Konträr bites

About Konträr bites

Konträr Bites is a podcast by Konträr, an independent artist-run stage in Stockholm. Each episode features conversations with artists about the ideas, processes, and questions that bring performances into being. This podcast is written and hosted by Bianca Intonti. You don’t need to be in Stockholm to be part of Konträr.

Publisher

Konträr

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 Mar 2026

Latest episode

9 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

14 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   9 Oct 2026

   Deepen the mystery. With Linda Forsell

   A conversation with Linda Forsell, Swedish artist and one of the founding artistic leaders of ⁠⁠Konträr⁠⁠ (https://kontrar.se/). She recently presented on Konträr’s stage the performance THE ESCAPE ROOM, created and performed in collaboration with Adrian Kautsky and Ambrose Watts. A surreal adventure in to your inner world. Entering what first appears to be a classical escape room, the audience encounters riddles, symbols and hidden clues. They are met by three psychopomps – guides between the conscious and the unconscious. As the performance unfolds, the space gradually transforms into a dreamlike inner landscape where the boundaries between reality and imagination begin to dissolve. Rooted in the artistic team’s lived experiences of existential distress, serious illness and gender transition, The Escape Room explores personal transformation through an immersive theatrical experience. The performance questions contemporary therapeutic paradigms that frame the self as something to optimize and repair and time as something to be controlled and maximised. Inspired by surrealism, the work approaches the dream not as an escape from reality, but as a form of resistance. The result is an enchanting, humorous, and existential experience, an invitation not to escape, but to enter the unknown. Host & Interview: Bianca Intonti Audio post-production: MoodGarden Konträr bites is a podcast by Konträr, MADE POSSIBLE BY THE SUPPORT OF OUR SUBSCRIBERS. You don’t need to be in Stockholm to be part of Konträr. ⁠Learn more.⁠ (https://www.kontrarnewsletter.com/about/) Music: Paul Yudin, #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/paul-yudin/during-the-rain

2. 

   25 Sept 2026

   Take the world in and put it out. With Marie Karlberg

   A conversation with Marie Karlberg, writer and director of I’M JUST A SYMPTOM OF A MORAL DECAY, that was recently presented at Konträr. The year is 2089, and most of the world has been burnt to a crisp. Survivors embrace servitude for subsistence. In one household, Loosey (Marie Karlberg) has a compulsive need for sex – a new social norm. She keeps two servants: GiGi (Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski), loyal to the bitter end, and Poor Boi (Sigrid Windolf), an apathetic and rebellious alcoholic who can’t stop singing a song that came out in 1975. Host & Interview: Bianca Intonti Audio post-production: MoodGarden Konträr bites is a podcast by Konträr, MADE POSSIBLE BY THE SUPPORT OF OUR SUBSCRIBERS. You don’t need to be in Stockholm to be part of Konträr. Learn more. (https://www.kontrarnewsletter.com/about/) Music: Paul Yudin, #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/paul-yudin/during-the-rain

3. 

   7 Aug 2026

   Contemporary Actors Studio. With Elin Skarin

   A conversation recorded live from Konträr in which Jenny Jensen interviews Elin Skarin for "Contemporary Actors Studio" a talk show to discuss the methods and professional life of artists. Elin Skarin is an actor who has, among other things, been described as “one of Sweden’s most extreme actors” (GP 2025), and who often works in co-creative collective processes as well as creating her own works. At Konträr, she created the piece Actor in a Cage with the group Administrationen (2023). She is also one of the members of the art and theatre collective KonstAB. Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/apero-hour (https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/apero-hour*)

4. 

   7 Aug 2026

   Contemporary Actors Studio. With Mattias Lech

   A conversation recorded live from Konträr in which Jenny Jensen interviews Mattias Lech for "Contemporary Actors Studio" a talk show to discuss the methods and professional life of artists. Mattias Lech is an actor and director who creates original works through exploratory collective processes. At Konträr, he has been a co-creator and performer in Baywatch (2022 & 2026) and Bråk (2023–2025), and has also performed in his and Lisen Ellard’s work Döden (2022). Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/apero-hour (https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/apero-hour*)

5. 

