Risk-taking in the performing arts field in Norway today?

 Av Katja Lindeberg

My name is Katja Lindeberg. I work as a performer, actress and theatre maker here in Norway, mainly in the independent theatre field and receiving most of my financial support from Arts Council Norway [Kulturrådet].

It is an honour to being asked to talk about risk taking in this panel. It’s also a very important topic. To take risks is highly valued in the art field, but I feel at the same time that the public discourse about art these days can in many ways limit the space I have to work with risk.

Many of my performances have had children and young adults as its target group. In many of these works I have been focusing on topics dealing with identity, normativity, gender and sexuality, themes that are complex and widely discussed in society. I will in this talk focus on the risk I face in connection to the public, telling you about my experiences with the production Just a wet mouth.

The performance was made it in 2018, together with Madeleine Nilsen and in co-production with Teaterhuset Avant Garden in Trondheim. The performance was made for both adults and youths, and for several years we toured under DKS [Den kulturelle skolesekken] performing for 16-19 year olds. Our last tour was in 2025. While developing the performance, we interviewed a wide range of women, with different perspectives, about their experiences of being women. We used the transcribed interview material and personal texts and mixed it with gender symbols and images and clichés about womanhood from the pop culture. In the interviews there was a lot of talk about sexuality and how we perform sexuality and therefore the performance focused a lot on that. We started the research for the project just before the Me-too movement exploded and taped into the prevailing cultural mood.

Sløseriombudsmannen

In 2018 «Sløseriombudsmannen» [The Ombudsman of Waste] had just started posting a lot of artists’ works on his Facebook page, taking it out of context and calling the art works – «The government’s waste of tax-payers’ money».

For those of you who don’t know about Sløseriombudsmannen, he was anonymous at that time but has lately been revealed as Are Søberg, a member of the political party Liberalistene, a far-right party who wants to reduce taxes and the government’s influence. Today he has 150 000 followers.

So, back in 2018 he also got hold of a video from our rehearsals, where Madeleine is pulling out a magic scarf from the crotch of a naked suit while she is talking very casually about what you can do with your menstruation blood and also the placenta after birth. For us, there was a lot of humour in the video. The text was taken directly from an interview.

Being outed on the Sløseriombudmann’s page was for us, at that time, just fun and even an honour, because we were in great company with the best stage art companies in Norway. All of them from the experimental independent art field. We were proud to be associated with them and did not take Sløseriombudsmannen that seriously, we actually used him in our marketing and got more people interested in our project.

Back then, the art scene had discussions regarding Sløseriombudsmannen, but for my part, I wish I had taken the criticism more seriously. Mobilized against it. Because when I look back, I can see something has shifted, in the public views on art, the economic situation both here in Norway and abroad and in people’s common values.

After our premiere and the Me-too movement, a series of identity movements were coming up – Black Life Matters and movements working for queer rights, disabled rights, indigenous rights and so on. We gained a better language to talk about representation, privilege and oppression. A discussion and awareness that are so needed, but which have also had a backside. Because if you misunderstand it, and belong to a privileged group, it may make some people feel judged, shamed and excluded.

In 2023 I made another similar performance as Just a wet month, this time about manhood, interviewing men and focusing on male normativity. I wanted to understand and talk with men who were criticising feminism saying that it has «gone too far».

In certain groups many of the liberation struggles have been labelled as woke, activism or left-wing politics, and we have seen discussions about cancelation and freedom of speech often expressed by far-right forces or conservative religious forces who feel that their values and way of life are threatened. It’s a paradox that the people who are really outing that their freedom of speech is threatened, are not really the ones who are being silenced. Far-right voices and religious conservative voices are gaining more and more coverage in the public eye. And the media and tech companies make space for these stories because conflict and polarisation are selling.

Now it is not only Sløseriombudsmannen who talks about art as a waste. Today a growing number of right-wing politicians are using the same rhetoric. FrP [Fremskrittspartiet] wants to stop funding Arts Council Norway, Høyre wants to cut it by half. The Academy of Stage Art in Fredrikstad was closed down this summer, which is a disaster. The students from that school were really making advances in the art sector while challenging the establishment. Oslo Nye Teater had their funding cut… Will there be sustainable funding for independent art in the years to come? … What about our national theatres? And DKS? Already now I feel more pressure from the programmers to do cheaper performances suitable for a larger group.

