The Nomadic Perspective and the notion of a Spiral Dramaturgy
Knut Ove Arntzen (University of Bergen) [Bio]
Abstract: In this article I will pin point some aspects of Sámi and indigenous theatre in relation to nomadism and shamanism with regard to Sámi and Inuit theatre of a spiral dramaturgical kind, and how this kind of dramaturgy corresponds to the concept of non-orientable surfaces put forward by Lech Tomaszewski. I will also touch the question of the Sámi coastal theatre and how Sámi spectacular shows may seem to become globalized in the Cultural Capital Year of Umeå in Swedish Lapland.
Nomadic people and the idea of the nomadic is a concrete term and at the same time an applied metaphor. It implies that the word nomad may be comprehended differently in different contexts, both philosophically and anthropologically. The term may be a metaphorical image of an artistic practice in the sense that nomad may indicate the real nomad in the anthropologic sense, but also be an image of artistic nomadism.
- Sámi and Inuit theatre as indigenous nomadic theatre
The original Greek meaning of the word nomad or nomadic, is referring to people who let their animal herds graze wherever vacant grazing areas were to be found. However, the most common meaning of the word nomad itself, refers to the lifestyle attached to collectors and hunters, which can also be applied on Arctic indigenous populations who make their livelihood from moving herds of animals like reindeers from area to area according to the seasons (cfr Arntzen in Methis 2009, 69-78). According to Deleuze and Guattari, a metaphoric use of the term nomad may be transferred to art theory in the sense that artists may be looked upon as mobile people, people who move in different geographical areas in order to live and produce.
A metaphorical use of the term nomad is exemplified in the essay Traitè de nomadologie: La machine de guerre by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (Deleuze and Guattari 1986). They use nomad in the metaphoric sense as an image of movement in landscape in connection to approaches in situations of war, something that is connected to the fact that the Mongolic tribes at the age of Djingis Khan conquered large parts of Central-Asia because they were able to move quickly, across the steps on horseback and thus launch surprise attacks. So, it refers to fast movement and becomes an image of mobility in concrete and metaphoric senses.
Sámi and Inuit art and theatre can be understood in the intersection of concrete and metaphorical nomadism, as well as operating in a dialogic space of two kinds: The indigenous nomadic space on one hand and the space of border dialogs on the other. Dialogic space is a concept to describe communication between two or more partners in an exchange situation of a nomadic kind, expressing the intersection of spiritual, political and vernacular kind (Arntzen 2012, 129). Nomadic people traditionally also relate to a shamanistic religion.
Professor Jon Nygaard (Oslo) has expanded on a circumpolar dialogic space when researching the development within the traditional theatrical expressive forms of shamanism, leaving traces like in stone carving and in the Inukshuk of the Canadian and Greenlandic tundra. Nygaards point is that it is legitimate to speak of these historical and ancient expressions, like Greenlandic mask dancing, as theatre forms. This makes sense, especially in relation to narrative traditions or rituals of performed shamanism. From the material that Nygaard has collected in his circumpolar research, it is possible to justify his claim that there are certain exterior similarities between sign systems in Asiatic theatre forms and the Arctic original populations’ traditional expressive theatre or stage forms (Nygaard 1998). This en-widen the dialogic space to include inspiration from Japanese theatre to Sámi theatre, which has been the concrete case with Haukur J. Gunnarson, the Icelandic artistic director of Beaivvás Sámi Teáhter in two periods.
Ritual and shamanistic masque dances have been investigated and conveyed by the Greenlandic Inuit actress Makka Kleist, which she demonstrated in a Norwegian TV-broadcast emission in July 1993. Ritual dances and ritual use of masques were parts of the Greenlandic Inuit culture. These were dances and masques of shamanistic character performed by the noaide in a northern Scandinavian context. Through rhythmical drumming the noaide entered into a trance and got into contact with the animal spirits, especially the bear spirit, a contact that had to be peaceful in order to maintain the balance between the Sámi and the nature from which they had their livelihood (Lee 1991).
