KARIN STRANNED

MULTIDISCIPLINARY DRAMATURG

I’m a Gothenburg based multidisciplinary dramaturg with an MA from University of Amsterdam. I work with creative projects across various disciplines with concept development, research, narrative, artistic feedback and audience perspective. My approach as a dramaturg is often from a practical, co-creative point of view, and I’m drawn to the exploration of storyworlds. I’m a producer at Fearsome Thing, and a member of Scen & Film’s diversity and inclusion team (NKA), focusing on neurodivergence. Sometimes I write video games.

Welcome, I’m glad you’re here!

Below you’ll be able to have a peek at selected projects in my portfolio,

listen to some voice acting samples in English and Swedish, or send me a message.

You can also find me on AKTI Scen & Film

DREAM

Fearsome Thing

Dramaturg, actor & 3D artist

Magical XR theatre where you, the audience, shape the story.

Dream is an experimental stage project that blends theatre, roleplay, and digital technology within extended reality (XR). Through creative and interactive elements, we explore how theatre can become even more magical and immersive.

The story unfolds in a world based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where you, the audience, can influence the storyline. At the intersection of roleplaying, immersive theatre, and gaming, you’re invited into a magical world where reality and dream merge.

Dream is part of a research project by the theatre collective Fearsome Thing, in collaboration with Visual Arena / Lindholmen Science Park, aiming to explore the potential of XR as an artistic tool for world-building.

Flexikant

Västtrafik, RISE & Point

Voice actor, dramaturg

Flexikant is an interactive audio experience where the listener explores

the future of mobility through a branching, multiple choice narrative (in Swedish). The project, developed by Point, Västtrafik and RISE, provides a way to envision the development of sustainable infrastructure through immersive storytelling.

For this project, I portrayed the narrator in the voice over, and recorded the branching script to reflect the intimacy of the relationship between listener and narrator in one-on-one audio experiences, and create an emotionally engaging journey for the listener as they lead the story forward with their choices. Additonally, I took part in the development of the script and provided dramaturgical feedback for adapting the text to audio performance.

You can learn more and listen to the audio experience (Swedish) here

Flexikant: En berättelse där du själv får välja vad som ska hända.

Året är 2040. Det är en helt vanlig tisdag, men vardagliga sysslor som att få dottern till skolan, ta dig till jobbet och handla matvaror löser sig på lite andra sätt än du kanske är van vid idag. Som lyssnare fattar du själv beslut om hur dagen utvecklas. Beroende på vilka val du gör öppnar sig nya möjligheter, men också nya utmaningar.

Hur kommer din dag se ut?

Shaded Planes

by Tora Bodin, Daniela Kaiser, Karin Stranned & Ulf Söderberg

Game writer, voice actor & 3D artist

Shaded Planes invites you to follow the call from a different world and

transition into the realm of shadows, where a story unfolds in the crossing of the virtual and the physical. Sprung out of a curiosity for immersive storytelling, digital embodiment and world based narratives, this interactive VR-installation welcomes participants to be present in the transitions and connections found in the spaces between light and darkness.

Playhouse Creatures

Fearsome Thing

Dramaturg, actor & producer

A performance-film-hybrid project as a response to the pandemic and

finalised in 2023. Originally meant as a site-specific, immersive theatre performance, the changed circumstances for audience presence encouraged us to dive into hybrid forms of immersion. It was first adapted to a live-streamed performance during the Tegel & Väv workshop in 2020 and then re-adapted to film starting in 2021. Through a filmed production, we asked ourselves the questions of how can we translate the sensation of immersion through a camera lens? Using the same site-specific location, cinematographic strategies and a focus on sensorial presence we created a dramaturgy for the film that maintained the sense of being-there and being-within as is so special for immersive performance.

With support from Kulturrådet, Göteborgs Stad, HIGAB & Historieverket

EXIT Macbeth

Noord Nederlands Toneel (NNT)

Dramaturg assistent (MA internship)

EXIT Macbeth is a visual, physical, interdisciplinary production with an

absurdly humorous twist. What happens if Macbeth is no longer the hero of his own story? Macbeth is the archetypal alpha male. But the original play’s horrifying cocktail of war, murder, and lust for power conceals another important idea: nature rebelling against incessant human violence. The removal of the tragic hero strips away the classic plot structure of the tragic hero’s journey, and leaves space for all the other things left outside the play’s spotlight.

Bij het bombardement van Rotterdam denk ik aan Jan Smit and niet aan mijn oma

by Leonie Kuhlmann

Production dramaturg

Bij het bombardement van Rotterdam denk ik aan Jan Smit and niet

aan mijn oma (When I think of the bombing of Rotterdam, I think of Jan Smit and not of my grandmother) is a devised performance about generational trauma with fragmented glimpses into the lives of three women. The performance conveys complex emotions from the experience of a burnout and how to artistically describe the feeling of survival, acceptance, love and inadequacy that lingers inside a person from past generations and is not yours originally, but still yours to carry.

MYCORRHIZA

by Gigi van Erven Dorens, Mara Hoek, Angelinah Maponya & Karin Stranned

Dramaturg & performer

‘If there was only one single person in the world

Could they even fathom what being together consists of?
What is sense?
What is sensing that you matter?
That you belong?
What is seeing and being seen when I — only I — walk this earth?
Would the I even realize that the I is an I?
Would one single person be able to imagine what it’s like to see others?
To hear them?
To feel them breathe?
Could one single person imagine what it’s like to love? To miss?’

A collaborative, devised multidisciplinary performance that investigated the tag and pull between individualism and community and the ability, need or lack of a sense of belonging from social, cultural, gender and neurodivergent perspectives. The performance told the story of a group of one person, isolated in another dimension, attempting to remember or understand belonging. At the same time, the process was an honest attempt by us in the performance group to achieve belonging with each other.

Created and performed by Gigi van Erven Dorens, Mara Hoek, Angelinah Maponya and Karin Stranned during MA International Dramaturgy at University of Amsterdam
Adaptations of the texts of Liselot Mol, Mark de Cloe, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and Kae Tempest
Sound design by Willem van Erven Dorens