A Global Theatre Intervention 2014 – 2016
boomerang – documents of poverty and hope 2014 - 2016
A Global Theatre Intervention 2014 – 2016 Teatro Elsinor Milan - Florence - Forlí | Italy Teatro O Bando Palmela | Portugal Pilot Theatre York | United Kingdom Presentation House Theatre North-Vancouver | Canada DynamO Théâtre Montreal | Canada Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) Sydney | Australia
with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
www.internationaltheatre-project.com
Cover Boomerang final.indd 1
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A Global Theatre Intervention 2014 – 2016
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»Boomerang - Documents of Poverty and Hope« is one of twelve projects announced by the European Commission under their Cooperation project with Third Countries – European Culture Funding Stream in 2013. Teatro Elsinor from Italy is the lead organisation. For the project three theatres from Europe (Italy, Portugal, Great Britain), two from Canada and one from Australia have joined together to work globally on the theme of migration. The partners aimed to create new theatre pieces based on stories from young people about their experiences of migration as a result of poverty and social isolation. Six co-productions, all based on an artistic exchange between two continents, and one final intercontinental co-production are the result of the project. The shows combine documentary theatre with the different aesthetic styles of the companies taking part. The productions have been integrated into the repertoire of the companies for their upcoming seasons. The final production brought together all of the theaters and their experiences from the previous months to develop a final show that unites the five countries. The resulting production was rehearsed and premiered at ATYP, Sydney in 2016. After being presented in Sydney it then travelled to Presentation House Theatre in Vancouver.
Preface Giuditta Mingucci
T
here is a beginning and an end for everything, a start and a destination. Sometimes we choose our trip, but often we just decide what to do with the trip that someone else has chosen for us. On this path we can find other people, people that could hopefully become our travel companions but not necessarily because, even if we are walking through the same path as others travellers, we are not obliged to be companions. Not everybody would share the journey, we do not share our journey with everybody.
Italy is a country with a long and strong experience in migration, both as a starting and arrival point. Exploring this theme together with people directly involved in it, with artists from all over the world and last, but not least, with our audiences gave us all a unique opportunity to go deeper into aspects of today‘s world that, whilst not always the focus of theatrical activity, are more and more key to our lives in the 21st century. Together with professionals from all over the world, we thought and discussed and created work about one of the most important themes of our society and in particular on its impact on young people all around the world. The objective was to build a common story based on the experiences of those who were forced to leave their countries of origin. The main themes being the poverty which was forcing their migration from their homes and the hope that there may be a better life together with the realities of integration they faced in their new host countries. During the creation of the plays, the participants had the chance to be involved in the artistic and cultural process.
Every theatrical company taking part in the project worked over the same period of time but from six different parts of the world, in order to realise workshops and interviews with young people who had experienced migration. The result was a pool of stories, words and pictures that were shared by all the artists involved. This experience led to the creation of seven different plays as part of one intercontinental project. Our research was not statistics. We needed unique stories just concerned with pictures, phrases and expressions, which could represent the synthesis of the whole experience. Theatre investigates, but in its own way. It takes life to love Life‘, said Lucinda Matlock in Edgar Lee Masters‘ Spoon River Anthology. And we need life to make theatre happen. We need meetings to do so. Theatre is a privileged place to meet people: the audience, the actors and the creative team, who leave their traces on the stage even if they are no longer on it. Theatre is an opportunity to meet new stories, new texts, authors, life itself and the lives of others. We need meetings like those we had with our communities, with their points of view about existence. We need meetings that open minds and increase interest in themes that were not originally part of the project, such as the sense of identity, the feeling of belonging and the values which pass from a generation to another one. The questions we asked the participants came back to the senders, challenging us to tell their stories, to put their lives on stage. A Boomerang effect indeed. Giuditta Mingucci Co-Director of Teatro Elsinor (Leading Organisation)
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Giuditta Mingucci, born in Rimini, Italy, she graduated with honours in Classical Literature at the University of Bologna. Her theatrical training began in the Compagnia degli Scalpellini theatre laboratories with other maestri. She has worked professionally since 1997 and in 2000 she joined Elsinor Teatro, as an actress, playwright and theatre director. In 2012 she was appointed Artistic Director for their theatre’s venue in Forli, Italy, and she‘s currently Artistic Co-director of Elsinor.
