Arntzen. Knut Ove , born 1950, was since 1983 assistant and later associate professor at the former Institute for theatre studies, now the Section for theatre studies at the Institute for Cultural Studies and Art History at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has been a free lance theatre critic at the paper Arbeiderbladet in Oslo, 1976-1986, and has benn in the function of a scientific consultant to the Bergen International Theatre. He was participating in planning and running the Drama Course at the Writing Academy of Hordaland County in Bergen and taught as at the director´s course at the State Theatre Academy in Oslo.
He has been a visiting professor at different universities, like in Kaunas, Lithuania, Antwerpen-Wilrijk and Frankfurt am Main, Belgium and Germany. He has participated in many international conferences, like the Small is Beautiful, University of Glasgow, 1990, Active Pooling: New Theatre´s World Perfect, Amsterdam, 1993, and European Theatre Towards Year 2000, Copenhagen, 1994. He has also given seminars and worked as a consultant with Les 20 jours du Théâtre à Risque in Montreal, Canada, 1994-95. He has published a series of articles analyzing development in the scope of a visual kind of dramaturgy and post-mainstream, and otherwise with regard to new theatre development he has cooperated in seminars at the Eurokaz festival with Gordana Vnuk.
In 1997 and 1998 he has attended conferences about new theatre and theatre research such as the Vision Zukunft # 1 – Theater 2010 at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main, and giving papers at the different research conferences like in Puebla-Cholula, Mexico, 1997 and Johannesburg, South Africa and Canterbury, UK in 1998. In 1999 he he also presented Baktruppen at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, China and gave several lectures about new theatre developments, post-mainstream and site specific/ambient theatre in Germany, Austria and Finland like the upgrade+3, Braunschweig, Off limits, Dortmund, 1999 and 2001, as well as the Helsinki Acts and cultural studies conferences of the Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies (INST), at different occasions.
The conference on Processes in Theatre, Art and Literature at the University of Bergen in September 2000 was coordinated by Knut Ove Arntzen in cooperation with Bergen Cultural City and INST.