- Indigenous theatre and the spiral dramaturgy
Theatre researcher of Danish background, Per Brask (Winnipeg, Manitoba) has been very preoccupied with Indigenous theatre in a northern circumference, and he made an interview with Ulla Ryum. In this interview she expresses the opinion that the original populations – the so-called Fourth World – have started to use theatre and urban media in order to express their self-esteem (Brask and Morgan 1992: 118-129). Ryum has especially pointed to the fact that there exists a form of communication or expression related to the different media such as theatre, video and television. Indigenous populations make use of these by combining standardised dramaturgy with their own narrative traditions and dance traditions, and she especially mentions the film known as Veiviseren (The Path Finder) by Nils Gaup (1987) with its conventional though efficiently applied narrative structure. However within theatre work other dramaturgies than the Aristotelian suspense dramaturgy will have to be preferred because it is necessary to have other dramaturgic working tools when you work with mythical material and local narrative traditions.
To develop such a process it is vital to be able to understand the complexity of ethnic cultural traditions. Indigenous narrative traditions is characterised by the relation between humans and nature and the necessity of having a dialogue between them. Ryum may have contributed to enabling her to see the coherence between narrative traditions of the Arctic original population, which has come to expression through her ideas of a spiral dramaturgy. The inspiration of developing a model for spiral dramaturgy may have come from the Situationists’ use of the spiral as a figure for non-closed or non-orientable expressions, in opposition to classical linear ways of thinking. Spiral dramaturgy has been defined as follows by Siri Hansen (Oslo):
“/…/Ulla Ryum, Danish author, playwright, stage instructor and theoretic, has promoted the term ´ spiral dramaturgy´, also known by the name ´female dramaturgy´. In stead of the linear causal logics of the rational world.”
Siri Hansen expands on this by saying that Ryum thinks that the cause-effect-relationship has an interactive effect in which the ´inner´ associative processes runs the cause of action in stead of the linearity of ´outer´ actions (Hansen 2006).
Another point of view is that theatres by original populations like that of the Sámi people take on a hybrid character. This is something upon which Per Brask has been reflecting. He came to the conclusion that it must have to do with the fact that they are attached to a form of culture of which a central feature is being able to think in images, symbols and thus touching upon the metaphorical, as I would add. This point of view can be applied to understand the first Greenlandic theatre in the tradition of the Inuit people of this island, which is a self-governed area within the Danish Commonwealth.
Tukaq Teatret was founded in 1975 by Reidar Nilsson together with some Inuit partners as a studio of the Odin Teatret in Denmark, and in 1984 the group moved to Nuuk in Greenland where they formed a new company under the name of Silamiut, which after they got their own space in 2005 has been given the status as a Greenlandic national theatre. Tukaq Teatret/Silamiut became the source of inspiration for other theatre initiatives within the Arctic area in both Canada and Scandinavia. Tukaq worked with different forms of physical expressions and has trained the actors in a physical technique inspired by Eugenio Barba’s working methods at Odin Teatret at Holstebro. Nattoralik, which is Greenlandic-Inuit for “eagle”, was a Tukaq production from 1980, which built on Inuit tales and the Greenlandic-Inuittic mythological and spiritual world. The tale of the eagle, which gives humanity the gift of feast, was the basis of this production.
“/…/Once upon a time people had no pleasures, all of their lives was work, food, devouring and sleep…” (Tukaq 1980)
After this time came a time when humans were like reborn and life got a deeper meaning through the recognition of the pleasures of sharing and being together, as it says in the tale on basis of which this stage production was made. Tukaq’s production consisted of many different situations with physical theatre, song, dancing and recitation. One of the scenes which was visually most successful was the one in which the eagle mother teaches a young Inuit to use his body and voice to dance and sing.
Dálvadis Teátter from Karesuando in Northern Sweden and other Sámi theatre initiatives have represented a corresponding form of hybridism, with elements like narrating theatre, rituality and performance art, which also applies for the Beaivvás Sámi Teáhter in Kautokeino. To say more about Dálvadis, I saw their production 8 minuter från solen (8 Minutes before the sun) in Stockholm in 1987, and as I have written in Nordic Theatre Studies, there was a striking contrast between attachment to a theatre of bodily energies, reminiscent of the Greenlandic Tukak theatre and a play with non-acting of a performative character:
“/…/From a dramaturgical point of view the basic structure of the action was fragmentary, dealing with the relationship between two Sámi girls, vigjhemit in the Sámi language, and the Shaman, noaide, who at the time was acting as the wild animal, the coyote.” (Arntzen 1995, p. 70.)
