My learning path with NÄTY: Marketta Tikkanen

I thought and hoped that, for five years, I would act as a receptacle for everything I need to know in the acting profession, and after that I’d be ready. I failed to see enough value in an actor’s own thinking; rather, I thought of an actor principally as the implementer and embodiment of someone else’s (the director’s) ideas. I expected to be shaped into an as-diverse-as-possible and flexible actor who can adapt to any kind of role whatsoever.

I’ve always been very performance-oriented and a straight A student, due to which I was very impatient and hard on myself at the beginning. I was surprised and even a little disappointed for not being fed one absolute truth, trick and stunt after another by an outside source, even though I felt like I needed them at the time. Instead, we began to approach the art of acting from within – through ourselves, our own bodies and thinking. It was an interesting, but at the same time hard, time of me coming face to face with my own incompleteness and insecurities.

Our first course, Introduction to the Art of Acting, concluded with every one of us planning and directing a little performance of their own. We were supposed to draw the script of the performance on paper, from where it was projected to the background during the performance. I think of this as an excellent example of the direction that our training had taken from the very beginning. The focus has been on our own stage thinking and the dramaturgy of the actor, as well as their analysis and articulation out loud.

I began to enjoy my studies once I got over the initial shock. I realised that I’d get a lot more out of the teaching when I keep an open mind towards it and am active myself. For example, I found the weekly chi kung exercises really difficult and frustrating at first. Even so, I’ve continued to practice it persistently and tried to revise my attitude towards it, and have subsequently found it to be a really useful tool for relaxing both my body and mind. The lessons on singing, dancing, chi kung, the Alexander technique and speech, as well as playback theatre have remained in our curriculum throughout our studies. For me, they have been important avenues for exploring my own voice in both a concrete and artistic manner.

With regard to my first-year studies, the ones, which stand out, include the course on intellectual self-defence, in which we reviewed the basics of critical thinking, as well as documentary theatre, acrobatics lessons and the Chekhov-encounter workshop. The most extensive course during the second year was implemented in cooperation with the TTT-Theatre. I was in the musical Mestaritontun seikkailut, in which I had the chance to rehearse being on the big stage and the production of a musical and children’s theatre. The most memorable courses in the second year included Marc Gassot’s workshop on make-up, the Shakespeare course in cooperation with Coventry University and Sonya Lindfors’s SWAG LESSONS, where I learned a lot about otherness, an awareness of my own privileges and the significance of representations in art. The second year ended in a monologue course during which we worked on a number of different texts.

At the beginning of the third year, we travelled to Udmurtia to study acting in a foreign language. Later we studied popular art, musicals and the representation of gender on stage. Before the Christmas break, we also had a two-week intensive course of the Chekhov technique. We also studied flamenco, the dialects of Finnish and the analysis of drama over the course of the year. In the winter, I was on a student exchange in Tallinn for a week. I attended a course on commedia dell’arte. And in the spring, I worked on theatre in Helsinki for my Bachelor’s and on my written Bachelor’s thesis. I’m now past the Bachelor’s phase, and this autumn, our class will disperse in many directions as part of our work experience. It feels scary to realise how fast this time at school is going, but at the same time, it is inspiring me to study even more intensively in the next two years.

It’s difficult to form a picture of your own learning. I’ve often felt like I haven’t learned a thing during my studies. On the other hand, I’ve started to notice some development in myself over the past six months. I’ve realised that I’m slowly starting to trust my own experiences and feelings on stage. I understand that, as an actor, I am often in the position to have information about a work that only an actor can have. I have the courage to speak my mind if I deem something questionable or difficult, whereas before, I would have swallowed my concerns out of a fear of getting the reputation of a difficult actor. I’m also getting continuously better at having the courage to show my insecurity, poorness and ignorance, and I’m slowly starting to get rid of my performance-orientation.

These past three years have taught me to be kinder to myself, and others as well. No matter what happens, each one of us makes or will make mistakes, and you should also have the chance to make them, especially during your studies. I think that the University should be a place of no pressure, where you have the peace, space and time to try different things and study different matters. When you have problems and make mistakes, the most important thing is to discuss and open them up afterwards, without judging anyone.

NÄTY trains autonomous actors who think for themselves. The central idea is for every actor to create their own theatre. While this inspires me, I’m also scared about the responsibility it entails. At the moment, my ideal actor is someone who retains their integrity and is not afraid to speak their mind. They trust their own thinking on stage and function as a content producer in performances. Instead of aiming to please, they are uncompromising in their art. My ideal actor is constantly engaged in continuous work to bring down power structures that oppress (female) actors. They are conscious of all the choices they make in relation to their work. They can justify their work from a social perspective and are aware of the context in which they perform. They are an artist who is treated as an equal member in work groups and who can stand up for themselves.

So there’s a modest goal for my studies for the Master’s! My studies have resumed, so I’ll face them fearlessly and shamelessly and, on every day, again wondering, questioning, renewing myself and others, dismantling the harmful, listening, challenging, receiving, giving, getting influenced by and influencing and, above all, asking why, how and for whom am I doing what I’m doing?

Marketta Tikkanen
Class of 2014–2019

Learn more about NÄTY and teaching in theatre arts at Tampere University