“Multilingual experiences can be strengthened and empowered through performing arts” – Interview with David Kozma and Vanja Hamidi Isacson

Director and actor David Kozma and playwright and artistic researcher Vanja Hamidi Isacson spent three weeks in residency at Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts in Hammerfest, Norway in September. During their residency, they worked on their multilingual performance TYSTNAD/HILJAISUUS/SILENCE, which aims to give a voice to immigrant and minority language speakers in Finland, Sweden, and Norway and to give these languages space in a Nordic context.

TYSTNAD/HILJAISUUS/SILENCE will be produced by the Post Theatre Collective in Helsinki. The idea and concept of the performance were developed by Kozma (Finland) and Hamidi Isacson (Sweden) in collaboration with Yuko Takeda (Finland) and Luthando Jamda (Sweden) based on their languages. The performance will include several languages, such as IsiXhosa, Japanese, English, Finnish, and Swedish.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Kozma and Hamidi Isacson in relation to their new performance and their time in residency in Hammerfest.

During your residency, you worked on the multilingual performing arts piece TYSTNAD/HILJAISUUS/SILENCE. The performance will explore the theme of silence in a multilingual context. Can you tell us more about the performance and what it’s about?

David and Vanja:
Its starting point is the experiences of exclusion from the theatre based on linguistic requirements, such as fluency in the majority language. Some of the questions we’re exploring with the performance are: What roles and parts are you allowed or are expected of you as an immigrated actor? What kind of productions and performances are you invited to? How can we create a multilingual performance without exotifying the actors and their languages?

The performance takes the form of an audition for a multilingual performance in a Nordic country, with the audience sitting in the waiting room as if they were actors waiting for their audition. The two actors, Luthando and Yuko, are preparing for their turn with monologues in their native languages IsiXhosa and Japanese, but their private lives keep interrupting them: their families, partners, friends, and the authorities erode their concentration. Their lives demand their full attention. When they shut “reality” out, their inner struggles bubble up to the surface as dreamlike monologues, songs, movements, etc.

David:
With this performance we want to play with the vertical power structure that dominates our societies. Power like this is very vague and can change easily when challenged. It’s always expected that the one who gets the job is the underdog, but what if this situation changes and the one who holds the power has to convince the underdog that joining the team will be beneficial for them?

In your project description, you discuss the position of majority languages and English in societies. Could you elaborate on this?

David and Vanja:
We’re interested in the “double silencing” which can occur when the majority language(s) in a specific country, let’s say Swedish in Sweden, silences the official minority languages as well as immigrant languages. This has been done historically with devastating consequences. In the current political discourse, immigrants are required to know Swedish almost as proof of their willingness to be part of society. There is a high risk of minority and immigrant languages being silenced due to these attitudes at both an individual and societal level.

“Second silencing” can happen if English is required as a common work language, which is often the case at international companies as well as at universities, and in cafés and shops, etc. We’re interested in what happens when individuals must silence their first or “native” language(s), and then the dominant language in the country is silenced by the global dominance of “English” – whatever that means… which English are we referring to? There is a strict hierarchy in terms of which variant of English has the highest status. Also, “English” is often considered to be the language of communication available to everybody, including all immigrant communities – a view which ignores the fact that many people don’t speak any variant of English.

What’s it like to work on a multilingual performance? Do you think it’s different from working on a monolingual performance?

Vanja:
Every monolingual performance is different and has its own circumstances; languages, artists, themes, form, context, target group, etc., but there are some recurrent elements. For example; collaboration and dialogue, time, risk of stereotyping and empowerment. In my thesis “The potential of multilingualism in dramatic work” I drew some conclusions around this.

As a playwright, I need to be close to the actors during the work on the script. I need to listen to them as speakers of the specific languages and as actors to perceive how they handle and deal with the languages. Everyone involved needs to listen to each other and be in constant dialogue. This requires time. Creating multilingual performing arts take time.

Language ideologies, our thoughts, feelings, and opinions about language can influence how we artists depict and portray different languages and the characters who speak them. There’s a risk of stereotyping, so I need to raise awareness of what I feel, think, and know about the languages I work with. I need to dialogue with people who speak the language and acquire knowledge.