Preface
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Dirk Neldner born in Hamburg / Germany. He started his theatre carrier as business manager of independent “junges Theater”, Berlin (1982 – 89). After that he was for nearly 10 years responsible for Management and Marketing at the state owned theatre for Children and Young People (1992-01). In this function Dirk got his first experiences with international network activities (Kinderspiel with ATYP 2001 in Sydney etc.) Since 2009 Dirk is head of “Platform “Platform Shift+”, a network of European theatre companies to meet the new opportunities of producing theatre for young people in the digital age. From 2010 - 2015 he was General Director of Germany’s biggest theatre for political satire, DISTEL, in Berlin.
n 2013, as we began to have first thoughts about an international theatre project, I had just returned from Portugal. There, our friends from Teatro O Bando, had told me about a restaurant in Lisbon that had specialized in organising farewell parties for young Portuguese people who were emigrating: A cynical symbol of the crisis in the heart of Europe. This was during the height of the European banking crisis when many young, mainly well-educated South-Europeans left their countries in search of work. Mass poverty, which had been considered as defeated, came back to Europe. In an unexpected dramatic way, some of the European countries had to fight unemployment rates of about 50 %, in particular among young people. With the project »Boomerang - documents of poverty and hope« we wanted to go on a theatrical root-tracing search to see how the flight from poverty influences the personal lives of young people. The chosen form of documentary theatre seemed fitting because it called for a concrete artistic examination of the experiences of those directly affected. Not even two years later, totally different events demanded our attention: War, terrorist attacks and the gigantic wave of refugees who arrived in Europe last year. It was important for the theatres who co-operated in the intercontinental coupling, to refer to this critical situation. This is especially true for the project theatres whose young target audience demands a sensitive way of dealing with current developments. In the Portuguese-Canadian co-production this reference is clearly evident. In »Absence«, a refugee, before entering his target country, must choose between »Memory« and »Hope«. He is only allowed to take one of these with him.
In the Montreal production »Inner Migrant« the audience follows the difficulties that the Portuguese immigrant has in the initially alien new homeland. The British-Australian co-productions are about causes and effects of the current migration movement: The Pilot Theatre play »Outsiders« explores the long lasting consequences of colonialism and the mistrust and dangers which arise fro a clash of cultures and religiouses. The play on the writer Emteaz Hussain, inspired by Albert Camus‘ novel about the French-Algerian conflict and which toured through much of the UK, became sadly very relevant because of the recent Parisian Terror attacks. A war taking place on foreign soil influences the relationships of five young women in »War Crimes«, the play put on by ATYP in Sydney. The presence of a stranger (in this case a refugee) puts a small community to the test. The play was nominated in three categories for the Sydney Theatre Award. This is an appraisal for the whole project, which confirms the necessity for contemporary childrens‘ and youth theatre to take a political stance. »The private sphere is political and the political sphere is private« was a saying in the 1968 Student movement, which had its origins in the Vietnam War Protest. This motto is relevant to the Italian-Canadian co-production »I Wish«. In participatory performances young people are asked what their wish might be. The 8-12 year olds in the audiences in both Vancouver and in Forlí would often say that what they wanted was: PEACE! Of course theatre doesn‘t bring us closer to world preace. At least, not directly. But through this project the
Dirk Neldner elementary importance of intense exchanges with the young audiences on the big themes of the world once again became very clear to all the partners. Obviously we can no longer evade global conflicts, no matter where we are and regardless of the ethnic composition of our societies.
Artists from all of the theatres contributed their experiences and professionalism to the final project production, »Patricia Balbina‘s Chance Encounter with the End of the World«. This was the climax and simultaneously the end of the EU sponsored project »Boomerang - documents of poverty and hope«.
All the more important was the exchange of ideas with like-minded people from different continents and different cultures over the last two years. Working together and being able to have heated arguments about a theme was enormously beneficial and unusually intense.
The collectively gained experience will influence all of our paths for a long time to come. Whilst searching for the tracks of young people we have left our own tracks. Dirk Neldner Project Dramaturg
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Linda Carson, Canada
Migration Stories 8
My parents
were born and raised in Barbados and moved to England when they were in their 20s. I was born there and moved to Canada when I was 16. They moved here to be with my Mothers sisters and to be closer to friends that were here. I found my early years here difficult but as time went on I adjusted and have come to love Canada. Funnily enough even though I have now lived in Canada longer than England I still consider myself British. Photo: Me at Peggys Cove NS
In dealing with the theme of migration everybody in the group of artists contributed their own experience of the topic. Almost everybody knew someone among friends who had a migration background; several had a migration background themselves or there was someone else in their family who had come from elsewhere. We collected some of these exciting stories – stories from five countries and from three continents.
