Through a series of artistic practices between opera, music, performance art, and installation, Danish company Hotel Pro Forma has expanded the boundaries of performing arts. Hotel Pro Forma is an atelier, a laboratory, and a production company that investigates places and perspectives: nomadic, exploratory, always challenging, with a different perspective of the world. This chapter is an introduction to founder Kirsten Dehlholm’s artistic performative practice and further provides a thorough examination of the performance Hvorfor bliver det nat Mor as well as a look at her later performances. In 2015, Dehlholm received an Award of Honor for her artistic achievements from the International Society of Performing Arts ‘as a superior image-maker, an explorer in space and time – across the arts’.

My Deer Hunter. Interview af de medvirkende og det kreative team. Interview with participants from My Deer Hunter by Christoffersen, Krøgholt og Winkelhorn. In dialouge with four participating veterans and the artistic team behind My Deer Hunter, the interview explores, how the performance and rehearsal process functioned for a group of PTSD affected veterans, and how their histories and participation in war was challenged.

In 1989 Odin Teatret established the Holstebro Festive Week (Denmark), and did so by involving the entire city and its inhabitants. The Festive Week promptly became an on-going event, which takes place every three years in June. What characterises the Holstebro Festive Week in particular? And how has this event influenced the city and its citizens in the longer run? In other words, how can an event like the Festive Week contribute to enriching a city for more than just a week? When I interviewed the Mayor about the Festival and the theatre's role in the event, he said: "What the theatre brings us is popular and I think it is crucial that we get common experiences in which we can mirror ourselves - in the selfish society we are currently living in. In Holstebro we have become dependent on Odin Teatret, which makes us take part and which has become a common denominator for the entire city. It is a gift that we have Odin Theatret" (interview with the author, June 2011).

It is a rather unusual statement for a mayor to make that a theatre is a gift for a city and that it has become a 'common denominatorâ'  for the city - and, what is more that the city has become dependent on the theatre.

In this chapter I will reveal and explore how Odin Teatret involves the entire city. I will try to give a clear answer as to why the Mayor described the theatre as a 'common denominator'. In my investigation of the theatre's approach to the Festive Week I use my personal experience and knowledge from my time as assistant manager at the theatre (1987-88). Most of my research has been carried out in the form of field studies conducted during the Festival Weeks in 2008 and 2011. During both festivals I spent one week in Holstebro and the surrounding villages watching and observing how the local audience responded to the activities. In addition I carried out a series of semi-structured interviews with representatives from Holstebro: the head of police, the Deputy Mayor, the director of a travel agency, a librarian, a policeman, the Chairman of the Cultural Affairs Committee of the City Council, the head of city planning, the project leader from the Odin Theatre and a senior lecturer living in Holstebro and working at Aarhus University and finally the Mayor.

Man kan undre sig over, hvordan et relativt lille teater som Odin Teatret kan overkomme så mange forskellige aktiviteter og med så høj kvalitet. Det hænger sammen med teatrets helt særlige måde at organisere sig på. Jeg skal her forsøge at indkredse, hvordan teatret ledes, og hvordan arbejdet er organiseret på det formelle og uformelle plan. Udgangspunktet er erfaringer fra min tid i teatrets administration (1987-1988) og mine tætte bånd til teatret gennem mange år. Derudover inddrages et organisatorisk begrebsapparat for at kaste et klarere lys på Odin Teatrets organisation og ledelseskultur og de delkomponenter, som spiller mod hinanden og sikrer en dynamisk og stærk virksomhedskultur. Til sidst ser jeg på teatrets ledelsesstrategier med et fokus på, hvordan man får skabt en dedikeret arbejdskultur.

Interviews with key persons in the city of Holstebro regarding their festival and what this means to and for the city.

By looking back and reviewing our recent modern past, we may be able to foresee and shape a different future. That has been one of the premises of the project MEMORIES OF MODERNITY. By simultaneously looking back and looking into the future one may detect surprising similarities between two apparently completely different societies like South Africa and Sweden – or, more specifically, the cities of Durban and Malmö. ‘Memory’ and ‘Modernity’ are key concepts in the analysis of our contemporary predicament, in Sweden as in South Africa. Memory invokes the books and albums made for the children of parents dying of AIDS. It invokes literature as reflection and testimony. It invokes the emotion-laden issue of cultural heritage. What do we bring with us to the future? Whose heritage are we preserving, and which values are to prevail? Memory also invokes the modern past, in Sweden closely linked to rapid industrialization and the social democratic model, in South Africa to the dark era of apartheid and its equally rational but racist welfare society. The differences are obvious. But what are the similarities in Sweden's and South Africa's experiences of modernity? These are questions that explicitly or implicitly have informed this experimental project, involving four Swedish and four South African artists and a group of post-graduate students from Malmö University.