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.

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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)

The Embassy of Utopia: 
Longing for a Different Way of Being

(2023)



"A sanctuary for positive uncertainty, bold thought, and untamable imagination."

In May 2023, the Embassy of Utopia opened for the very first time, taking over an old jewelry shop on the corner of Tartu's Town Hall Square and Rüütli Street. It declared itself a safe space for positive uncertainty, bold thinking, and unbridled imagination: a place for ideas too unconventional for the papers, too strange for the news, yet too beautiful, too painful, and too important to leave unspoken.

Over five days, the Embassy held nightly keynote speeches at 9 PM from invited voices — among them Mehis Heinsaar and Maarja Pärtna, alongside guests from Canada, Austria, and Portugal — each offering a vision of what a different way of being, a different tomorrow, might look like. But the real center of gravity was the open floor: anyone could step up and speak for up to five minutes about their own idea for change, from the shape of the global economy down to a single street or neighborhood.

By the time the doors closed, close to 300 speeches had been given aloud.















Authors / Directors / Performers: Oliver Issak, Jan Teevet, Taavi Teevet
Producer: Lisanna Lajal
Photos: Johanna Roos

Institute of Meetings and Non-Meetings, Prima Vista 2023


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