Oliver Issak

... is a dramaturg and freelance artist whose work in social design and performance art challenges traditional boundaries and activates public spaces through immersive, participatory experiences.

CV
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Plays
  1. tonight (2025)
  2. Bogged down (2025)

Performances
  1. Until they are dead, they shall live forever (2026)
  2. The Dew Point (2025)
  3. How to Look at the Sea? (2024)
  4. Oasis (2022)
  5. Battlefield (2021)
  6. Safe Zone (2018)

Actions
  1. Monuments (2025)
  2. The Embassy of Utopia: Estonian Book 1000 (2025)
  3. The Embassy of Utopia: Radio (2023-2025)
  4. Translation Agency (2024)
  5. The Embassy of Utopia: Happiness for Everyone, Free of Charfe, and Let No One Be Forgotten (2024)
  6. The Embassy of Utopia: Longing for a Different Way of Being (2023) 
  7. The Shadow Council (2022)
  8. 33 Speeches (2021)

Dramaturgical Formats
  1. Two-Room Conference
  2. Senior Citizens' Theatre Club "Avangard"
  3. Dinner at the Dramaturg's
 
Presentations / Speeches
  1. Spatial Dimensions in Heritage | Creative Research Capacities (2026)
  2. International Conference "Dramaturgy – Mapping the Landscapes" (2025)
  3. Baltic Drama Forum (2025)
  4. Estonian Cultural Endowment's 100th Anniversary Dinner (2025)
  5. Riga Performance Art Festival "Starptelpa" | Curators' Assembly (2024)

Texts / Books / Writings
  1. Teatrielu 2025 (editor) 
  2. Artishok Biennale (critic)
  3. Värske Rõhk: How to Write Kindness? 
  4. sss
  5. Publiku kaasamise projekt 
  6. “Teatrielu 2020” (editor)


Spatial Dimensions in Heritage | Creative Research Capacities (2026)



Spatial Dimensions of Heritage | Creative Research Capacities was an international conference held January 27–28, 2026, at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn, part of the Transform4Europe (T4EU) university alliance. The conference brought together contributions from architecture, art, design, digital humanities, and history to explore how spatial relationships shape cultural heritage and how emerging technologies such as AR, VR, and 3D modeling can support preservation work.

Title of my presentation
Reimagining a Vanished Square: Dramaturgy, Spatial Memory and World-Building in the VR Experience “Old Narva”As dramaturg on the team behind Old Narva's New Life, a virtual reality experience opened at Narva Town Hall in 2023, I worked on reconstructing the town's Town Hall Square as it stood in the 1930s — a square almost entirely erased by the Second World War. This talk examined what dramaturgy looks like in VR, a medium where the viewer moves inside the story rather than observing it from outside. Drawing a comparison with VR History's Tallinn 1939/44 tour, I explored how Old Narva diverges from a single linear narrator in favour of a modular, multi-voiced structure — built from interviews with Narva residents and literary fragments — aiming not just to explain what was lost, but to restore a texture of place and community for the people living in Narva today.

Full text of the presentation  is available HERE
Slides of the presentation















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