Dirk Neldner, Germany
Giselle Clarke-Trenaman, Canada
My personal Migration Story
My father was born in Breslau,
Silesia / Germany in 1919. Due to the Potsdam agreement, Silesia was given to the new nation of Poland. So my father was not able to get back home after the WW2. His mother and his sisters had been displaced to Lower Saxony. He settled in Hamburg, where I was born years later. My father didn’t speak a lot about his former home. But he kept some traditions; most of them were related with celebrating Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had a typical Silesian supper: a malt beer soup with different types of sausages – and by eating it he sometimes started to talk about the past.
Photo: Me and my father, christmas 1959
My dad emigrated
from Scotland when he was 21. It was just after WW2 when all the educational placements were being held for war veterans, so he came to Canada to find more opportunity. My mom was born in Canada after both her parents emigrated from the north of England in the 1920’s to find work. My Grandparents and my dad were the only ones of their families to emigrate so I have wonderful memories of going back to “The Old Country” to visit “The Relatives”.
Photos Left: My dad (left) and two friends when he first got to Canada. Above: My Grandmother and my Grandfather‘s mother - immigrants from UK (Except my Grandfather‘s mother was just visiting).
My mother’s migration
My mother married at 18 as the Cuba missile crisis was in the news all over the world. She left her family and Quebec to settle in Halifax, a port on the Eastern seaboard. My father was a cook on a Royal Canadian Navy ship. Alone, pregnant and without a penny to her name, my mother had to manage. To get through, my father stole leftovers he hid under his coat and brought them home. He also collectd other sailors’ rations and resold them. My mother gave birth to 2 boys in barely 2 years. Photos Father with my mother (l) | Father in the Navy (c) | Ship of my father (r)
and his parents lived in a small town in Portugal, where they had their own business for over 25 years. After the global financial crisis in 2011 that crippled Portugal and all of Europe, their business hit the wall: customers disappeared and profits declined. Xavier‘s parents decided to make a bold decision: emigrate. This would change everything: the country, the continent, the climate in which they lived, the language they spoke and the friends they made. Xavier, who fathered a daughter shortly before his parents’ departure and was understandably fearful for his future, made the difficult decision to leave his daughter in Portugal and join his parents. Today, his daughter lives in Portugal with her mother, while her father, Xavier and her grandparents, now more than 60 years old, live in another country.
Migration Stories
Photo: Me (right) with my grandparents
My friend Xavier
Yves Simard, Canada
was born in Russia. When he was eight, his family decided that they needed to leave Russia and they travelled by boat to Romania. On the boat they lost all their money and with the help of a fellow traveler they were able to reach England. He lived in England for 67 years before he became an official resident, he said it took this long because “he was deciding whether he liked the country.”
Katie Posner, UK
My grandfather
João Neca, Portugal
My personal Migration Story
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The partners 10
with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
Content Project Introduction Preface Giuditta Mingucci Preface Dirk Neldner
4 6 7
Project partners Table of Content A Global Theatre Intervention
CO-PRODUCTIONS: Teatro Elsinor and Presentation House Theatre I Wish (Forlí) Participational Work Miseria & Nobiltá
20 22 24
I Wish (Vancouver) Educational Work
Pilot Theatre and Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) Outsiders 34 A Restless Place 36
War Crimes
Teatro O Bando and DynamO Théâtre
18 26 29
32 40
44
Ausência 46 Educational process 48 Casaverde 49
Inner Migrant Educational work
Patrice Balbina‘s Change Encoutner with the End of the World Final Production Creative Process
10 11 12
54 56
Creative Team Summer School Sydney
50 52
54 58 70
Migration 73 Migraton facts today My personal Migration Story 1 My personal Migration Story 2
74 8 31
My personal Migration Story 3 53 My personal Migration Story 4 72 Imprint 81
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Documents of poverty and hope The hope of prosperity for all EU citizens has come to an abrupt end in the last few years. The serious economic crisis exposes the supposed solidarity of the Union as highly fragile: the rich countries increasingly isolate themselves and the poor countries are confronted with insoluble problems. The interference in the social system makes the poor poorer and creates existential problems that end up with the crucial question: Can we find a better life somewhere else, in a country other than our own?
