This article is aimed at exploring the political characteristics of the drama space, which reflects, juxtaposes, and opposes particular sites in a participant’s everyday life, such as the school. By putting spatial theories to work, this article investigates the drama space belonging to an all-girls community group in Sweden, participation in which is voluntary and where the artistic work produced relies on a democratic process, with the girls’ input being vital. I conceptualise the drama room as a heterotopia that functions as an exclusive and excluding space as a well as a space of resistance. Based on interviews with the girls, this ethnographic study challenges the conventional notion that applied drama is only an interrelational matter between the drama participants. By examining the drama room’s role as the ‘other place’ in the girls’ everyday lives while being connected to ‘everyday’ places, this article demonstrates the drama room as an important space for the girls to have agency, there and elsewhere. When placing space and place in the foreground, a ‘dramaspaceknowledge’ emerges, the influence of which stretches beyond the drama room. This article argues that the girls’ dramaspaceknowledge is utilised when creating a performance and while challenging structures and norms elsewhere, such as in their schools and communities.

This article explores the risks and potentials of staging vulnerabilityin community theatre with teenage girls. By drawing on postconstructionist and spatial theories, the article elaborates on how aesthetic spaces emerge when interwoven with spaces of vulnerability. Exploring how vulnerability becomes a generative, or restrictive force, the article debates tensions produced in the process in terms of potentia and potestas. It examines the embeddedness of the drama practice as it both challenges and merges with the local context and the participants’ everyday. The article argues that this embeddedness is a prerequisite to turn vulnerability into potentia.

This article concerns how the normative matter of body hair is playfully encountered within a theatre practice for teenage girls. By working with Deleuzian-inspired theories, playfulness is understood as embodied doings, interwoven with the local context. The article explores how playfulness is enacted in relation to the everyday, in particular body hair removal. The analysis shows how playfulness is an ambiguous feature enacted together with bodies, affects and materialities. Moreover, playfulness became both a restricting and a transformative force reproducing the already known while also opening up a critical approach of playing with the violent aspects of hair removal. 

Didaktikbegreppet figurerar oftast i relation med kursplaner och på förhand bestämda lärandemål i formella utbildningskontexter såsom skola och universitet. I den här artikeln undersöks hur didaktikbegreppet kan bli produktivt i relation till konstnärliga verksamheter som communityteater där innehållet oftast är platsspecifikt samt förhandlas fram mellan deltagare och ledare. Utifrån detta utforskas hur ämnesinnehållet i estetiska ämnen, med fokus på teater inom frivillig verksamhet, skapas av kroppar, affekter, känslor och plats. En utgångspunkt är att dessa aktörer blir centrala medproducenter av ämnesinnehåll när kursplaner saknas. Med inspiration från posthumanistiska teorier förstås aktörerna som både rörliga och oförutsägbara vilket skapar specifika förutsättningar både för hur teaterämnet tar form och för de estetiska ämnena generellt. Detta utforskas genom en utvidgad relationell didaktik vilken möjliggör fler aktörer än de mänskliga på den didaktiska arenan. Genom begreppet didaktisk musikalitet undersöks hur teaterledaren kan förhålla sig till ett ämnesinnehåll som är både rörligt och oförutsägbart samt i hög grad samskapas affektivt, kroppsligt och rumsligt.

Didactics for the aesthetic subjects; producing subject-matter through bodies, affects, feelings and place. Didactics as a concept is often connected with syllabuses and beforehand stated learning objectives in formal educational contexts such as schools. This article explores how didactics could become productive in relation with artistic and site specific settings such as community theatre where the content is negotiated between the leaders and the participants. The article explores how subject-content in aesthetic subjects, with focus on theatre in a community setting, is created through bodies, affects and space. A point of departure is that these actors become vital co-producers of the subject-matter in the absence of curriculum. Inspired by posthumanism, the actors are explored as agile and unpredictable thus creating specific conditions for the shaping of the theatre subject and the aesthetic subjects in general. This is examined through an extended relational didactic that enables human and non-human participants in the didactic field. Through the concept of didactic musicality the article also explores the relationship between the theatre teacher and a subject-matter that is constantly changing through affects, bodies and space.