Norway Now: How a country built one of Europe’s most ambitious performing arts ecosystems

At the 2025 edition of the Sibiu International Performing Arts Market (SIPAM), a spotlight was cast on one of the most consistently innovative and publicly supported artistic landscapes in Europe: Norway. Curated by Performing Arts Hub Norway (PAHN) and moderated by its director, Hege Knarvik Sande, the session Norway Now offered a panoramic view of the country’s performing arts infrastructure, its public policies, and the dynamic forces shaping its artistic present and future.

With speakers ranging from national theatre directors to experimental makers and state funders, the panel reflected Norway’s dual strength: centralized cultural strategy paired with radically decentralized artistic expression.

A National Theatre for a global society

Kristian Seltun, Artistic Director of the Nationaltheatret (Norway’s national theatre), opened by emphasizing the complex role the Nationaltheatret plays as a state institution. He noted that while it’s charged with artistic excellence, it must also be accountable to public expectations, funding bodies, and political frameworks. He characterized this as a balancing act between “artistic freedom” and “public responsibility.”

Kristian Seltun set the stage by addressing the responsibilities of a state institution in today’s polarized cultural climate. “We are not only curators of Norwegian identity,” Seltun stated. “We are facilitators of global conversation.” He described how the Nationaltheatret seeks to hold space for innovation while staying answerable to public accountability, political expectations, and audience evolution. For Seltun, programming on the national stage means navigating a constant negotiation between artistic autonomy and societal relevance.

Seltun affirmed the theatre’s commitment to forging international partnerships, citing long-standing collaborations with Eastern European and German theatres. “Being a national institution,” he noted, “does not limit us to national narratives, on the contrary, it demands we engage with the world.”

Seltun’s intervention clearly situates the Nationaltheatret as both a cultural flagship and a platform for transnational dialogue, echoing Norway’s broader arts diplomacy goals.

Black Box teater: an ecosystem of trust

In contrast to the grand national scale, Jørgen Knudsen, Director of Black Box teater, offered a view into a theatre that operates more like a laboratory. 

Knudsen described Black Box teater as a “home for contemporary performance and interdisciplinary practice.” Unlike traditional venues, it operates more as a context-creating space than a mere presenter. “We commission, co-produce, and accompany the work from start to finish,” he explained.

Known for its fierce dedication to interdisciplinary and experimental performance, Black Box prioritizes long-term collaboration and process-based work. “We don’t just invite artists, we accompany them,” Knudsen said. In recent years, Black Box has also come under political scrutiny for the provocative content it supports. Knudsen addressed this directly: “Freedom of expression isn’t a slogan for us. It’s the reason we exist.”

The theatre prioritizes long-term collaboration, often accompanying artists through multi-year development. Knudsen remarked, “We are not interested in the quick fix. We are building ecosystems of trust.”

Knudsen’s speech positioned Black Box teater as a critical site for free expression and interdisciplinary research, offering a model of how a small institution can maintain both intimacy and international relevance.

Centering indigenous voices

From Norway’s northern regions, Per I. Ananiassen, Director of the Sámi National Theatre Beaivváš, offered a deeply resonant perspective on cultural representation. Ananiassen introduced Beaivváš as “not just a theatre, but a cultural stronghold” for Sámi identity. Working primarily in Sámi languages, Beaivváš serves as a platform for storytelling deeply rooted in indigenous cosmologies, oral traditions, and lived realities.

Beaivváš, he explained, is the only professional theatre that produces in Sámi languages, making it both an artistic and political institution. “We are a language theatre,” Ananiassen emphasized, “but also a resistance theatre.” While grateful for public support, he also warned of the structural fragility faced by indigenous institutions and the need for stronger international alliances to amplify Sámi visibility across borders.

This presentation emphasized that indigenous artistic production in Norway is institutionally recognized and funded, but still faces precarious logistical and structural conditions.

Visual theatre at the edge of the Arctic

Yngvild Aspeli, Artistic Director of Nordland Visual Theatre, spoke of how geographic peripherality can be an artistic asset. Aspeli highlighted that Nordland Visual Theatre, located above the Arctic Circle, turns remoteness into an advantage. “The landscape offers time and silence, essential for visual theatre,” she noted. 