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Introduction
Emigration as an answer to these problems has made a strong mark on the societies of both Australia and Canada. Overwhelming poverty resulting from famine and war has caused hundreds of thousands of people to depart from
both countries, at the same time, the new streams of migrants, especially Asian migrants, are bringing yet another new element with them. In recent years Europe itself has become a desirable destination for refugees from all over the world.
Italy and Portugal, strongly suffering under the present economic crisis, are being confronted by new streams of migration. Many young people move from their own countries to wealthier areas in central and northern Europe. Economic necessity forces people to an unwanted mobility, looking for work, they leave their home countries and thus leave their language and cultures behind them. The modern migration processes presents European countries with new, unknown challenges. Australia and Canada has had to face these challenges too. How does the stream of migrants influence the social and cultural structures of the countries? Are tensions caused by the collision of old and new immigrants? How does culture and identity develop in multi-ethnic societies? Australia and Canada are very well suited as partners for the 3 European countries as they collectively explore the cultural effects of the migration movement. What can Europe learn from the multi ethnic nations overseas? What is comparable and in what way is the European development unique?
Inaugural meeting at Presentation House Theatre, Vancouver, June 2014 Â Dirk Neldner presenting the concept of the project
Europe in the past. If it weren’t for the European immigrants of the last century Australia and Canada would not exist in the way they do today. Language and culture bear witness to this in
Great Britain, being the centre of the Commonwealth, Portugal, a former Colonial power and Italy close to the border of Africa are all potential destinations for refugees.
The partners Theatres are more interested in the concrete stories of real people rather than the abstract presentation of problems.
A Global Theatre Intervention
All participating theatres are renowned institutions whose professional dedication is highly regarded in their own countries. All of them are focused on
offering theatre programmes, which span many generations. They work through very different cultural starting points, training methods and forms of expression (physical, musical-metaphorical, text based theatre). Co-operation between such theatres is only of lasting benefit to the partners when they succeed in developing a project that goes beyond the sum of the individual experiences. It was therefore necessary to find an area, which the partners could discover together and enlarge on with their own
artistic qualities. In order to transform the theme of “Poverty and Migration” into meaningful stories for the stage, the partners decided to conduct interviews with young people for whom the theme “Poverty and Migration” is presently relevant.
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Introduction
Emigration and Immigration: these movements of people show their lines between the continents and countries, between the past and the present. Personal stories hang like a row of pearls, they tell of poverty and existential need, from hope and solidarity, from new beginnings and from dreams thereof. The aim of the project was to bring stories like these to the stage.
The process and the productions The starting point of the project was set at the Inaugural Meeting in June 2014. Two artists from each of the companies met in Presentation House Theatre in
Two representatives from each of the six companies came to the first encounter.
Documents of poverty and hope the multi ethnic city Vancouver for one week. The focus of the encounter was set on the exchange about the poverty based migration situation in the cities, regions and countries of the partners. The participants discussed how to conduct interviews in the framework of biographical research and how to use them for the artistic work.
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Introduction Pierre Leclerc, General Manager, talking to the partners about the artistic vision of DynamO Théâtre (CA)
In the inspiring atmosphere the companies easily could decide on a bi-national artistic partnership finding a conscious connection between the “old” and the “new” world. So each pair of theatres consisted of one European and one non-European theatre who
worked bi-laterally to cooperate and co-produce. Back home the bi-national exchanges started: The artists went out of the theatres and into the schools and educational training centres, to unemployment centres and to youth clubs in their neighbourhood, where they got to know their partners for the interviews. All interviews went into an internal project pool, which was available to every partner. Because the theme “Migration” was linked to personal encounters and to people with relevant life stories, an in-
dividual relationship to the artistic object was developed over the continental borders. As they had gone through similar processes the artists gained a strong mutual understanding for an exciting intercontinental exchange. The concepts for the co-productions grew out of the exchange of ideas between the bi-national artistic teams. Six inter-continental co-productions grew out of the co-operations during the last two seasons. They, all highly appreciated in their countries, are based on very different ways of working. They express the aesthetical variety of the starting points, the wealth of content
A Global Theatre Intervention All the productions and the interviews gave a deep insight into the theme of “Poverty and Migration”, as seen from the point of view of young people from three continents. Parts of the gathered material are also available for interested people world-wide for free online with links to other relevant institutions.
