Electa Woodbridge Behrens

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2024). Spaces of Agency: exploring text bodyworld hybrids. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. ISSN 1944-3927. 15(2), p. 197–211. doi: 10.1080/19443927.2024.2335630. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  How might ‘agency’ be practiced in the meeting of performer and text? What are the ethical concerns of how these two materials might merge? The analysis draws on the author’s research at the Norwegian Theatre Academy with students of diverse backgrounds. It traces notions of agency from the institutional context to the specifics of studio exercises: acknowledging these as interconnecting systems which affect each other. It proposes a trans-aesthetic approach which foregrounds agency as primary mode of learning. The work contributes to the field by developing an analytical strategy of overlay and simultaneity: exploring how different methods may co-exist. It considers text and body as heterogeneous hybrids: bodies as texts and texts as bodies, drawing on Camilleri’s research on hybridity and the bodyworld, Barad’s intra-action, Crenshaw’s intersectionality, Meizel’s multivocality, Cahill’s hesitation and Russel’s glitch feminism, among others. It grounds the practical exploration in existing approaches such as Stanislavksi and Viewpoints, discussing how these methods expand to meet 2024; and aiming to speak to students and teachers whose work spans a range of methodological backgrounds. In relation to text and body as merged hybrids, this article explores examples such as: exploding the text, code shifting, aesthetic hybridity, glitching - all as examples of heterogeneous sonic world-making.

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2024). Singing Pedagogy for Actors: Questioning Quality. In Peck, Lisa & Stamatiou, Evi (Ed.), Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches. Routledge. ISSN 9781003393672. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2023). Voice (As and In) Touch. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. ISSN 1944-3927. 14(2), p. 221–236. doi: 10.1080/19443927.2022.2161615. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2021). This is Not a Manifesto. Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts. ISSN 1352-8165. 25(8), p. 11–14. doi: 10.1080/13528165.2020.1930763. Full text in Research Archive
• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2021). YOU and ME -where and how do we meet? Critical Stages/Scènes critiques. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  YOU and ME—Where and How Do We Meet is a 40 minute film presenting our research focused on the intersectional materiality of the voice and the potentialities of aural diversity and audience agency. Within the larger framework of new materialism, aurality studies and critical race theory, we situate our work between Nancy, Kendrick, Eidsheim, Behar, DiAngelo, Gordon-Cook, Bonefant and Oliveros. This film examines how the video article format: 1. exposes and implicates the researcher’s own embodied positionality. We are trying to queer and appropriate whiteness: to take different faces and voices of whiteness and tweak, tear and intensify them—so that they are no longer invisible or appear harmonious. We attempt to disturb the normalcy of the white frame of listening and thinking. 2. allows for a wider range of language and non-language use, which might communicate the material more effectively and disturb normalized relationships between text, song and sound as meaning carriers. 3. complexifies the theoretical aspect of the work by the very fact of embodying the messiness of the space between “clean” theory and embodied action (Spatz, Campbell and Farrier). This format offers a way to, as Donna Haraway writes, “stay with the trouble.” This video is nothing if you do not have a conversation afterwards. Dramaturgically, it is a “score for audience.” The performance is really happening in your head. As you watch we ask you: when do you feel most comfortable, or uncomfortable? You and me, as vocal material, where and how do we meet? Keywords: Aural diversity, vocal material, critical whiteness, intersectionality, new materialism, object-oriented feminism, ethics

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). Training a performer’s voices. In Zarilli, Phillip; Sasitharan, T. & Kapur, Anuradha (Ed.), Intercultural Acting and Performer Training. Routledge. ISSN 9781138352148. doi: 10.1080/19443927.2016.1222302. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). Devisers in the dark: reconfiguring a material voice practice. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. ISSN 1944-3927. 10(3), p. 395–409. doi: 10.1080/19443927.2019.1637372. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Berkeley-Schultz, Ditte (2017). Songs of tradition as training in higher education? Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies (JIVS). ISSN 2057-0341. 2(2), p. 187–200. doi: 10.1386/jivs.2.2.187_1. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2016). Training a performer's voices. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. ISSN 1944-3927. 7(3), p. 453–471. doi: 10.1080/19443927.2016.1222302. Full text in Research Archive

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• Lawson, Samantha; Roos, Cecilia; Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Rodrigues, Érica Faleiro (2025). Contextualising "skill" in arts education within an EDI framework. doi: https:/elia-artschools.org/page/EDIOnlineSessionCSW25. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  ELIA EDI Online Series

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2024). Leading ‘with the trouble’: a physiovocal reflection on leadership in ensemble practices in the Grotowskian Diaspora. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2024). To be or not to be, multilingually. Full text in Research Archive
• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2024). Decomposing Decay: a suite of speculative archives. A laboratory, art film and performance project with Act 16 at Norwegian Theater Academy. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Decomposing Decay: a suite of speculative archives This laboratory consists of an artistic research project exploring sound and resonance as a site of symbiosis between bodies and buildings. The laboratory will take place in Hallen 1, one of the large, slowly decomposing warehouse buildings on the Dock in Fredrikstad. Series of interrelated research questions to start dialogue: · How might buildings and bodies decompose or merge together, inhabiting in-betweens and creating new hybrid beings? · When is a building/body not a building/body anymore and what does it then become? · What are the structures in ourselves and our communities that are falling apart, what structures do we want to dismantle? · How can working with sound be a perspective for understanding space as shared time?

