Biography

Jenni Nikinmaa is a playwright/performer from Finland, banished to the Western outskirts of Europe as she doesn’t like sauna. Now she lives in Ireland and writes weird, wonderful, off-beat comedic plays about grim autobiographical experiences with unblinking kindness and touch of otherworldly magic and designs binaural soundscapes and site-sympathetic work. 

Jenni is interested in immersive work where people interact with their physical surroundings and living beings. As an artist working in site-related context, she was recently part of RESONANCE PERFORMANCE PROJECT at Rosorcas Festival of Circus Arts, and participated in the Context Creators residency with Cikada Circus. Most recently Jenni has been working with Big Telly Theatre Company on Faust-ish at Belfast International Theatre Festival. A site-sympathetic promenade experience The Enchanted she created toured in 2023-2024 from Birr to Cork and Galway. Currently, Jenni is rehearsing the monologue Sheep! For a premiere in May 2026.

She was shortlisted for Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize in 2020, holds an MA in Playwriting & Dramaturgy from The University of Galway and is a FUEL artist from 2023 with Druid Theatre Galway. Jenni is supported by Arts Council of Ireland, Kone Foundation in Finland and multiple others.

Artistic project

Being Human is a walkabout performance, where a character who has no idea of how to be a human picks up habits and pieces of others they encounter. They might mimic a movement, learn a new word or steal a piece of clothing, slowly creating a human out of humans. This human will be more human than any human before! 

And then there will be another. Being human is a practice in observation: I am afraid of people, but so curious and I want to look at them from the safety of a character and performance. It's a scientific and very serious experiment and a playful case study, an attempt to draw our attention to different ways of being that exist.

My whole life I have tried to be someone else, and have been looking for this book of instructions given to other people which has enabled them to human, while I hang out with horses and dogs and plants, whom I relate to. Now, I am trying to be myself, and this piece is a part of it, as I largely exist through my practice as a performer, maker and writer.

Format: walkabout

Size of audience: 20-100 people 

Specific location: crowds

Timing/duration: Any time, around 30 minutes