Beaivvás Sámi Teáhter was founded in 1981 as a free theatre group in Kautokeino, Finnmark county in Norway: It gained status as Sámi regional theatre from 1990 on, and got status of a national theatre for the Sámi people under the name of Beaivvás Sámi Nasunálteáhter from june 2001, and Beaivvàs is also touring in Northern Sweden and Northern Finland, and sometimes performs in the capital cities of Scandinavia. There was no established tradition for running professional theatre in the Sámi languages, but a certain performativity was to be found in the tradition of the storytelling and the joik, and even in a Sámi acrobat (Oskal 2009). An important source of dramaturgical inspiration was through workshop contributions by Ulla Ryum. Nordisk Teaterkomité organised a Sámi playwright and drama seminar at Kautokeino in September 1985, at which Ryum was one of the lecturers presenting her idea of spiral dramaturgy (Ryum 1986). This was at the occasion of the newly founded Norwegian Sámi theatre Beaivvàs.
A similar conflict as in the above mentioned Dálvadis-production was at display in Deáarvvuodat (Greetings), a production from 1993 dealing with the tensions of industrialization vs. keeping an ecological habitat for humans and animals intact. Deáarvvuodat, directed by Anitta Suikkari, was in co-operation with Mary Sarre as sole actor in a monologue about a suicide. Sarre portrayed a mother who tries to understand why her son committed suicide. The production simultaneously took up the conflict between modern urban society and the more nature-related Sámi culture. The central issue was cultural identity, and the scenography was based on the form of a sledge to be pulled by reindeers (Arntzen 1995, p. 72-74). The topic of suicide among indigenous people due to conflicts about life forms is a tension, which was one of the main themes in much artistic production of indigenous people during the 1980s and 1990s, from Canada to Northern Scandinavia. Many means of expressions from artistic hybridization were used to touch upon it in a spiral dramaturgical way, which certainly can be seen in the perspective of the nomadic.
In Norway, especially succeeding the establishment of a South-Sámi theatre cooperating with Nordland Teater, and later in Sweden with Samiska Teatern (Kiruna) and Tornedalsteatern (Tornedalen), Sámi theatres have attained good conditions through the establishment of regional culture politics. They have also been of great importance to people working to strengthen Sámi culture and give the Sámi more opportunities to make decisions in cases that are directly concerning them.
Hålogaland Teater was established as a regional theatre in Tromsø in 1971, performing in North-Norwegian dialects. It was the first professional institutional theatre North of the polar circle, with the obligation of touring in the arctic part of Norway. In co-operation as well with the smaller companies of Sampo Teater and the Studioteateret of Trondheim, they joined up with Beaivvás Sámi Teáhter in the production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Man from Sezuan in 1991, an outdoor ice-theatre production directed by Jos Gronier (The Netherlands). This production won the prize of the best Norwegian production of that year, and it was later shown in Tromsø at the shores of the lake known as Prestvannet (Video/stills from NRK). This production was characterised by intercultural exploration in theatre work in which people of many nationalities and from many theatre groups participated as actors. The production reflected a dynamics, which in an Arctic perspective may be viewed as the beginning of a new wave characterized by the intercultural and international connection to a Northern and Arctic identity. There is a strong vernacular touch in this production based on Brecht because of the locality, and the use of Sámi language as a political statement.
Haukur J. Gunnarsson has been an artistic director in Beaivvàs Sámi Teàhter for two periods, from 1991 to 1996 and in a new period from 2007. He has been very preoccupied with traditional Japanese theatre forms like Noh theatre, something that was expressed throughout the production of Narukami (1992), which was a dramatising of an old Japanese tale.
- Arctic drama, non-orientable surfaces, gender and ecology The term arctic drama was studied and researched by the International Association for Scandinavian Studies-conference (IASS) in Gdansk 2008: Nordic Drama. Renewals and Transgressions. This proves that the challenge consists in searching for – and describing – other narrative traditions and dramaturgic techniques that often exist in the range between epical techniques of drama, shamanism, and Ulla Ryum’s circular and spiral dramaturgy of a non-linear and mythological kind.
David Schuler has shown how the Sámi chanting form, the joik, was a source of inspiration for arctic drama, mentioning Finnish-Sámi multi-artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää´s (1943-2001) play Ridn’oaivi ja nieguid oaidni (The Icyhaired and The Dream Seer). It is about a young reindeer herder meeting an old seer or shaman, and is a play developed in a dialogue with Japanese Noh Theatre, which Beàivvas Sami Theater produced in 2007, and also touring in 2013. This play it is an example of a Sàmi drama built up around the narrative structure of the joik (Schuler 2008: 104-105).
