Available express courses

 
 

Cyborg, Avatar, Virtual

Step into the future of performance with Cyborg, Avatar, Virtual—a bold MA-level workshop at Tampere University (4–13 May 2026) that challenges you to act, imagine, and create with technology as your co-conspirator. Guided by Davide Giovanzana and inspired by Haraway and Xenofeminism, this course invites Nordic-Baltic students to explore new theatrical narratives beyond techno-utopias and human boundaries.

Title of course: Cyborg, Avatar, Virtual

Teaching period: 4-13 May 2026 at Näty, Tampere University, Finland

Teacher: Davide Giovanzana

ECTS: 4

Number of available places for Norteas students: 7

Level: MA

Course description:

Relying on Cyborg Manifesto by Dona Haraway and Xenofeminism Manifesto by Laboria Cuboniks, this workshop will explore what is acting with new technologies. But not only—it will not be limited to exploring “acting”, but also to turn, to use and to abuse these technologies to unfold what kind of ideology is hovering above the intrusion of digitalisation in our everyday life and under our skin.

The goal is not to refuse technology but to explore if we can use it to display other forms of narratives than the techno-enthusiastic or the technophobic ones.

As Haraway suggests, with the cyborg (the avatar, the technological monster), there is a possibility to display other types of stories that escape the traditional narratives of a lost paradise to be found again.

 

The basic questions underlying this course are:

  • How to develop new narratives with a cyborg?

  • How to act with avatars?

  • How to use the virtual world to create theatrical situations?

  • How to expand our capacities to act, to imagine, to tell stories, to reconsider ourselves?

  • Can we use technology to establish new forms of encountering Otherness?

  • Can we go outside our human limitations to explore existence, identity, consciousness, and the nature of reality?

Application deadline:

How to apply: Send a motivation letter to teija.huikka@tuni.fi

 

Sublime Violence

Confront the aesthetics and ethics of staged violence in Sublime Violence, a thought-provoking MA-level workshop at Tampere University (19–29 January 2026), led by Davide Giovanzana and featuring expert guidance from intimacy coordinator Anastasia Trizna. This course invites you to critically and physically engage with violence in performance—its dramaturgy, embodiment, and impact on spectatorship.

Title of course: Sublime Violence

Teaching period: 19-29 January 2026 at Näty, Tampere University, Finland

Teacher: Davide Giovanzana

ECTS: 4

Number of available places for Norteas students: 5

Level: MA

Course description: This course is based on the research: Performing Violence, Limits and Transformative Means in Staged Violence. See publication: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003519881/performing-violence-davide-giovanzana

Participants will have the chance to explore staged violence from three different aspects: from a dramaturgical point of view, from the spectator position and from the performer position. In addition, the intimacy coordinator and stage fight expert Anastasia Trizna will coordinate some of the sessions during the course.

The course will offer a wider understanding of this complex phenomenon. The participants will, at the same time, develop a more critical approach to the phenomenon of staged violence, but also have the possibility to dive completely into the embodiment of it.

Application deadline:

How to apply: Send a motivation letter to teija.huikka@tuni.fi

 
 
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