita-natter, Swedish, new window), and the work collective Public Plot (publicplot.com, new window). 

Intermediate seminars for artistic third-cycle education in theatre

Malmö Theatre Academy (THM), both for the doctoral students and as quality assurance of the department, University and discipline. The principal supervisor holds the primary responsibility for the ongoing review and follow-up of the doctoral student’s work. In order to examine the work and its openness for review from several different perspectives, and to ensure that the doctoral student’s activities are well-established at the department and in the artistic field, the work is to be presented in a wider context. At THM, PhD projects are presented in the form of open seminars on at least three occasions during the third-cycle programme. These are referred to as planning, midway and final seminars, and are scheduled to take place when approximately 25%, 50% and 75% of the third-cycle programme has been completed. At these seminars, the doctoral student can present different types of material, and artistic performance can be part of the presentation. 

Content and focus of the final seminar (75%)

At the final seminar, the artistic research process should have reached a stage where the presentation of the entire PhD project is more or less complete. All of the artistic material to be included in the completed PhD project is to be made available to the seminar participants. The doctoral student is expected to present how the work has progressed since the midway seminar.

How the presented material relates to the project’s aim and research issue is discussed during the final seminar. This involves a discussion of how the chosen theories and methods interact with the artistic content of the project. During the final seminar, the main focus is to be on the quality of the project as a whole, which may include discussions about the project’s communicability in its current form, and whether the chosen forms of presentation have successfully succeeded in communicating the artistic research processes and results.

The aim of the final seminar is to help doctoral students to complete their artistic research project. The external reviewer should therefore strive to present constructive criticism, questions and suggestions based on a thorough review of the material presented.