Arctic, as well as archipelagic nature has fascinated modernist avantgarde movements, like the Situationist movement, including the writings of the Polish architect and artist Lech Tomaszewski (1926-1982). He was invited by Jacqueline de Jong, editor of The Situationist Times to contribute with an arcticle on non-orientable surfaces in the no 5 issue in 1963, published in Copenhagen and Paris. He launched the theory of labyrinths as topographic symbols in landscapes:
“/…/Topology considers superficial structures susceptible to continuous transformations with easily change (of) their form, the most interesting geometric properties common to all the phases of modification being also studied. Assumed is an abstract material of ideal deformability which can be deformed, disruption and guering being accepted” (Tomaszewski 1963, p 6).
The non-orientable surface in matemathics is a surface which can not be measured, thus it is non-orientable. The Situationist Movement was fascinated by the idea of the non-symmetric and how Nordic folk art would reflect this by labyrinths and knots, like in Viking ages with the concept of Valknútr, symbol of three dimensional or non-symmetric figures (Hellers 2012). This was to be conceived of as in oppostion to classisist conceptions of art and art history, like by Asger Jorn and Jacqueline de Jong.
Kajakkkvinnen (The Kayak Woman) by Per Verner-Carlsson was a play staged in 2003 by Beaivvàs Sámi Nasunàlteàhteas as a co-production with Sampo, based on a the play by the Swedish playwright Verner-Carlsson, directed by Suikkari. At this time Harriet Nordlund who was a dramaturg of this production, succeeded Alex Scherp as artistic director of Beaivvàs, and she reworked Verner-Carlsson’s play about communication across cultural and linguistic barriers with a touch of gender and ecology, and indeed reflecting the topographic point of Lech Tomaszewski. The play had its first staging at Dramaten (The Royal Dramatic Theatre) in Stockholm 1982, and it is about a woman about to separate form her husband due to quarrel of linguistic understanding. The action moves symbolically from ice flake to ice flake, and we experience the mythological level of the play, almost as a metaphor of a non-logical or non-linear search for identity. It was a focus on linguistic-philosophical perceptions of how a kayak may be described in relation to how it really is looking seen from different point of view, the male or the female view reflecting a symmetric vs. a non-orientable topology. This becomes crucial in how the female main character understands herself when the husband insists that it is a canoe, so the kayak becomes an icon picked up from the Arctic area viewed in relation to nomadic life forms which is of a non-orientable kind, and this female point of view is opposed to the male-view, insisting that a kayak is a canoe. However, the woman intuitively knows how a kayak looks.
- Sámi Coastal theatre to festivals and global shows
In the 1990s the topic of nomadism vs. industrialization and urbanization was very urgent to indigenous societies, whether it was in Northern Scandinavia or in Arctic Canada. It was a time when indigenous culture was at stake, but now much has changed. A Sámi coastal theatre representing the Sámi agricultural and fishing village identity, came to expression in Totalteatret from Tromsø, questioning the more oppressed Sámi identity in the coastal areas of Northern Norway where nomadism was not at hand any more. The festival Riddu Riddu Festivála in Kåfjord was based in such perspectives as the coastal and the nomadic, and developed into an international festival for indigenous music and cultural shows.
Sámi, and indigenous cultures are about becoming globalized like in music or new Cinema, not least thanks to the Sámi artist Mari Boine, film director Nils Gaup and later on Tommy Wirkola, the film director behind Kill Buljo 1 and 2. Sámi and indigenous theatre has also toured a lot internationally and has acquired the touch of global community, as we could also see at the opening of the Culture Capital year of 2014 in Umeå in Swedish county of Norrland.
The opening event was a Sámi co-operation with Künstlergruppe Phase 7 from Berlin, and Berliner Zeitung (5.2. 2014) wrote in a review that:
“/…/Auf dem zugefrorene Fluss had das Berliner Künstlerkollektiv Phase 7 unter der Leitung des Medienkünstlers Sven Sören Beyer um ein paar Samizelte und fünf Bühnen einen Hightech-Rahmen aus Licht und Klangeffekten geschaffen…Dann beginnt das berühmte Joiken. Die Sängerinnen Inga Juuso und Ulla Pirttijärvi wuchten archaische Gesänge mit einer Kraft in den Raum, die in den hoch technoiden Ambiente der Lichteffekte nur umso stärker wirkt” (Jähner in Berliner Zeitung, 5.2. 2014, see my translation under references).
