It’s all National

COPENHAGEN— The Royal Theatre of Copenhagen and Asylum Dialog Tank (ADT) presents: IT"S ALL NATIONAL: A 5 DAY LEARNING SITE FOR CONVERSATION AND ENTERTAINMENT FRAMING THE ASYLUM POLICIES IN DENMARK.

IT"S ALL NATIONAL is a 5 day event, from the 1st – 5th of December, 2009 organized by Asylum Dialog Tank (ADT) and Joachim Hamou as part of the Temporary National Theatre (TNT) project hosted at the Royal Danish Theatre.

IT"S ALL NATIONAL has been organized as a series of events that will make the theatre available for conversations, presentations and entertainment as part of an inquiry into asylum policies in Denmark. A selection of guest artists, researchers, philosophers, lawyers, politicians and asylum seekers will be invited to present perspectives on stage with a wide range of positions and opinions about asylum policies and integration in Denmark. The aim is to provide a stage for asylum seekers and Danes for dialog, recognition, and understanding.

ADT and its collaborators are looking into transnational and global societies to provide content, concepts, and ideas for presentations to generate dialog during this five-day period. Turning the stage of the Royal Theatre into a learning site for active discourse on immigration, integration and humanitarian issues related to asylum policies at a national and global context.

The sum of all these presentations will conclude with a public discussion seeking a summary of all the activity throughout the week for a constructive dialog with the invited guests.

ABOUT THE ROYAL DANISH THEATRE (DET KONGELIGE TEATER) The Royal Danish Theatre has been appointed by the Danish Ministry of Culture and it is in charge of three major venues The Copenhagen opera house, Operaen, The Royal Danish Playhouse, and the Old Stage. The Royal Danish Theatre has been located at Kongens Nytorv in the heart of Copenhagen since 1748, when the theatre was established with royal patronage. (http://www.kglteater.dk/)

ABOUT TNT – TEMPORARY NATIONAL THEATRE: Temporary National Theater (TNT) (http://www.temporarynationaltheatre.dk/) is an investigation into the nature and identity of "national" theatre organized by Directors Anders Paulin, Mia Lipschitz and architect Tor Lindstrand who have invited three guest curators, Architect Lene Mirdal and artists Jacob Jacobsen and Joachim Hamou, to organize programming for TNT this season for the Royal Danish Theatre from the 17 of October 2009 – 24 of April, 2010. The main objective of TNT is to examine different potentials for a cultural arena; understood as a public space where the Citizen and Institution meet to define collective ideas of identity, ethics and social imagination. This program is being developed in co-operation with institutions as well as individuals from a number of different disciplines and fields. The more different perspectives and diversified expertise, experience and strategies that fill up the space, the more impossible it gets for one identity to claim power over the space and it’s representations of a dominant national narrative, Thereby allowing a temporary transformation of a national stage into a public meeting room.