Introduction
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The project title
of the interview material and the high artistic quality of the involved theatres. For these productions, modern documentary theatre devices were combined with the specific artistic style of each of the individual theatres. The six co-productions stay in the repertoire of the respective theatres and are accompanied by numerous theatre pedagogical measures as well as post performance discussions. In this way, for a long period, the productions remain as the starting point for the intense consideration of those involved and of the audiences with the fatal effects of poverty in historical and current migration processes. Most of the productions remain available to view online.
The final production The final production »Patrice Balbina‘s Chance Encounter with the End« of the World, produced at the ATYP in Sydney, stepped beyond the single parts of the project because the experiences from the previous months enabled the team to develop an additional comprehensive idea, which unites the 5 countries. Artists from the 6 theatres joined together to develop a common production. The production had its world premiere in ATYP and travelled to PH Theatre in Vancouver afterwards. It is also available world wide online where audiences can also engage and discuss the material and performances.
The project started under the title “Boomerang – Documents of Poverty and Hope”, because it seemed to the European applicant a perfect symbol for the artistic aims. The wooden throwing weapon which finds its way back to the person who threw it, was taken as a symbol for the artistic concept of the project: Art is always about sending out impulses which return in a transformed way. That’s why the title stood for the traces of both historical and current migration processes, which never only go in one direction, but always return to the place of departure. It also stands for the way the artists worked: They left their safe native harbour, the theatre, to interview young people for whom poverty and migration is a relevant theme in order to bring back these real life stories to the stages of their theatres. And it finally symbolizes the experiences of these affected young people, who see their real life stories being expressed artistically on stage and those who
Above: Stefano Braschi (IT) chatting at the pot luck supper . Left: Bicycle ride around Stanley park in Vancouver.
Documents of poverty and hope 16
Introduction
Odette Bereska Odette took theatre studies at Humboldt University (East Berlin, GDR) followed by six years in TV developing scripts for movies for children and youth audiences. From 1991 - 2005 she was chief literary manager of Carrousel Theater an der Parkaue in Berlin, the biggest theatre for a young audience in Germany, as part of the Artistic Leadership renewing the theatre after German reunification. She also started to work as a playwright and director and since 2005 she has worked as a freelance artist, mainly as a director in Germany and Norway, often in a combination of both puppet and actors theatre. From 1999 on Odette was one of a team of three developing EU-funded theatre projects including “European Schoolyard stories”, “Magic Net”, “Platform 11“ “PLATFORM shift+ and “Boomerang - documents of poverty and hope“ From left: Nicolas Brites (PT), Jennifer Medway (AU) and Raul Atalaia (PT) at Presentation House Theatre
take this intense impression back into their own lives and that of their family. So there were good reasons for such a title. But the Australian Theatre for Young People has requested to use a different one. This is how the Artistic Director explained the request: »The Boomerang is a tool used by the traditional owners of the land, which is now Australia. The dispossession of Indigenous Australians from their land and the mistreatment at the hands of European settlers over the past 200 years is a national issue that will take generations to reconcile.
In the process of reconciliation we recognise there is great sensitivity around the appropriation of Indigenous names, references and traditional stories. In order to use an Indigenous reference like ‘Boomerang’ inside Australia, the project must have a strong connection with, and prior approval from, the Indigenous community. And this is not the case for this project.« Fraser Corfield, Artistic Director ATYP
also connects strongly with our aims, became the new project-title.
Of course we understood our Australian colleagues and tried to find a solution. The original subtitle “Documents of poverty and hope”, which
Odette Bereska Literary Adviser
The process around the title makes clear how important these kinds of international border-crossing projects are. To have strong reasons for discussion, exchange and an opportunity to listen to each other brings artists together and helps to develop an understanding between people and nations.
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Co-Productions
Teatro Elsinor from Italy and ... Elsinor is a centre of theatrical production and performances and specialises in plays and children’s theatre, as well as organising theatrical seasons and training laboratories. These are carried out in three regions, which are considered highly influential for Italian theatre: Lombardy, Tuscany, and Emilia Romagna. Elsinor is represented by Teatro Sala Fontana in Milan, Teatro Cantiere Florida in Florence, and Teatro Giovanni Testori in Forlì.