   24 Jul 2026

   Contemporary Actors Studio. With Sepideh Khodarahmi

   A conversation recorded live from Konträr in which Jenny Jensen interviews Sepideh Khodarahmi for "Contemporary Actors Studio" a talk show to discuss the methods and professional life of artists. Sepideh Khodarahmi is a dancer, actor, director and performance artist. Khodarahmi created SMASH COLLECTIVE – The Erotic Clown (2024), participated in Keeping ip with the Iranians (2024) and performed her performance Cakesitting (2024) at KONTRÄR.The conversation is in Swedish.

6. 

   17 Jul 2026

   A post-human choir. With Mille Bostedt

   A conversation with Mille Bostedt, writer and director of HYBRID , a post-human musical, that premiered in February in Konträr. HYBRID is a newly written musical, with music by Tami T, about not identifying as human, but as something else. It invites audiences into an Alice in Wonderland universe where humans undergo radical transformations, not only of their bodies, but of their entire existence.

7. 

   6 Jul 2026

   Willing to stay wild. With Jenny Möller Jensen

   A conversation with Jenny Möller Jensen, Swedish actress and one of the founding artistic directors of the independent stage ⁠Konträr⁠ (https://kontrar.se/) in Stockholm. At Konträr, she recently presented the performance A SWEDISH MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, that she created and performerd in collaboration with Janna Granström and Nils Närman Svensson. A satirical and surreal summer performance created by the team behind Konträr’s Christmas show, where this time the audience is invited to witness a traditional Swedish Midsummer celebration. On the brightest night of the year, lovers and merry Midsummer revelers wander into the woods. Who is in love with whom, or what, becomes less relevant the deeper into the night they go. Dances are danced, flowers are picked, the maypole is raised, and fertility is celebrated. Midsummer night is the night when societal order is challenged—nature, myths, and sexuality take center stage, and the schnapps flow most abundantly. Midsummer night is the night when fairies dance in the meadows…

8. 

   5 Jun 2026

   Very little pretend. With Ella Schartner, Alexander de Sousa and Freja Hallberg

   A conversation with With Ella Schartner, Alexander de Sousa and Freja Hallberg, respectively actors and director of the performance RATHAUS, recently presented at Konträr. Two acts about execution, what we allow – and what we become. Set within an absurd and unsettlingly bureaucratic universe, the work explores the relationship between everyday systems and systemic violence — not as something observed, but as something the audience is placed inside. The performance moves from trivial office routines to actions with irreversible consequences. What initially appears administrative, rational and neutral gradually shifts into something deeply human — and deeply disturbing.

9. 

   15 May 2026

   Share some of the labour. With Heneliis Notton

   A conversation with Heneliis Notton, freelance writer, dramaturg, curator, critic and lead producer of the performing art festival Baltic Take Over, whose 2026 edition has been co-produced with Konträr. The performing arts festival Baltic Take Over 2026 has taken place from 8–10 May in Stockholm, Sweden. Baltic Take Over presents performances by artists primarily working in Baltic countries. It’s like a journey through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, making meaningful stops along the way. In 2023 and 2025, the festival passed through Helsinki and Turku, now, in 2026, it mapped its way through Stockholm. In dialogue with various partners, the festival seeks moments of connection with local scenes, artists, and audiences. This year’s program has come together in artistic duos who are approaching the space between them in politics and in proximity, in geopolitical conflicts and contemporary love stories, between black curtains and bookshelves, wearing VR-glasses or nothing at all. The festival aims to offer a shared space of thought during and in between the shows. In this year’s edition, the audience is invited to performances by IevaKrish, Agniete Lisičkinaite and Igor Shugaleev, Liis Vares and Taavet Jansen. Baltic Take Over is a performing arts festival co-curated by the New Theatre Institute of Latvia, Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Estonia), and Lithuanian Dance Information Centre since 2023. Baltic Take Over thinks of taking over as a way of shifting habitual structures that cultural work often follows. Taking over is gently negotiated and only possible thanks to a warm invitation. In Stockholm, Baltic Take Over is made possible in collaboration with STHLM DANS, Konträr, höjden studios and Tranströmer Library. Baltic Take Over is also included in the program of STHLM DANS. The 2026 edition is supported by the Baltic Culture Fund, Estonian Ministry of Culture, Estonian Embassy in Stockholm, Embassy of Latvia to Sweden and Lithuanian Culture Institute.

