Can directors and actors be vulnerable to one another?

Through concrete actions and personal experiences, participants are confronted with questions concerning integrity and intimacy. The research examines how these values influence the collaboration between director and performer, and how their practice can be affected by different leadership styles in contemporary performing arts.

‘In this type of performing arts, the boundary between performance and reality is often blurred. This can create powerful and meaningful experiences but also presents new ethical challenges. Without roles and fictional plots, it can become more difficult for performers to protect themselves in their work,’ says Linn Hilda.

The director’s role and leadership
In her artistic research project, Linn Hilda describes how the performance field’s ideals of authenticity and risk-taking bring the director into close contact with issues of integrity, responsibility and boundary-setting.

‘As a director, I may feel a need to legitimise my position as a manager. This may mean that I try to demonstrate qualities such as decisiveness and artistic courage, or that I try to inspire by fostering a culture based on charismatic leadership,’ says Linn Hilda.

Both alternatives reinforce the asymmetry that already exists between director and performer.

Portraying authority in such a way can be exhausting. At the same time, Linn Hilda argues, there are other problems for directors who, for various reasons, try to refrain from behaving in an authoritarian manner.

‘In the worst case, the director is then left with anunsolvable dilemma. They must neither hesitate nor be too pushy. It creates, so to speak, a double-sided taboo’, says Linn Hilda.
 

New perspectives
Drawing on theory from fields such as gender studies and class analysis, Linn Hilda explores how intimacy, mandate and leadership can function in artistic processes. She demonstrates how vulnerability and sensitivity can become a resource, not just an obstacle, in work.

‘I think I went into this research very focused on how the director, through their interpretation of their professional role, also creates a more or a less reasonable working environment for their colleagues. This was just after #MeToo and #tystnadtagning, and there were obvious reasons for me and many others to reflect on what kind of directors we wanted to be,’ says Linn Hilda.

As the research progressed, the work has increasingly centered on creativity and artistic desire.

‘There is sometimes a fear amongst directors, a notion that their own creativity might be threatened or stifled if we are forced to be more attentive to our colleagues’ boundaries and impulses. Personally, I have come to the opposite conclusion. If I know that my colleagues are able to say no to me, I find it easier to deal with my own desires. My job is to want things, not to demand that I get my way,’ concludes Linn Hilda Lamberg.