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Elsinor
Elsinor’s driven commitment is focused on the exploration of contemporary theatrical prose, and the exchange and synergies inspired by traditional and new approaches. By diverse forms of collaboration between artists, local governmental institutions, universities and schools, Elsinor offers theatrical training, workshops and special events all over the national territory. An important example of this is the festival of youth theatre “Platform Milano”, created and hosted in Teatro Sala Fontana since 2011.
Teatro Elsinor, Milano, Right: Stefano Braschi and Carlo Rossi in »Adams Dream«
In collaboration with Teatro del Buratto, Elsinor organizes “Segnali”, one of the most important children’s theatre festivals in Italy.
Via Boltraffio 21 20159 Milano, Italy www.elsinor.net
Presentation House Theatre from Canada
Presentation House Theatre believes that professional theatre is for everyone. Every show PH Theatre presents or produces will be of the highest professional standard while also appealing to the diversity of the North Shore. The theatre is proud to offer programming for children and youth, adults, young and old, the music aficionado and the innovative and emerging dancers. Presentation House Theatre is the cultural hub in the backyard of North Vancouver. Organizational objectives: * to produce and develop work that is accessible, engaging and entertaining * to provide a home for new and innovative emerging artists * to bring a world of culturally diverse playwrights, choreographers, performers and producers to the North Shore * to always be inclusive and reflect North Vancouver in the work we produce and present * to engage with North Shore culture by inviting other companies to
become partners and / or resident companies at Presentation House Theatre * to encourage a life long love of the arts through artist-in-residence programs and educational programs for North Shore youth
Today, Presentation House Cultural Society operates Presentation House Theatre, and oversees the maintenance of the Presentation House Arts Centre for all facility users and tenants including Presentation House Gallery and the North Vancouver Museum.
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Presentation House Theatre, North-VancouverÂ
PH Theatre
333 Chesterfield Ave. North Vancouver, BC V7M 3G9 www.phtheatre.org
Presentation House Theatre, the neighbourhood professional performing arts centre with all kinds of shows for all kinds of people. It is the place where children, youth and adults from different communities come together for a shared experience in professional theatre and performing arts. Presentation House Theatre core purpose statement is to bring the 10.000 hours of experience of professional artists, to the diverse community of North Vancouver.
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I Wish
Every show is the result of a creative path that a group of people walk upon together. In the case of both the productions of I Wish, the group of people was very large and many of their paths crossed before we arrived on stage. A first step, for us, was taken in Forlì, Italy, in a place called »La tana« (The Den), where we met youngsters of the most diverse origins. »La tana« is a small place but at the same time a big house for these young people. We started with a workshop. For the majority of the participants it was their first experience with theatre. It was nice to see how keen they were to be involved, and how much they loved it. The workshop led to the interview process. Each of the participants had a different experience and story, both personal and familiar. However, all of them had something in common: a heart full of hopes, ideas, projects, and wishes for their future - whatever their past stories were, they were all looking towards the future, with expectations, questions, and sometimes fears.
Alongside those stories, others soon joined, shared by the other interviews from across the world, from different corners of the earth. Again, fragments of stories and thoughts generously shared, and gazes looking up or down, escaping or being open, insisting or resisting the look of the person in front of them, the interviewer, looking at them from outside but hoping to be able and see the inside.
I WISH Teatro Elsinor and PH Theatre by Col Cseke, Nathan Pronyshyn, Linda A. Carson and Kim Selody Cast
Leo Sandra Director Set & Costumes
Stefano Braschi Giuditta Mingucci Kim Selody Annamaria Cattaneo
Opening: 31.7.2015 in Forlì
»I Wish« at Teatro Elsinor (Forlì, IT): Opposite: Stefano Braschi Below: Giuditta Mingucci and Stefano Braschi
Kim Selody has worked as a writer, director and actor in Canadian theatre for over 30 years. He has directed over 100 productions for TYA and has written several plays. Recently, Kim left his position as a Theatre Officer with the Canada Council to become Artistic Director of PH Theatre. In the past he was Artistic Director of Carousel Players (Ontario, 99-06) and Playwrights Theatre Centre (Vancouver, 91-95). He has studied clown and movement.