This show also was on German television and thus we see how Sámi and indigenous culture is being exposed to globalization and global community and tourism. This is, however, far away from the very beginning in search of the local identity as such. And it shows the unavoidable in the search for becoming a part of a much wider community than at the very beginning of Sámi and indigenous theatrical culture.
It is a development, which is taking place on different platforms, be it the Riddu Riddu Festival in Kåfjord or Umeå Cultural Capital. My final conclusion then would be that Sámi and indigenous culture has come to global focus. But still it contains the spiral and is marked by non-orientable surfaces as a counter culture to the established urban cultures.
References
Arntzen, K. O. (2009), “On Nomadism”, in Methis 3-2009: Studia Humaniora Estonica.
Arntzen, K.O. (2012), ”A Metaphorical Vie won Cultural Diealogues: Struve´s Meridian Arc and Reflections on Memories in Eastern and Northern Borderlands”, in H. V. Holm, S. Lægreid and T. Skorgen (eds.) The Borders of Euorpe. Hegemony, Aestshetics and Border Poetics, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Brask, P. og W. Morgan red. (1992), Aboriginal Voices. Amerindian, Inuit, and Sami Theater, Baltimore and London,: P. Brask, „Performance in the Fourth World: An Interview with Ulla Ryum.
Deleuze, G. og F. Guattari (1986), Nomadology: The War Machine, New York.
Hansen, Siri (2006):, “Feministisk teater”, in Stikkordet nr. 4-2006, Oslo: Norsk skuespillerforbund.
Hellers, T. (2012), ”Valknutr”. Das Dreieck Symbol der Wikingerzeit, Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia 19, Wien: Fassbaender.
Arntzen, K. O. (1995), Hybrid and Cultural Identity – After the Mainstream. Arctic Theatre from Scandinavia in a Post-Mainstream Perspective”, in Nordic Theatre Studies Expanding Horizons, vol. 7, ed. Kacke Götrick, Nordiska Teaterforskare: Gideå.
Lee, M. (1991), „Shamanistic Elements of Korean Folk Theatre, Kamyon´ guk“, Shamans and Cultures, M. Hoppál og K.D. Howard (ed.), International Society for Trans-Oceanic Research, Selected papers of the First Conference of the international Society for Shamanistic Research, 27-28 July, 1991, Seoul, Korea, ISTOR books, 1500 Dana Place, Fullerton, California 92631, USA.
Nygaard, J. (1998): Spillerom, Oslo, nr 1-4/1998: Bokhefte: Teater som uttrykk for kultur og identitet hos arktiske urfolk.
Schuler, D. (2008), “East meets west: Joik-driven dramaturgy and Noh theatre in the Beaivvás Sámi Teáhter´s production of ´The Frost-Haired and the Dream-Seer´”. International Association of Scandinavia Studies, in Nordic Drama: Renewal and transgression, Fundacja Rozwoju Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2010
Ryum, U. (1986), Om den ikke-aristoteliske fortaelleteknik. Rapport från seminariet “Dramatikern i dialog med sin samtid”, II delen, 4.-11.6. 1982 Reykjavik: Nordiska Teaterkommiteen, Helsingfors 1983: Statens tryckningsanstalt, 2. opplag 1986: Oslo.
Tomaszewski, L. (1963), “Non-Oreintable Surfaces”, in The Situationist Times, nr 4, Paris/Copenhagen: Rhodos.
Tukaq 1980: Program for Nattoralik
Jähner, H. (2014), “Wolfsheuelen und Kunstgrunzen”, Berliner Zeitung, 5.2., Berlin. My Translation of quotation into English: From German language article in Berliner Zeitung, 5th of February, 2001:
“/…/On the frozen river the Berlin-based artist collectivity Phase 7 has under the direction of the media artist Sven Sören Beyer has created a high tech installation around a couple of Sámi tents and five stages…Then the famous joik started. The singers Inga Juuso and Ulla Pirttijärvi presented in the typical way some archaic songs with a force in the space, that made the high tech ambient setting of lightening effect seem even more impressive”.