Acting Otherwise

This doctoral project explores a shift in postdramatic acting — a movement from techné to phronesis, from the mastery of technique to a form of practical discernment grounded in situational judgment and relational sensitivity. Within this shift, the institutional context of performance is no longer a neutral frame but becomes a material in itself: something the actor navigates, negotiates, and transforms through embodied and transferential relations.

Situated within Nordic artistic research, the project responds to an institutional landscape shaped by neoliberal governance, moral perfectionism, and managerial logic. Against this backdrop, it asks how acting can remain alive and critical — not through control or clarity, but through embodied discernment, ambiguity, and ethical risk.

Composed as a woven dramaturgy of essays and conceptual “refractions,” the dissertation combines artistic practice with theoretical reflection. It introduces phronesis as a living methodology for acting and collaboration, proposing that the actor’s craft is not to perfect representation, but to trouble it — navigating heteronomous conditions with sensitivity, erotic awareness, and ethical imagination.

Experimental devices such as reversed consent and the practice Brave Love serve to test these ideas in practice, exploring how desire, asymmetry, and institutional tension can become materials for artistic transformation within institutional life. The work ultimately proposes a “liveable grammar of judgment” for artists, educators, and institutions seeking to act otherwise — with courage, care, and erotic intelligence.