Mart Kangro says curiosity shapes his collaborative theatre work

Choreographer Mart Kangro said he cannot imagine anything today that is not political, because the decisions about what he does and how he does it are political as well, ERR reported in its Teater. Muusika. Kino discussion.

Three devised performances created by students in the contemporary performing arts master’s programme at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre premiered in succession on January 23, 2026. That evening, programme head and professor of contemporary performing arts Jüri Nael led a public discussion at the academy titled “What is devised theatre and how do you eat it?”

The panel examined the preparation phase of devised performances and discussed the distribution of responsibility, conflict resolution, building trust and other challenges surrounding collaborative theatre. The participants were dramaturge, choreographer and visual artist Alissa Šnaider; Nicolette Kretz, artistic director of the international theatre festival auawirleben; dramaturge and curator Sandra Küpper; and performer Mart Kangro.

Šnaider said she is often drawn to devised performances because they allow her to enter a process without knowing where it will lead.

Kretz was in Tallinn rehearsing Kangro’s production “Medium,” which she is dramaturging with Eero Epner. She said neither Tallinn nor the rehearsal room was her natural environment. Kretz is from Bern, Switzerland, and leads auawirleben, whose programme mainly consists of devised performances. She previously focused on playwriting but eventually gave it up after realising that it was not the form of theatre she genuinely preferred.

Küpper said she took part as a senior lecturer for students in the contemporary performing arts programme, helping to explore what creating devised performances means. The three productions premiering that evening were created under her and Giacomo Veronesi’s guidance. She has worked as a dramaturge and curator for several international performing arts festivals, including Theater der Welt and Lessingtage Hamburg.

Kangro described himself as a performing artist who has worked across the field, making solo pieces, group works and commissioned projects. He said all of them shared one feature: he had never worked with material that already existed before the production process began. Whether as a director or another member of a production team, he said, the process had always begun with people coming together and thinking collectively, from which the performance emerged.

The discussion also addressed how devised theatre differs from other forms of theatre, which are likewise collective by nature, and whether the absence of pre-existing material at the start of rehearsals is the defining distinction.