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2023). This Paper Will Touch You – You Will Touch This Paper: investigating intimacy and consent in teacher touch, partner touch and self-touch in voice training for performers. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2023). Unpacking Voice (As and In) Touch. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2023). Ethics and Ensemble in the Institution. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Berkeley, Ditte (2023). Polyphonic life. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2023). Talking the talk and walking the walk: destabilizing the canon in international singing pedagogy. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2022). Questioning Quality: Invisible Legacies. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Tapra Conference 2022, Essex, UK 13.09.2022 Vitenskapelig foredrag, «Questioning Qualities: invisible legacies» Av Øystein Elle og Electa Behrens. Abstract: This presentation will introduce a research-based pedagogical project, which looked to dismantle the legacies of ‘quality’, derived from traditions of Western classical music and how they inform and inhibit work with music in performance. This project was done with a group of 3rd year conservatory acting students. Attempting to decenter western perspectives, we explored ‘quality’ as something plural, shifting and contextual. We asked, can we even hear a quality which is unfamiliar to us? (Eidsheim) In the project each student should self-identify the traditions they come from, articulate the ways in which they are loyal or irreverent to that tradition and take responsibility as co-devisers for how other students might enter their worldmaking via music. This project culminated in a collective performance event including all student’s work with a dramaturgy which allowed different ‘qualities’ to stand next to each other while disrupting narratives of ‘better than’. Methodologically, this project explored a model of dynamic leadership, where the voice teachers did not have the last word on ‘quality control’, and instead we tried to ‘led the material lead’. The responsibility of self-determining quality was risky for students and triggering for pedagogues. It exposed how deeply notions of quality, are inscribed in young students today, even in who have little knowledge of these traditions. For the teachers, it asked us to ‘teach’ from another positionality. This research is grounded in and contributes to fields of aurality studies (Konstantinos, Eidsheim, Kendrick), aural diversity (Drever), intersectional pedagogy and movements such as FLUXUS and the field of extended composition.

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2022). Naked Teachers. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  ELIA Biennial conference, Uniarts, Helsinki 24.11.2022 Vitenskapelig foredrag og workshop, Electa Behrens og Øystein Elle Abstract How does who we are affect what and how we teach in the current climate of 2022? This is a speculative workshop for teachers in which we will ‘undress’ our own positionality and power. How do we work with and against our own intersectional identities in ways that make space for student agency and our own creativity? How can we ‘stay with the trouble’ (Harraway) of our own strengths and limitations and ‘queer use’ (Ahmed) them in productive ways? How do we stage ourselves? Presenters are looking to create a space where we as teachers can fail, ask stupid questions, and laugh at ourselves, to be vulnerable and courageous.

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge; Elle, Øystein & Meyer, Ruth Wilhelmine (2021). Quality Carneval. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2021). Privilege in the Arts Panel Discussion. Full text in Research Archive
• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2021). YOU and ME as Vocal Material - Performing and Queering Whiteness. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Electa Behrens and Øystein Elle YOU AND ME: Performing and Queering Whiteness This presentation presents excerpts from our recent video essay, “YOU and ME – Where and How do we Meet”, framed by a performative presentation and interaction with audience. The research focused on the intersectional materiality of the voice within the larger theoretical context of aurality studies. Particularly: our voices as white performers and academics. We look to unpack the relationship between a writer’s positionality and their material – specifically how whiteness ‘works’ in different formats of documentation. Acknowledging the normalized whiteness of academic writing as a format, and music theory as a “white male” foundational reference point when working with sonic arts (Neely 2020). Our research examines how the video format: 1. exposes and implicates the researcher’s own embodied positionality, 2. allows for a wider range of language and non-languauge use, which might communicate the material more effectively, and has the potential to reach a larger audience and 3. complexifies the theoretical aspect of the work by the very fact of embodying the messiness of the space between ‘clean’ theory and embodied action (Spatz 2021, Campbell and Farrier 2015). This format offers a way to, as Donna Harraway writes, ‘stay with the trouble’. Dr. Electa Behrens is program-responsible for the BA Acting at Norwegian Theatre Academy. She has performed with companies/artists throughout Europe/USA including Odin Teatret, Richard Schechner, Marina Abramovic and the CPR, and published in journals such as Theatre, Dance and Performance Training and Performance Research. Research areas: intercultural training, sonic and listening led dramaturgies, voice, darkness and performer agency in training. Dr. Øystein Elle, associate professor at Østfold University College, is a multidisciplinary artist, singer and composer. Elle is a classically trained countertenor with a further specialization in extended vocal techniques. His research and performance spans, baroque, Dadaism, western avant-garde traditions and intercultural and transdisciplinary projects. He has toured over 30 productions to Europe, Asia and the Americas. For the past 12 years been active as a creator, performer and researcher in art experiences and performances for the youngest children's audience on which he is currently co-editing an anthology.

