Sten Rudstrom, Improviser/performer/choreographer, Berlin. Senior Certified teacher of Action Theater™, a radical body-based improvisation practice that treats movement, voice and language equally. He started working with Ruth Zaporah in 1986, copy/line editor of her first book, Action Theater — The Improvisation of Presence. What fascinates Rudstrom about this approach is the combination of text and movement and how to keep the body engaged when language’s fixed meaning pulls focus from the physical experience. It is moments of intersecting media that excite him the most. Rudstrom focusses on improvisation as a process and devising tool and enters into the unknown in studios and theaters as often as he can. Heavily influenced by Buddhist philosophy and neuroscience research, he constantly articulates the process of improvisation in new and exciting ways. How the brain creates the mind, how personality and ego identify with the thought process, how habitual behaviours solidify unconsciously, how to not take things so seriously and how to seriously play with those things are of his greatest interest. Self-surprise is one of his goals. He founded Action Theater™ Berlin; two improvisation ensembles: Streugut; and EAT (International Action Theater Ensemble). For over 30 years he has been teaching, directing and performing internationally, working with acting and dance students at TanzFabrik, HZT, ada studio, Ufer Studios, HDKM/Frankfurt, RITSC/Brussels, The Place/London, TEAK/Helsinki, CodArts/Rotterdam, Anton Bruckner/Linz and others. He is the artistic director of the NOW! Festival of Improvisation/Berlin, https://www.nowfestival.net/; holds an MFA Creative Writing/Poetics; MFA Live Art/Performance; Jury Award Winner 2022 Solo/Duo Festival, Barnes Crossing/Köln; and supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste, and Dis-Tanzen Solo. His trainings are dynamic, inspiring and challenging.
Sten Rudstrøm started his educational career with a B.S. in Chemistry/Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, 1982. In his graduate work, he found himself boxed for hours on end in a windowless room spinning unknown samples in multi-thousand dollar NMR machine. At this point in his life, he realized that he wanted to work with people. He travelled around Europe for 3.5 years trying to find himself, during which he witnessed a Canadian performance poetry duet in a small Berlin café. It seemed to him that the only difference between the performers and himself was that the performers were on stage. This epiphany triggered an arts education. He received a M.F.A.Fine Art/Performance from the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, CA., 1989, then went on to complete a M.F.A Creative Writing/Poetry from The Naropa University, Boulder, CO., 1991. In 1986, he met Ruth Zaporah, developer of Action Theater™ and has continued to work with Action Theater™ and other forms of improvisation since that time. He teaches regularly internationally and is known to be inspiring, compassionate and challenging. Regularly students tell him how Action Theater™ practice can apply directly to their own artistic or professional work.