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I Wish
The leading company, Teatro Elsinor decided on an artistic exchange with the Presentation House Theatre. The companies realised two co-productions of the same new written Canadian play for children aged 8+. The concept and the interactive part of the performances are based on interviews with children. The exchange of the directors, Giuditta Mingucci and Kim Selody, alongside the common bi-national research and development process ensured a professional cooperation on a high artistic level.
I Wish - Particpation of Young People
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Elsinor
Stefano Braschi born 1957 in Forlì and graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in Pre-Law. From 1979 to 2000 he was a member of Teatro dell’ Arca, working as both an actor and producer. From 2001 to 2011 he was Artistic Director of Teatro Sala Fontana in Milan and since 2001 he has been the Artistic Co-director of Teatro Elsinor and of the Children’s Theatre Festival “Segnali”.
The first step for Elsinor was realising workshops and interviews with young migrants in Forlì. We chose youth community centres such as L’OFFICINA (The Laboratory) and LA TANA (The Den), thanks to the cooperation with Forlì’s Culture and Social Policies Departments. La Tana is a small place but at the same time a big house for these young people. We started with a workshop for the majority of the kids - that was their first experience with theatre. It was nice to see how keen they were to try and how much they loved it. The workshop led to the interviews process. The workshops allowed the participants to feel more comfortable and free to express themselves. This helped them with the interviews, in which they explained their personal stories. They were curious and interested, they participated with enthusiasm even if most of them had not had any theatrical experience before. In fact, some of them had a very indefinite idea of what theatre was. We needed an interpreter only once, and the centre’s cultural mediator was there to help us. The personnel of both centres assisted our team with passion and dedication, providing an incredible help during the whole process. Working with the participants resulted very profitable. They showed their interest in theatrical activities and their transparency while telling their stories. »I‘m 17 but I feel like I‘m 70 because of all I experienced«.
School Workshop in preparation of the production »I Wish« (Teatro Elsinor, Forlí)
»Do you want to interview me? Well, I came here by ferry, nothing special ...« No journey of hope. Maybe someone
else had one, someone who tested the waters. Maybe no one had, it was not necessary. But a journey is a journey and a change is a change. It is like a lift, from a place to somewhere else. The result is often a double track. Here and there, before and after are parts of the everyday life of young people who
Educational process in Forlí
The first shock comes when one realises that things are not the same everywhere: it is cold when you get off the plane, teachers want you to look into their eyes, there is not enough room to play. Maybe this is the reason why a fight at school often became a friendship relationship, the most important one.
Each particpant had a different story
past stories were, they were all looking towards the future. With expectations, questions, sometimes fears. Beside those stories, soon others joined, from the other interviews from across the world, from different corners of the earth. Again, fragments of stories and thoughts generously shared, and gazes - looking up or down, escaping or being open, insisting or resisting the look of the person in front of them, the interviewer, looking at them from outside but hoping to be able and see the inside.
As the production process started, with the pleasure of hosting the artists Kim Selody and Linda Carson from the Canadian PH Theatre in Forlì, the workshops went on involving the kids of some Summer Camps in town. In particular, the group of InArte followed the rehearsals process with different moments of workshop and the participation to a preview of the show. The show was then successfully presented in the theatrical season for the schools in November 2015 at Teatro Testori.
Annamaria Cattaneo born in Bologna, she studied music and architecture in Bologna and Ferrara. After graduating she worked briefly in Paris as an architect, before gaining Masters degree in Theater Studies in Venice. Since 2004 she has worked as a set design assistant with opera houses like Berlin, Stuttgart, Hong Kong, and Helsinki. As a set and costume designer she specialised in musical theatre, contemporary opera and collaborated with different groups. She lives in Berlin.
Someone was happy to move from another continent to Italy, but once they arrived, the problem was moving 50 kilometres away from the new home, in the same region. After arriving, the father of a participant had stomach problems because of Italian food. Now it is his son who has stomach problems when they come back to Asia, because of Asian food. Each participant had a different story, both personal and familiar. However, all of them had something in common: a heart full of hopes, ideas, projects, wishes for their future - whatever their
»I Wish« at Teatro Elsinor (Forlì, IT): Giuditta Mingucci, Stefano Braschi
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I Wish
experienced migration, often referring to a separation or a distance. It is like living in two parallel worlds: some of them are looking forward to come back, while others do not think about it. They are convinced that life is better here, but signs persist.