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge; Lie-Jensen, Anette Christensen & Røste, Rannveig (2021). Digitalisering av den direkte kontakten med studentene – erfaringer fra koronapandemien. Forskningspolitikk. ISSN 0333-0273. 44(3), p. 10–13. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2020). Sit with Me. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2020). YOU AND ME AS VOCAL MATERIAL: Where and How do we Meet III. Full text in Research Archive
• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2020). YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL – LISTENING TO THE SPACE BETWEEN II. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This performance lecture explores listening intersectionally (see Thomaidis 2017): across identities, categories and positionalities of class, ability, race, ethnicity, gender, age and sexuality. It asks the question: if sounding is a practice of intermaterial vibration (Eidsheim 2017), what might a new materialist approach to voicing and listening offer? How do we experience the borders between listening/sounding, as performer with audience and objects or as pedagogue with students? Looking at listening across the range of vocal material, including song, text and sound, this performance lecture reflects on the plasticity of material, (its ability to flex, to a degree, but also its potential to combust) (Behar, 2016) and the grey areas surrounding topics such as ownership, ethics and appropriation. Within the larger framework of new materialism and aurality studies, we situate our work between Nancy, Kendrick, Eidsheim, Behar, Gordon-Cook, Bonefant and Oliveros. The lecture’s structure is a dialogue between theory, practice and audience engagement with a good dose of self-irony and deep questioning. Øystein and Electa are bodies and voices on stage. Together they will attempt to be present with themselves as vocal material and to entangle with the multiple others present in the space. Through performative experiments including audience invitations, they investigate the dialogue, and the possible construction of meanings, interpretations happening in the meeting between the voicer on one side, and the receiver on the other side; creating feedback loops between present and not present bodies. This research is part of the research project in development: Material Borderlands.

• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). You and Me as vocal material. Where and How do we meet. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL – WHERE AND HOW DO WE MEET? Øystein and Electa are bodies and voices on stage. Together they will attempt to be present with themselves as vocal material and to entangle with the multiple others present in the space. Øystein and Electa have similar but different approaches and trainings, ranging from Bel Canto singing to classical text work, extendend vocal technique to the sensuality of sound in the dark where objects and voices meet. Opening up this range of vocal material, including song, text and sound, they will look to extend the borders of materials and open up the grey areas surrounding topics such as ownership, ethics and appropriation. Relevant theory comes from OOO (object oriented ontology), OOF (object oriented feminism), aurality studies and voice studies. This presentation will include some embodied work and a reflective section.

• Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). What the Body Says: How a materialist approach to vocal actions can open for new dramaturgical strategies to performing personal stories. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). SONIC WORLD WITH VOICES AND ACCORDION. Full text in Research Archive
• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL – WHERE AND HOW DO WE MEET? Performance lecture as part of the Material Strategies research presentation. Full text in Research Archive
• Elle, Øystein & Behrens, Electa Woodbridge (2019). YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL -Listening to the space between. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract This performance lecture explores listening intersectionally (see Thomaidis 2017): across identities, categories and positionalities of class, ability, race, ethnicity, gender, age and sexuality. It asks the question: if sounding is a practice of intermaterial vibration (Eidsheim 2017), what might a new materialist approach to voicing and listening offer? How do we experience the borders between listening/sounding, as performer with audience and objects or as pedagogue with students? Looking at listening across the range of vocal material, including song, text and sound, this performance lecture reflects on the plasticity of material, (its ability to flex, to a degree, but also its potential to combust) (Behar, 2016) and the grey areas surrounding topics such as ownership, ethics and appropriation. Within the larger framework of new materialism and aurality studies, we situate our work between Nancy, Kendrick, Eidsheim, Behar, Gordon-Cook, Bonefant and Oliveros. The lecture’s structure is a dialogue between theory, practice and audience engagement with a good dose of self-irony and deep questioning. Øystein and Electa are bodies and voices on stage. Together they will attempt to be present with themselves as vocal material and to entangle with the multiple others present in the space. Through performative experiments including audience invitations, they investigate the dialogue, and the possible construction of meanings, interpretations happening in the meeting between the voicer on one side, and the receiver on the other side; creating feedback loops between present and not present bodies.

• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge; Elle, Øystein; Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla; Graffer, Sidsel; Holm, Ingvild & Oredsson, Jakob [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2019). Material Strategies workshop and sharing. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2019). Performance lecture: YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL – LISTENING TO THE SPACE BETWEEN. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2019). YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL – WHERE AND HOW DO WE MEET? Performance lecture as part of the Material Strategies research presentation. Full text in Research Archive
• Behrens, Electa Woodbridge & Elle, Øystein (2019). Performance Lecture: YOU AND ME – AS VOCAL MATERIAL – WHERE AND HOW DO WE MEET. Full text in Research Archive

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