10. 

    25 Apr 2026

    We want humans to meet. With Majula Drammeh and Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe

    A conversation with Majula Drammeh and Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe, who presented at Konträr the performance installation WHAT IS ALREADY HERE? Majula Drammeh is a performer, dancer, dramaturg and performance maker based in Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden with a focus on interactive, participatory immersive work within the fields of dance and performance as well as somatic practices. Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe is an artist and storyteller from Lubumbashi, working across theatre, film, photography, installation, curation, and writing. Together, they created WHAT IS ALREADY HERE?, an Afrofuturist performance installation set in a world where humans have become humanoids, governed by a digital operating system called Virtus. The audience enters a space where time is experienced differently — a state in which sound, movement, speech, and image flow together, shaped by the themes of the work, by encounters along the way, and by what emerges through being together. Rooted in African philosophy and ritual traditions, the work searches for cracks in the system, where the human pulse continues to beat beneath the code. The live soundscape is composed and performed on stage by Franck Moka, whose role in the piece also emerges in the conversation.

11. 

    10 Apr 2026

    Stuck for a few hours. With Freja Hallberg

    A conversation with Freja Hallberg, Swedish playwright and director and one of the founding artistic directors of the independent stage Konträr (https://kontrar.se/) in Stockholm. She works with performance across different scales and formats. Her practice includes plays, durational works, participatory formats and long-term artistic projects. Her work exists where performance meets philosophy and politics — raw, emotionally precise and formally unexpected. Alongside her artistic practice, Hallberg develops long-term structures for artistic production and presentation. She founded PotatoPotato, co-leads the international platformSWEETS, and runs Konträr. At Konträr, she recently presented the performances BAYWATCH and ART & MONEY.

12. 

    27 Mar 2026

    Speaking the things that are not spoken. With Jasna Žmak

    A conversation with Jasna Žmak, who presented at Konträr the performance THIS IS MY TRUTH, TELL ME YOURS. Jasna Žmak is a Croatian dramaturg, writer, researcher and counselling therapist that in this performance appears on stage in the role of the performer for the first time. Dealing with questions of truthfulness and representation, participation and responsibility, she guide the audience through her dramaturgical and sexual experiences, asking herself and the audience questions about the importance and the meaning of artistic production in the era of wild capitalism. What happens when a dramaturg, after fifteen years in the service of art, begins to suspect that art has ruined her life, and yet cannot stop?

13. 

    13 Mar 2026

    Never dancing alone. With Hana Umeda

    A conversation with Hana Umeda, who presented at Konträr the performance RAPEFLOWER. Hana Umeda is a Japanese-Polish choreographer, performer, and dancer. She is also a Natori (master) of the Jiutamai Hanasaki-ryu school. RAPEFLOWER explores experiences of sexual violence. Umeda approaches rape as a transcultural weapon used to control women’s bodies. In a striking fusion of traditional Japanese jiutamai and contemporary performance, she portrays rape as a psychosomatic condition shaped by trauma, survival strategies, and the possibility of beginning anew. Umeda leads the audience through an emotional journey within her own body, a site of injury and objectification, but also of liberation, exploration, self-determination, and resistance. The performance seeks a language beyond taboo and sensationalism, and asks whether the stage can become a space for emancipation and healing.

14. 

    12 Mar 2026

    Konträr bites. Trailer

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