Grethe Melby

Position

PhD Candidate, Theater studies

Affiliation

Research groups

Research

Grethe Melby is working on a monograph about the history of BIT Teatergarasjen. BIT started as a theatre festival in 1983. Eventually, BIT became a year-round programming theatre, with the associated festivals Oktoberdans and Meteor.

The dissertation examines the rhetorical strategies the theatre has used in its encounter with the Norwegian public. It asks how the theatre has been met by critics, politicians and other participants in the public sphere. It also looks at how the theatre has argued for its view of theatre and performing arts to bureaucracy and funding authorities.

Grethe Melby is an educator with 15 years of experience as a teacher in upper secondary school. She started 2007 as a media studies teacher but has since worked as a joint subject teacher at Årstad upper secondary school with students in industrial subjects, car mechanics, health care and specialised studies.

She has a master's degree in media studies from the Department of Information and Media Studies. There she did a rhetorical analysis of debates around free software, including the controversy surrounding the teenager Jon Lech Johansen who was arrested by the police unit Økokrim.

Grethe Melby has also studied administration, organisational science, literature, Nordic studies, and history. She came to Bergen in the autumn of 1994 to attend the Academy of Writing Arts and has had two smaller theatre pieces performed in the early 2000s. She has worked as a freelance theatre producer.

Grethe Melby has also been a freelance reviewer for Kunstkritikk.no, Billedkunst, Norsk Shakespearetidskrift and Scenekunst.no. She now reviews theatre and performing arts for the regional newspaper Bergens Tidene.

She is a member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Teatervitenskapelige Studier.

Grethe Melby is a member of two research groups. 

Research Group for Rhetoric, Democracy and Public Culture

Theatre history and dramaturgy Research Group

Teaching

Autumn 2023: DKT100 Introduction to art, theatre and digital culture.
Art and controversy, theatre and the public sphere. 

Spring   2023: TEAT115 Performance Analysis and Theatre Criticism:
Theatre criticism in newspapers and magazines.

Spring   2023: TEAT211 Aesthetics and Theory of Theatre:
Critical Theory, Feminism and Postcolonialism

Spring   2023: TEAT252 Theory-based Essay in Theatre Studies/Bachelor's Thesis:
Counselling

Spring   2023: TEAT253 Essay on a Practical Process/Bachelor's Thesis:
Counselling