I'm afraid that the demand to make art with smaller budgets and the demand for more self-generated income is forcing us to take less risks. It’s easier to program musicals and classics that you know will sell tickets, compared to the increased financial risk you face when partnering with an independent theatre group that works in a process-oriented way with experimental forms and sensitive topics.

Mehus' interventions

A year ago, when we were touring with Only a wet month here in Oslo, I came over a newspaper article written by Truls Olufsen Mehus, a politician for the Konservativt party in Finnmark. This is a conservative Christian party. He is also chairman for an organization called Christian Resource Centre. He had read our teachers’ guide, which we send out to teachers before performing for their students. The guide includes suggestions for questions to discuss, and different exercises classrooms can do after seeing the performance. Mehus wrote that we were forcing kids to talk intimately about masturbation, desire and sex fantasies in front of their classmates. He had not seen the performance and was taking everything completely out of context. The exercises were suggestions that teachers could choose from, depending on what they found appropriate for their students, and in no way forced on anyone. His article was posted on different platforms and his readers were furious. There was also criticism of other projects touring in DKS which in different ways were exploring gender and sexuality.

I was very stressed about it, stressed that this could have an impact on our dialog with DKS, the schools and teachers. I felt I had to apologize for myself and my work. Teenagers are surrounded by sexual content, from pop culture and the porn industry all the time, so it’s not like they are not exposed to sex, but still I felt ashamed, so used to always having to defend my work. The tour was booked so I knew it would not be cancelled, but what about potential new tours and work? My latest performance about masculinity also has parts in it that are quite sexual and has explicit language. This spring, when playing for teenagers here in Oslo, we had a whole class of students leaving in the middle of it. (This particular class consisted of a majority of conservative Muslim teenagers, and it was during the Eid celebrations). At the same performance there was another school class with boys that were so touched by the performance that they were crying. Still, I am questioning my work.

Mehus, by the way, is the same man who has been fundraising to stop schools from celebrating Pride. This has gotten a lot of attention in the media. He has raised a million Norwegian kroner. A lot of people, also politicians, both right and left, have criticised this, which is good, but it has nevertheless got a lot of attention. Now the leader of KrF, The Norwegian Christian party, have supported the cause publicly.

Can it be like it was with Sløseriombudsmannen in 2018: I don’t take it seriously now, but in 5-10 years it becomes mainstream? 

I fear this kind of criticism is making the whole DKS system vulnerable. We can’t take DKS for granted. Will this kind of criticism make programmers less willing to program work that can lead to friction, in fear of less support for DKS in general? This applies not only to DKS, but to theatre festivals and institutions that are depending on government support, as well. Statements like «the art field being too left wing» or «art being made for a cultural liberal elite» can cause us to create, and invest in, safer art and programming in order to prove them wrong.

Just the beginning?

If we start cancelling topics that touch upon sexuality and gender, I am afraid, it’s just the beginning. There are a lot of other sensitive topics; the genocide of the Palestinians, the world’s way of dealing with wars, racism and immigration politics, climate change, and so on. Difficult topics with many perspectives and opinions but also themes that really define our times and our humanness. I feel a strong need to broaden our communities, focusing on our humanness and what makes us come together, learning to disagree but still maintaining compassion and empathy for each other. What I’m afraid is happening instead is that we in the arts are narrowing the discourse, to please everyone.

So, what do I do about all of this? Because what I am describing is quite a serious situation. I tend to distance myself from it, being so preoccupied working from job to job, that I am pushing it all aside.

Because a large source of vulnerability, I feel working as an artist, comes from the field itself, with its constant risk of artistic failure. I face the risk of my work being disliked or misunderstood, applications for funding being rejected, bad reviews, or no reviews at all. I risk that curators are not come to see my work or find it uninteresting. There is risk caused by competition, positioning and preferences. As an independent artist you are constantly proving to people that you are worthy of the space you are given.

Maybe there are so many fights and positionings in the field itself, that we have no time to lift our gaze and really fight for arts' existence. To be a community of artists.

Fortunately, ballsy programming and ballsy artists doing fantastic work, still exist. And we still have a good financial support system, but I’m afraid that what we risk by not taking society into account, is undermining our own value and making us all irrelevant.

So dear colleagues, let’s mobilize!