The theatre specializes in object-based, visual storytelling that often tours internationally. “The silence and the vastness of the landscape allow us to think differently,” Aspeli said. 

Aspeli detailed the theatre’s focus on object manipulation, puppet dramaturgy, and hybrid scenography. International touring is vital, as the local population is small. With limited local audiences, the theatre has created a model rooted in incubation and export, a place where visual dramaturgy, puppetry, and hybrid forms are constantly tested.

Radical rurality: The Theatre Festival in Fjaler

If urban theatre often speaks in a fast rhythm, Torkil Sandsund and Miriam Prestøy Lie, co-directors of the Theatre Festival in Fjaler, advocate for a dramaturgy of slowness. 

Both speakers described the Theatre Festival in Fjaler as an “ecosystem of place, people, and poetic inquiry.” Unlike urban festivals, Fjaler unfolds across village spaces, gardens, barns, and fjords, integrating landscape into dramaturgy.

Their festival, nestled in a small Norwegian village, foregrounds local engagement and landscape-integrated performances. “Artists don’t just come to show something,” Lie explained. “They come to stay, to walk, to listen.” Fjaler’s festival model exemplifies how rurality can generate not just aesthetics, but ethics, anchored in presence, listening, and care.

The festival advocates for a slower, deeper experience of performance. “We invite artists to dwell, not just pass through,” Lie explained. It is a rural model that flips urban urgency into reflective presence.

The Fosse phenomenon

Siri Løkholm Ramberg, Artistic Director of the International Fosse Festival and programmer at Det Norske Teatret, reflected on the international reverberations of Jon Fosse’s Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023. Ramberg detailed how the Fosse Festival has evolved since Jon Fosse’s Nobel Prize in Literature (2023), becoming a global magnet for literary theatre. She described Fosse’s dramaturgy as “open, metaphysical, slow-burning.”

The festival, dedicated to Fosse’s enigmatic, poetic work, has become a space for multilingual experimentation and philosophical theatre. “Fosse’s playscreate silence and metaphysical tension, qualities that translate across cultures.” The festival now commissions new translations and welcomes global reinterpretations, from Japan to the Faroe Islands.

Policy and possibility

Bringing in the funding framework that undergirds these varied artistic expressions, Hedda Grindland Abildsnes, Senior Advisor at Arts and Culture Norway, outlined the country’s cultural financing system. 

Norway’s model is based on a combination of structural support (for institutions) and project-based grants (for artists and companies). Importantly, it actively encourages international collaboration. “Global partnerships are not just allowed,” Abildsnes clarified, “they are incentivized.” This positions Norway as a rare example of a nation where risk-taking and aesthetic diversity are not only permitted but systemically supported.

Her intervention clarified that Norway’s cultural model deliberately supports experimentation, regional equity, and global engagement, making it a rare case study in holistic arts governance.

A showcase of range

Though not all present as speakers, several theatre companies were featured in the session, each representing a different strand of Norwegian innovation. Jo Strømgren Kompani is known for dance-theatre hybrids and absurdist language play; Susie Wang crafts uncanny horror performances blending cinematic logic and theatrical tropes; and NIE Theatre creates devised, multilingual storytelling works rooted in memory, migration, and community.

Together, these companies reflect the wider ethos of the Norwegian arts scene: one that values rigor, experimentation, and the courage to go against the grain.

A cultural model worth watching

What emerged from “Norway Now” was not simply a presentation of national achievements, but an invitation to imagine a cultural ecosystem that values both excellence and equity. Norway’s performing arts scene, while deeply anchored in state support, remains pluralistic, ranging from indigenous storytelling in the north to experimental festivals in remote fjords.

In a time when many arts institutions are fighting for survival and relevance, Norway’s model stands out for its clear civic mission, stable public investment, and enduring belief in the social power of art. Or, as moderator Hege Knarvik Sande put it: “We don’t just export shows. We export ways of thinking about culture, collaboration, and care.”