I live in multilingualism. At home we speak Italian, with my colleagues I speak English, and in everyday life, in shops, at the doctor’s office or on the bus, the language of communication is Finnish. It is estimated that around 43% of the world’s population are bilingual, and 17% are multilingual, i.e. fluent in more than two languages. According to studies by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there were around 281 million migrants in the world in 2024 plus 117 million people who were forced to move due to war, violence and disasters. Migratory flows, which will certainly not stop but will increase in future years, will create more and more multilingual citizens around the world.

Language diversity can lead to misunderstandings, which are easily resolved in the best cases. However, in more complex contexts, where cultural, religious or economic differences also intertwine, communication can degenerate into conflicts, which, if not managed, can lead to violence. Violence is often the news, while peace goes unnoticed.

Today, despite the growing presence of multilingualism, there is still a long way to go to fully explore the opportunities offered by linguistic diversity, especially in theatre. Multilingualism can become a way to navigate differences, learn to communicate in different contexts, and potentially transform conflicts between people. In addition, it can be seen as a form of opposition to imperialism and colonialism, as demonstrated by the use of translanguaging by some indigenous minorities, where languages are mixed to support each other. The idea is that all languages are in the same ‘drawer’ in the brain, and when a bilingual or multilingual person speaks, they choose the word that best fits the context. Indeed, some concepts can only be expressed in a certain language, and in those cases the speaker will mix languages for expressive need.

Yet, although multilingualism is an established reality in Europe, this linguistic diversity is still poorly represented in theatre. Together with other migrant theatre professionals living in Finland and the Nordics, such as Norway and Sweden, we have started to reflect on how to integrate multilingualism into our theatre productions and research. How can writing and theatrical practice serve this continued diversity that our European societies are experiencing in an increasingly visible and tangible way?

My first theatrical experiment in this sense was the interactive children’s show Shamaanit: tarina ystävyydestä ja taikuudesta (Shamans: a story of friendship and magic, Autumn 2022). I wrote in four languages: English, Finnish, Brazilian Portuguese and Arabic. The challenge I set myself was to ensure that the different languages were not a dramaturgical constraint, but rather emerged organically from the narrative structure. Multilingual writing required a collective approach, in which the text was also partly created and tested together with the actors.

A first starting point of writing was to work on some linguistic misunderstandings in a fun way, involving the actors in a very simple exercise: listing those phonemes that in their languages mean different things than in the dominant language, Finnish. The context in which the story takes place, on the other hand, was inspired by some readings, including Dino Buzzati’s masterpiece ‘The Secret of the Old Forest’, to which Shamaanit pays tribute, but also various readings on the bear cult and, of course, on the studies of shamanism, as the title suggests.

In an imaginary international school for shamans there is a strict rule in place: none of the students are allowed to interact with the others, nor to share their study interests or magical talents with them. In addition, it is strictly forbidden to speak your native language in the presence of other students, under any circumstances. The only language allowed for common communication is Finnish, and everyone is required to follow this rule. Students can interact exclusively with the headmaster and sole teacher, who has the extraordinary ability to communicate in all the world’s languages. In this similarly dictatorial context, three young students suddenly find themselves having to break the school rules to save the school itself. A powerful spell hit the school, and the headmaster was bewitched: his voice is trapped in a radio while his body wanders through the forest surrounding the school. The three players are therefore forced to work together to restore order, and in doing so they not only break the rules, but realise that, despite their differences, they are not so different after all.

Before playing in some public festivals and events, the show ran at a dozen schools in the Tampere region to reach more than two thousand young spectators in just two weeks.

The highlights of the show were interactive moments, where children could intervene and contribute to the story’s development, for example, by suggesting and pronouncing words in Finnish, Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese together with the actors. The reactions to the scenes played entirely in Arabic or Portuguese were also very interesting: children belonging to those linguistic minorities were suddenly the only privileged ones able to understand exactly what was being said on the stage. During a performance at a school in Tampere, a girl in the audience unexpectedly stood up and said out loud: hän puhuu arabiaa! (that’s Arabic!) with bright eyes of excitement and joy in her voice. At that time, she was speaking Finnish to be understood by her classmates and by us, but at the same time she expressed the surprise and perhaps also the satisfaction of being able to understand the Arabic speech that was being spoken on the stage.

The Shamaanit production has confirmed that multilingualism is not only an effective means of representing diversity, but also an intercultural practice. For adults who attended the show, especially outside the school circuit, the experience has sparked empathy, making them reflect on the frustration at the misunderstanding that every migrant person faces when moving (or being transferred) to a new country. Moments of misunderstanding were not experienced as an obstacle, but as an opportunity for growth, a political teaching moment.

The next multilingual art research project awaiting me is within a larger research project called FoRE/HOPE ( Forms of Resistance and Practices of HOPE ). Based on ethnographic material collected by colleagues working in the field of peace and conflict studies, I will write and direct a multilingual theatre text in co-production with the Tampere Theatre for the 2026/2027 season.

The ethnographic material I will be working on is very different from the texts that inspired Shamaanit. They are interviews and ethnographic observations from six different case studies from Finland, Iran, the US-Mexico border and Palestine. There are three Finnish cases: the student movement opposing cuts in culture and education, the experiences of young Somali men experiencing discrimination and racialisation in Finland every day, and finally the stories of students from West Africa fleeing unacceptable situations and conditions. The Iranian case, on the other hand, includes material on how women use art as a form of resistance and practice of freeing their bodies when faced with a totalitarian, oppressive regime. The militarisation of the US border with Mexico and the consequences on how families separated between the two countries maintain their relationships is the fifth case I will work on. And finally, the testimonies of Palestinian prisoners and the use of irony as a non-violent strategy to address torture will be part of the material related to the sixth case.

Over the next two years, I will study the material, which is very extensive and diverse, and select the elements to be developed in multilingual and interactive dramaturgy. I will replicate the experience of collaborative work with actors from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, with the aim of processing the initial material with them through improvisations, discussions and exercises of various kinds. The show will be for a Finnish audience, with the conscious intention to include those linguistic and cultural minorities that are usually excluded and ignored. In this artistic project, multilingualism will in itself be a form of resistance to dominant monolingualism, but also an act of hope and of creating new scenarios of peace and dialogue, in which peoples and cultures can live together without being forced to assimilate to repressive models. I do not exclude the possible discovery of other dimensions and perspectives that working on multilingualism will allow me to explore.

Ilaria Tucci

Published originally in Italian in the magazine LEFT in January 2025.

Ilaria Tucci uses theatre as a nonviolent tool for peace education, conflict transformation, empowerment, and peacebuilding. In her postdoctoral research at the University of Tampere, she explores how multilingual dramaturgy and narratives can be considered forms of resistance and practices of hope. She is also active in Finland within the Diversity Agents Network, which aims to promote and implement DEI practices in Finnish artistic and cultural contexts.

Ilaria’s photo by Saara Partanen | Mimi et Nöde.