In this presentation the risks and potentials of staging vulnerability in a community theatre practice with teenage girls will be explored. This presentation will explore vulnerability as a potentially generative matter that enables resistance in line with Judith Butler (Butler, 2016). By drawing on post-constructionist ( e.g. Lykke, 2009, 2010) and spatial theories (Massey, 2005) the presentation troubles how aesthetic spaces emerges when interwoven with spaces of vulnerability. The empirical material in this presentation comes from a one year ethnographic study following the theatre-groups’ work creating a performance based on girls’ stories and experiences of becoming woman in a particular Swedish town.  Exploring how vulnerability becomes a generative, or restrictive force in the performance work the tensions produced in the process are discussed with the aim to highlight the multitude of ethical dilemmas that arise when staging the everyday. Also brought to discussion is the embeddedness of the drama practice as it merges with, and challenges, the local context and the participants’ everyday life. In this presentation I will argue that this embeddedness is a prerequisite to turn vulnerability into a generative force, enabling the participants to feel hope and be proud of what and who they are in relation to limiting structures.

By bringing space and place to the foreground, this presentation will trouble who and what have agency in the drama room. The theatre practice will thus be explored through post constructionist and spatial theories which will provide for new questions and findings within a field that tend to focus on human agency and interaction.