From Residency to Premiere: SILENCE – a Nordic Co-Production now running in Helsinki until 26 September

SILENCE is a playful and thought-provoking multilingual performance set in a waiting room for an audition. As the actors prepare for their turn, they begin to question what is expected of them.

The performance was created by director/actor David Kozma and playwright/artistic researcher Vanja Hamidi Isacson, who spent three weeks in residency at Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts in Hammerfest, Norway, in September 2024. During this time, they developed the performance, exploring themes of language, identity, and artistic expression.

Now their work is being shown at the Post Theatre Collective in Helsinki. The performance premiered on 10 September 2025 and after six showings, there are still three more performances to come on 24, 25, and 26 September 2025.

Photo: Bita Razavi

SILENCE challenges the “multilingual silence” that dominates Nordic theatre and questions the cultural logic of “one nation, one language.” It speaks to a wider political climate in which minority and migrant languages are framed as threats, and English dominates at the expense of local languages. The performance confronts this reality — presenting a space where multilingualism becomes both expression and resistance.

Read more about the performance and get tickets from Post Theatre Collective’s shop.

The 2024 residency was part of a collaboration between Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts, the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, and the Swedish Cultural Foundation. It marked the second year of the collaboration, which supports Finland-based performing artists working with minority languages on stage. Kozma and Hamidi Isacson were selected through an open call in autumn 2023. Both artists received working grants from the Swedish Cultural Foundation to support the development of the project.