Institutet is a theatre group based in Malmö and Berlin. The group’s most important ambition is to explore the critical potential of theatre and consequently finding a societal pertinence for the medium. Institutet also wants to participate in an international exchange of ideas and strategies, and therefore, amongst other things, produces the platform MIT DEMO FESTIVAL which aims to exchange theory and application in stage art. At the moment the group is planning to develop through international productions such as Conte d’Amour and Invisible Empire. The international and inquiring aspects reflect Institutet’s ambition to generate competence and experience through a post-dramatic tradition of contemporary European theatre.

The group was formed in 2000 under the name Teater Terrier, by four actors from Teaterhögskolan in Malmö (Malmö Academy of Dramatic Arts), and has ever since garnered a great deal of attention in the Swedish theatre world. In 2007 the group shifted its focus beyond the representational dramatic theatre to an updated aesthetical direction under the name Institutet.

Today the group understands theatre as a social event where artists and audience members stage social rites expected of them, until an alternative praxis succeeds in opening a rift between expectation and “performance.” Institutet works in a performative manner, in the sense that the societal dimension of the theatre institution is both recognized and used. Sometimes Institutet has employed a club setting to frame the staging, and at other times a more traditional spectator/actor situation has been used as a starting point for a contextual exploration. In some cases the piece has existed mainly in the media rather than at a physical location. Currently the group is once again interested in the representative and dramatic theatre aesthetic it once left behind, but now with new experiences and entirely different possibilities.