Language as an impulse: NTL and the artist’s way

This paper articulates pathways for including spoken language in circus dramaturgies of Human Can (2025) – a milestone production by Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (NTL) following the departure of Odin Teatret and Eugenio Barba. I focus on how the body as the site of the action in circus dramaturgies creates opportunities to explore spoken language as an impulse. I argue that such explorations can delay processes of intuiting signification so that performers can focus on their body’s perception of the world in relationship to their language(s), before such knowledge is signified. This theorisation is part of my ongoing methods-driven challenge to the hegemonic spectatorial gaze that omits and neutralises multilingualism. My analysis follows an interaction between circus performers Ward Mortier and Villads Bugge Bang, both of whom are working with NTL for the first time, and director Søs Banke, who is part of the NTL team and thus shares connections to the Odin way. I locate the internal dynamics of the rehearsal room and analyse an improvisational moment when Mortier tenderly draws on Dutch and French with Bugge Bang, despite Bugge Bang’s unintelligibility. I conceptualise circus dramaturgies as connectors to Mortier’s spoken languages, experiences and epistemologies. In parallel, I map Banke’s relationships to the external ecology as she is positioned between Odin, NTL and the rehearsal room. Rather than earmarking this milestone production as a metaphor for future dramaturgies, I highlight a commitment by NTL to inviting individual artists’ personal and artistic resources, their way.