Beyond pathos: Interview with Annika Tudeer

Abstract

Abstract In this interview with Annika Tudeer, we pursue the question of possibility and the place of emotionality in contemporary theatre. At the forefront of the interview is the process-oriented practice of the Finnish theatre company OBLIVIA, which oriented itself very heavily around conceptual approaches of the 1970s through the 1990s but which in recent times has increasingly opened itself up by incorporating chance as a constructive principle for using affects and emotions as a medium of communication with the audience. In its more recent works, the company has allocated more room to that which one might call the pathos of acting. This serves a new performative aesthetics that endeavours to overcome the analytical approach to the theatre dispositive.