This artistic research project introduces the concept of multilingual silence to describe the artificial monolingualism that characterizes many contexts in which national majority languages or English dominate, despite actual linguistic diversity. The exposition takes as its point of departure the development and staging of the performance SILENCE (Post Theatre Collective, Helsinki 2025), in which an international multilingual ensemble uses languages that are rarely heard on Nordic stages. Focusing on her own artistic process and linguistic repertoire as a Sweden-Finn, playwright Vanja Hamidi Isacson investigates how multilingual silence can be challenged through artistic practice. Through process texts, stage texts, a working diary, text fragments, and reflections on language portraits, the exposition analyzes how the artistic process renegotiates language, identity, and voice. A theoretical discussion of monolingual and multilingual norms, linguistic repertoires, and polyvocality deepens and situates the concept of multilingual silence.
FLER_SPRÃ…KIG TYSTNAD : MONI_KIELINEN HILJAISUUS : MULTI_LINGUAL SILENCE
Vanja Hamidi Isacson is a Sweden-Finnish playwright and artistic researcher based in Malmö, where she is an affiliated visiting researcher at Malmö Theatre Academy. In 2022, she completed her PhD at Stockholm University of the Arts with the dissertation The Potential of Multilingualism in Dramatic Works. Her research and artistic practice explore the artistic and theoretical implications of multilingualism in theatre, with a particular focus on its communicative, dramaturgical, political, and emotional dimensions. Her work builds on extensive experience as a playwright working in multilingual and intercultural performance contexts. Hamidi Isacson was co-founder and dramaturg of the multilingual theatre company Teater JaLaDa in Malmö between 2013 and 2015. Her plays and music theatre works for children and young audiences have been staged at venues such as Malmö Opera and Malmö Sommarscen. In recent years, she has been active in Nordic contexts, developing stage texts and performances in close collaboration with performing artists in Finland and Norway.
Alongside her artistic practice, she works as an educator in dramatic writing and multilingualism in the performing arts. She teaches, supervises, and leads workshops, seminars, and lectures on playwriting, theatre, and multilingual performance, both within the performing arts field and at arts universities. She is currently involved in several artistic research projects at Inter Arts Center in Malmö that explore multilingual stage practices, polyvocal composition, and new dramaturgical methods for working with multiple languages on stage. Her work investigates how multilingualism can function as an artistic resource within contemporary performing arts.
Visit the exposition in the database Research Catalogue.
