Inside the Malmö Theatre Academy’s premises on Bergsgatan in Malmö, a group of acting students are busy rehearsing their degree project, a production that will be staged at Bryggeriteatern during the spring. Sitting on a chair by the wall is Nanna Berner. She is a final-year student on the Bachelor’s Programme in Dramatic Writing and the author of the play now being performed in front of her. The play is also her degree project, and needless to say, seeing her own words brought to life is a great feeling.
“The text is fairly minimalist, and it doesn’t contain that much information, yet the actors still find what I intended and not only that, they constantly contribute ideas of their own. It is great fun,” she says.
Alongside her is Annika Nyman, lecturer on the Bachelor’s Programme in Dramatic Writing and Nanna’s supervisor. She studied the programme herself, and has been working on and off at the Malmö Theatre Academy since graduating in 2011. Last year, she obtained her doctoral degree with a thesis about literary conflict in dramatic writing, and she is now employed at 50 per cent of full time as a lecturer and programme director.
Drama, she says, does not have quite as much to do with the written word as one might think.
“What I have tried to assert in my thesis, and something that is probably also a basic premise in the academy, is that drama is not primarily a text. The result is of course a text, but drama is actually about interpersonal acts,” she says.
In that sense, writing drama differs markedly from literary writing, Annika Nyman argues. Since what the playwright is creating is to be realised by someone else, in another medium – such as the stage, the silver screen or radio – a dramatic text is something distinct from a text that has been written only to be read. This is something Annika Nyman and her colleagues exploit in their teaching.
“When I am supervising students, we talk a lot about what the people in that dramatic situation do in a particular context and how they act towards one another.”
Very few students are admitted
Annika Nyman explains that the students always have lots of experience of writing, but that most of them need to change their way of thinking in order to become good playwrights. It is less about what serves as an interesting line and more about the interplay between people and the capacity to understand how people react to one another.
Three or four students are admitted to the programme every second year. The modest number is due in large part to the market being so small – there simply are not a large number of playwright jobs. The first semester entails writing five minutes of coherent text. The length then gradually increases. The second year is largely about dramaturgy and how one scene leads to another.
Supervision is intensive, and workshops are also arranged with professional actors in order to test the texts produced. This is a good way of establishing the things that the actors need to know before each scene.
“It is about learning it physically. If someone needs to stop a person who is on the way out the door, what do they do, and how? At what point do you let go of someone’s hand when you are cross with them – and what response does that action elicit?
The programme also has a theoretical element, which includes plot analysis and repertoire studies. Instructing others in artistic skills can be a controversial issue. Annika Nyman has encountered the opinion that art is not something that one can be trained in – if you possess talent, you will succeed regardless.
“That may be true, up to a certain point, and of course we look to see which of the students bring their own ideas. But you still need to learn things. If you attend the Malmö Academy of Music, I would guess that there’s a clear line between what is right and what is wrong. At Malmö Art Academy, perhaps it is more like, ‘this is my subjective opinion of your work’. At Malmö Theatre Academy, we are somewhere in between. There are things that we believe in, while at the same time, the students need to do their own thing.”
Annika Nyman’s own path to becoming a playwright has not been unswerving. She had a childhood dream of becoming an author, but after a dispiriting year studying creative writing at Biskops Arnö folk high school – “I was so slow at writing that I was planning to give it up altogether” – she was ready to abandon it. By chance, she discovered dramatic writing, had the chance to try it, and never looked back. When she is not teaching, she works as a freelancer, mostly writing plays for various fringe theatre groups. Recently, she won the prestigious Swedish Ibsen Society’s Ibsen Prize, with the judges noting how her drama “dissolves the hierarchy of language in an inimitable way.”
“I think that above all, the prize will mean that I am more visible. I have been writing plays for many years, and there are times when you wonder whether anyone has even noticed. The prize is a boost and I hope it means it will be a bit easier to sell my plays to producing theatres.”
She likes extremes
In her writing, Anna Nyman likes to go to extremes. An evil person becomes very evil, a tragic relationship becomes very tragic. She likes to probe the unthinkable and the forbidden.
“What I am best at is understanding what happens between two people in dramatic conflict. On a more general plane, I think it is important that students find a relationship to writing that works. How do I need to set up my life, for my writing to work? Some might need to go and sit out in the woods, others need to collaborate in order to get going. That is not something that is written in the syllabus, but it is important.
