Forestillingens fællesskab [PDF] - Center for Kunst & Interkultur

Abstract
In Denmark there is an ongoing debate about missing representation of cultural diversity
within the arts and culture sector. This thesis, called The theatre’s imagined community,
takes its point of departure within this debate, investigating interviews about a concrete
theatre play called: Et andet Sted (‘Somewhere else’) which was staged at the theater
Mungo Park in 2010. We have chosen this specific play as it represents an example of
repertoire renewal compared to the traditional West-European plays that are criticised in
the debate. What is new about the play is the fact that it tells a part of Danish history from
a Turkish immigrant perspective. Our investigation deals with the actual representational
space within the theatre as well as how cultural diversity manifests itself during the
interviews. Therefore this thesis is not an esthetic analysis of the play; rather we focus on
interviews with members of the production crew, actors and audience in connection to
the play. In order to do this, we find it extremely relevant to define how cultural diversity
can be understood, and in so doing we come up with different theoretical components
which we can use when interpreting and discussing our different interviews. Mikhail
Bakhtin and Homi K. Bhabha are the dominant figures in this definition. Bakhtin is
useful because of the way he places the carnival as a carnevalesque counter-culture to
the surrounding society. Furthermore the concept of ”the dialogical” is all-pervading
in the sense that different people negotiate meanings in dialogue as well as one person
negotiates with him-/herself about conceptions of the world. Bhabhas idea of ‘the third
space’ and processes of cultural hybridity that take form within the frame of the national,
are likewise crucial. Both theorists are motivated by the ambivalence connected to the
processes they discuss. In this connection we find it appealing to ask whether there is a
possibility that a collocation of a dialogical third space can be institutionalized within the
theatre’s representational space.With our theoretical perspective as well as the composition
of different interviews, the debate and our own observations, we investigate how the
representational space has taken form in the process of planning the whole play, how
this space of negotiation functions in practice and what potential the theatre experience
has in terms of communicating intercultural insight. Conclusively we can say that the
theatre gives room for a sense of community across cultural diversity. Its representational
space allows a counter-perspective on the surrounding society within which people with
different cultural imaginations can negotiate meanings. In this sense a challenging seed
has been planted both in the debate around the arts and culture sector as well as in the
imagination of Danish national community.
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