• Video: Kitchen table at Heddadagene 2025

    What do young people think about performing arts criticism? How did it feel to step into the public sphere as a critic — and how did they go about finding their own voice?

    In an informal Kitchen Table conversation aduring Heddadagene 2025, young participants from Unge Stemmer met with a critic mentor and a performing artist to reflect on criticism as practice and public engagement. Through their own perspectives and experiences, they explored what criticism could be, who it concerned, and how they understood their own place within the cultural public sphere.

    The conversation brought together Josefine R. Narverud (17), Fiona Åtland (19) and Heidi Bjørge Gravalid (16) from Drammen, and Ali Salhab (20) from Oslo, in dialogue with performing artist Cici Henriksen and critic mentor Per Christian Selmer-Anderssen.

  • Fieldwork: Rethinking the format

    Drak Theatre previously ran two long-term youth ensembles (one for children, the other for teenagers), which met regularly once a week. These groups took part in a theatre education course that culminated at the end of each season in a work-in-progress presentation showcasing the results of the creative and educational process. Based on our positive experience with intensive creative work by teenage groups during the summer camps, and also inspired by how participatory creation with young people is approached at JES and in several other Czech theatres, we decided to transform the format for working with the teenage ensemble in 2025—or rather, to create an entirely new one.

    We launched an open call, inviting teenagers to take part in the collective creation of an original production, led by Drak Theatre’s head educator Jana Nechvátalová and supported by members of the theatre’s artistic ensemble—professional actors Edita Dohnálková Valášek and Šimon Dohnálek. The creative process was structured into several weekend sessions, culminating in an intensive summer residency.

    The result is the original production Míla D., inspired by the true story of a sixteen-year-old boy who escaped from a correctional facility and stole a bus. The production explores themes of freedom, resistance to the system, and the search for identity, and it draws not only from the original story but also from texts written by the teenage creators themselves.

    The production has scheduled reruns and will be presented in the Drak Theatre studio. It is also planned to be presented at festivals dedicated to participatory work by young creators.

    What we learned

    • Project-based formats allow for deeper artistic engagement than weekly courses.
    • Open calls attract participants ready for commitment and responsibility.
    • Combining real stories with personal writing strengthens relevance and ownership.
    • Long-term processes enable trust, complexity and artistic risk-taking.

  • Video: Artistic Co-Creation, Theatre as a Space for Ethical and Collective Inquiry

    This fieldwork strand by Junges Ensemble Stuttgart investigated artistic co-creation as a third place, focusing on how collective artistic processes can support reflection, belonging and critical thinking among young adults.

    Through an intensive kick-off weekend, young performers and professional artists explored methods of collective creation, authorship and responsibility. Rather than starting with a predefined concept, the group developed material from discussion, improvisation and shared inquiry.

    The resulting production, about good and bad but probably mostly about the complicated mess inbetween, used the historical figure Boudica as a framework for examining moral ambiguity. The process deliberately avoided clear binaries and instead investigated contradiction, justification and ethical grey zones.

    A key finding was that co-created artistic processes allow young participants to engage deeply with complexity, both intellectually and emotionally. The theatre rehearsal room became a third place for thinking together — not oriented towards answers, but towards shared questioning.

    What we learned

    • Artistic co-creation functions as a third place when the process prioritises collective inquiry over predefined outcomes.
    • Young participants engage deeply with complexity when moral ambiguity is not simplified or resolved.
    • Shared authorship strengthens responsibility and commitment to the artistic work.
    • The rehearsal room can become a space for ethical reflection and belonging, not only artistic production.
    • Trust in young people’s capacity to handle difficult questions leads to richer artistic material and stronger ownership.