Åsa Back
Åsa Back is a director and project manager, making performance art in and outside the traditional theatrical space. She has a double master from SKH (2016/18) and works with investigative projects where art is not a product, but a way of understanding the world.
Lately, Åsa has been artistically interested in forests and nature, and in exploring questions around humankind’s place in a larger whole. Bön för vår tid – en skogsperformance was recordeed in 2021-22, partly through Stockholm Fringe Festival. I the project Spår i skogen, Åsa’s creative starting point is her grandmother’s village of birth, Gällerstena. The uncultivated land is restored to recreate a lost biodiversity and the process leads into a performance.
The process is central to Åsa’s work and she often returns to the term artistic ethnography, which she developed during her master’s degree. During a residency at an independent theatre in Beijing, she collected videos, photos, personal memories, movemennts, memories of smells, sounds and tastes that became the performance SINNLIG i Peking.
She has previously directed at Ensemble Yria, Byteatern, Sagateatern and Dramalabbet. In 1999, she started Teater Asoko, which developed a stage expression inspired by Japanese theatre and performance. In the early 2000s, Teater Asoko created a series of highly acclaimed plays, including Medea från Mbongo (2001) and Den andra stranden (2002).
Photo: Johan Rosenqvist