DRAMATIC ARTS LABORATORY
Theatre is not a trifle. It can make a mass of five or six thousand people who have nothing to do with one another suddenly feel shaken by the same shock, sob with the same tears, and break into the same, collective laughter.
- Nikolai Gogol -
The Dramatic Arts Laboratory’s philosophy is that the theatre is not an escape from life, but an exploration of it. We gather in a common space to share an experience, to understand our lives and what is happening to us, and to feel, together, a truth.
DAL's purpose is two-fold: to provide training for actors and to produce theatre that focuses on the human condition.
DAL will offer training through workshops and lectures grounded in Stanislavski’s System, Vakhtangov’s further development of it and Strasberg’s Method. A fundamental principle of both the System and the Method is to help the actor discover, liberate and disclose their own unique artistic voice in the most profound way -- not to play as themselves, but from themselves. The actor learns how to analyze the text and how to make use of their personal material in order to create a justified and logical behaviour for the character originating from an internal truth. The training soon becomes personalised because its focus is on how to break the barriers and eliminate the personal resistance and blockage, which is different in each individual actor, and to stimulate new depths of creativity.
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DAL’s ideal is to produce theatre that builds a stirring and intimate relationship between actor and audience through personal, truthful and sincere acting regardless the style of the play. A theatre that will serve and honor the playwright’s work by unveiling the human experience captured within it. Our hope is for both our performers and audience members to truly feel and experience our stories; engage and invest in them; to be thrilled, moved and enriched by them; not merely bear witness to them.
Dramatic Arts Laboratory (DAL)
Gothenburg, Sweden
VICTORIA NILSSON
Artistic Director || Teaching Artist
Victoria Nilsson is a Gothenburg- and New York-based director and actor. She holds an MFA in Directing from the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York. Since then she has participated in intense Method workshops in Athens and Paris. From 2019 to 2022 she was an active member of the Playwright Director Workshop at the Actors Studio. During that period, she collaborated as a director in the development and presentation of a number of original plays and screenplays. Since 2018 Victoria has mentored young filmmakers and produced international short films through the International Youth Media Summit.
‘Victoria Nilsson’s work with actors and playwrights is exceptional. She is gifted with a rare talent to understand text and human behavior. Victoria is one of few theatre artists that knows in depth the history, the tradition and the application of the Stanislavsky System and the Method both in training and in production.’
– Andreas Manolikakis, Lifetime Member and Board Member of the Actors Studio; Clinical Professor of Directing and Acting, and former Chair (2006-2020) at Actors Studio Drama School
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