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Arts & Communication A perspective on art-based and academic research

I do not advocate for the cancellation of cultures, the theater and irregular working hours foster emotional bonds,
complexities involved in contextualization underline the friendships, and marriages within the acting community.
significance of mutual engagement between artists and It could be argued that almost 100 years later, during
academic researchers. Interculturalism in performance the second wave of feminism that started in the late 1960s,
is the moment where two or more cultural traditions actress-managers once again took control of their art and
meet 34(p7) . The production in which I participated in China lives by creating monologs and touring the world with
was also an intercultural production, but it was planned content that they themselves chose and, sometimes, author.
and produced by Chinese artists who understood their In Norway, this includes Juni Dahr’s monolog Joan of Arc,
own context, values, and aims.
Bente Kahan’s monologue Letters without a stamp, Liv
When reflecting on my own performance as Nora Gulbrandsen’s Shut up, it’s Ibsen, and my own monologue
in China, the project A Global Doll’s House was an eye- Florence Nightingale – woman at war. Likewise, monologs
opener. Based on the collaborative methodology, including such as The Belle of Amherst by William Luce and Lilli
digital humanities, the researchers looked at multiple Valentin by Willy Russell are also examples of a renaissance
adaptations of the play and revealed how “artists have been for female stars and one of many understudied issues for
able to re-create the play successfully in so many cultural further research projects where digital humanities could
contexts.” 35(p1) The researchers traced the main reason for be used to find new patterns.
Ibsen’s popularity back to the English-speaking actress- A third area where artistic and academic research
managers at the end of the nineteenth century. These intertwines must also be mentioned. Digital tools have made
actresses used Nora to promote and manage their own
careers. By touring the world, they made Ibsen global at it possible to recreate historic venues that have been “lost”
a time when Ibsen’s complex female characters and Nora’s to make us understand how space affects performing art. In
Visualising Lost Theaters, five different historic venues are
fight for independence created big debates. Nora gave the 36
actresses “a new identity space to inhabit at a time when recreated digitally. Using virtual reality (VR), the researchers
women in diverse cultures were demanding changes in the have created digital models as spaces for performance research,
social organization of gender.” 35(p64) architectural knowledge, and sites of cultural production. The
project shows how the research of Professor Julie Holledge has
In A Global Doll’s House, the authors use network been essential in combining VR and performance research.
analysis to demonstrate how Norwegian actresses who In a VR laboratory, actor-researchers collaborate with other
played Nora were linked to major European theater makers, researchers to investigate how performance was shaped
and, beyond that, made Ibsen a global phenomenon. Their in historic venues that no longer exists. This is yet another
claim is that the family ties between actors and actresses example of how academic researchers and actors-researchers
proved cultural inheritance as an esthetic constraint. 35(84-85) can cooperate and find new insight by asking questions
The network itself shows facts about family connections, and finding answers together. It is a symbiotic relationship
and the researchers interviewed six of the nine remaining where the latter can use their embodied knowledge in a VR
Noras within the network. All six denied the influence reconstruction so that academic researchers can investigate
of the others. 35(88-94) My experience is that all actresses and write about the influence of space on acting.
intend to be original, but we are all still consciously or
unconsciously carrying a notion of who Nora is and 9. Two fields merging together
how she is to be portrayed. My own research shows that It is possible to draw strong parallels between digital
esthetic and cultural transmissions can be traced back to humanities and performance. The American theater
the first Nora in Copenhagen in 1879. I have seen all the historian, Debra Caplan, says it this way:
9
Noras interviewed in their respective live productions of
A Doll’s House. Their individual family ties are part of the “Digital scholarship trades not just in text but in
historic, political, and social context of how Nora is given multilayered conglomerates of words, images, sound,
life and soul on stage. However, my claim is that marriages video, social media, and other forms, constructed
and family relationships are a minor argument to explain via collaborations of multiple kinds of experts and
cultural inheritance in acting styles and methods. The way disseminated to the public who interact with them in real-
the six actresses acted may be a result of going through time. It is no wonder then that many digital humanities
similar training within the same historic period. As a scholars across fields have begun to refer to their work
former president of both the International Federation of as “performative” – that is, consisting of discrete, live,
Actors (FIA) and Norwegian Actor’s Equity (NSF), I would and generative “web events” that can most accurately be
also argue that the digital network shows how dedication to considered in a performance studies framework.” 37(p349)

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 7 doi: 10.36922/ac.1807