Multilingual experiences can be strengthened and empowered through performing arts that dare to weave a performance involving multiple languages. It can be empowering both for the performers involved and for individuals in the audience.

David:
The challenge is not to become monolingual in our working process while developing a multilingual performance. It’s easy for English to dominate other languages because it’s the only common language of the working group. How can we avoid falling into this trap? How can we ensure and encourage the working group to use its full linguistic repertoire?

You’ve developed methods for incorporating several languages on stage. Could you explain these methods and what you do in practice?

Vanja:
A method that I’ve used a lot in my previous works in Malmö is called translanguaging, which is a sociolinguistic term to describe when individuals use several languages in their conversation and move between these languages without commenting. I let the characters use this way of talking, changing between Arabic and Swedish in the same sentence, or between sentences, for example.

Another strategy I developed during my PhD was the choir as a crucial element in the multilingual piece. In my play ASIA/ÄRENDE I used a choir in Swedish as an echo of the Finnish dialogue. It served as a communicative bridge between Swedish and Finnish – a translation of the core of what was said but also, and even more importantly, as an emotional and musical element.

Another method we’re currently working with is “linguistic repertoires”, i.e. the different ways of speaking that an individual has access to. This can be different dialects, languages, or ways of speaking that we use within certain groups of friends, colleagues, or relatives. This repertoire can be visualised through so-called language portraits. The method consists of drawing the linguistic repertoire – the language portrait – and then embodying the linguistic repertoire through physical explorations, combining movement and speech.

Can you tell us about your residency period? How has it benefited your work?

Vanja:
Since we live in different countries, the residency was a great opportunity to get together and work intensely in a new environment for both of us. Northern Norway, with its many languages, both indigenous and “immigrated” languages, very much inspired and informed our project. We made a trip to Kautokeino, which was an interesting contrast to Hammerfest with the Sami languages and cultures present – both audible and visible – which we didn’t experience in Hammerfest.

During the residency, we had time to work in different ways, both intellectually and practically. We developed new methods of working together which we can use and develop further in upcoming projects.

David:
The residency meant a lot to me. We (Vanja, Luthando, and David) live in different countries and only had the chance to work together for short periods of time. The residency finally gave us the opportunity to put all the material together and reflect on it. This helped us to clarify the structure of our upcoming performances as well as to get to know each other better.

Hammerfest was the perfect place for our residency. The Davvi crew, the space, and the equipment were all excellent. The regional uniqueness of Hammerfest also gave us a better understanding of our project. Personally, I found the city’s decision to ban reindeer from inhabited areas very interesting, alongside our encounter with two camels in Akkarfjård, a small village on an island half an hour by boat from Hammerfest. This, combined with the huge oil company operating there, gave me a completely different picture from what I’d imagined Northern Norway to be like.

How do you see the future of your project?

Vanja:
This is hopefully the beginning of a series of performances which we’ll create together in different contexts – countries, cities, various sized theatres, linguistic contexts, etc. I’ve been searching for a collaboration with a director with whom I can develop aesthetics and working methods for multilingual transcultural performances.

With our first piece I’d say that we’re laying a foundation for long-term collaboration – experiences, methods, aesthetics, etc. I also consider the dialogue with multilingual actors to be a long-term commitment; getting to know them and creating the performance based on their languages and experiences, without making it a biographical performance.

David:
Thanks to the residency, we now have a concrete plan for this project for the next three years. Now the question is whether we’ll be able to translate the project into concrete results. Although there’s a good chance that the project will happen as planned, given the unstable cultural and economic situation that Finland and Sweden are facing, anything can happen.

But we can’t avoid the process. The reality is that societies are already super multilingual and English is a global language that dominates all other languages. It’s possible that we’ll have the opportunity to explore this and get some artistic result out of it, or someone else will do it in the future. Multilingual societies are already here, yet we continue to ignore them.

This is the second year in a row that Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts, The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, and the Swedish Cultural Foundation have collaborated to offer a residency opportunity for Finland-based performing arts artists. The focus of the residency was on giving room to minority languages on the theatre stage. Hamidi Isacson and Kozma were selected through an open call in the autumn of 2023. The Swedish Cultural Foundation awarded working grants to them both.