Miseria & Nobiltà (Poverty & Nobility) As a company working for both, young people and adults, Teatro Elsinor has continued working with the theme “poverty” in an impressive production for the visitors coming to the theatre in the evenings. “Miseria & Nobilità” (Poverty and Nobility), the well-known play of Eduardo Scarpetta, was a perfect starting material for eleven actors dealing with the dramatic matter in a tragic-comical way.
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Elsinor
Inspired by a 19th century work, the play revives the famous farce in order to discuss issues of poverty and starvation.
Michele Sinisi and Giuditta Mingucci in »Miseria & Nobiltá«
Felice (which means happy man) is the name of a penniless man forced to live by his own wits, rarely managing to get by on a piece of bread. In order to survive, he creates a complex web
of methods and scenarios that involve two families, one of which is wealthy and the other very poor. The action does not leave aside imagery from the famous theatrical and cinematographic versions, which created true symbols and vivid pictures in the collective memory (above all, the spaghetti scene, in which the
poor men put the spaghetti into their pockets). In fact, the play is inspired by these images and follows in their wake. It is no longer a story, but a collective ritual whose poles are no longer represented by the slavish dialogical evolution of the story, but by mounting the scene with a theatrical language totally in tune with the complexity of the contemporary world that is on the street, outside the theatre: ‘Poverty & Nobility’ rediscovers the rituals of today with an extraordinary team of actors who take possession of the scenes. The creation of the play was preceded by two intensive workshops, one in Florence and the other in Milan in
Reference Production
A drama faithful and twisted »In Poverty & Nobility by Michele Sinsi, an Elsinor production (...) the event’s moral winner, if there was a classification. Scarpetta‘s text enhanced itself in the Apulian actor‘s hands, becoming a big theatrical game which was sharp, ironic, light and intense at the same time, with gags and inserts. All this is connected in a drama framework which is faithful and twisted, betrayed and philologically correct at the same
time. A drama that is transformed in a Neapolitan comedy. In this play, actors do not speak only the dialect of Naples. Mr. Sinsi split the voices of the artists in different recognisible dialects (Ciro Masella, for example, in the letter of Toto‘ and Peppino just like the one of Troisi and Benigni). All the voices speak from a poor but illuminating range of objects, such as the trap door from which the director (which is the child Peppinello, who tells the story as an intermittent flashback) switches the light on and off. This door is like a window above the world or the Cinema Paradiso hand-held camera.« Tommaso Chimenti, IlFattoQuotidiano.it
MISERIA & NOBILTÀ Inspired by Eduardo Scarpetta Written by Michele Sinisi and Francesco M. Asselta Cast
Diletta Acquaviva, Stefano Braschi, Gianni D‘addario, Gianluca delle Fontane, Giulia Eugeni, Francesca Gabucci, Ciro Masella, Stefania Medri, Giuditta Mingucci, Donato Paternoster, Michele Sinisi Director Set Design Costume Design
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Michele Sinisi Federico Biancalani GdF studio
Opening: 15.12.2015 in Milan Created with a contribution of NEXT / Laboratorio delle Idee
Francesca Gabucci and Donato Paternoster in »Miseria & Nobiltá«
Miseria & Nobiltá
September and October 2015. During these workshops, the director worked with young actors and famous artists until he formed the final cast. A first performance of the play was presented in October 2015 in Milan in the context of NEXT/Laboratorio delle Idee. It was a success, both for the audience and the critics.
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PH Theatre
I Wish
The exchange of directors (Kim Selody directing the Italian Production, Giuditta Mingucci directing the Canadian production) created an intense and valuable learning experience for all artists involved. Cultural and aesthetic differences were evident immediately. Both companies were forced to expand their aesthetic, and both productions endured challenging rehearsal processes. A wonderful bi-product was the exchange of secrets for creation and performance. The overall impact was very positive for the artistic development of each company. Approx. 700 students, teachers and general public have seen I Wish in Canada so far. 126 Students participated in the workshop and interview process. Reviews from public journals were mixed, but comments from students and teachers about the performances were unanimously positive. We have had several requests for more programming of this nature. Jo Ledingham of the North Shore News says in her review: »The goals of the show, featuring Jay Brazeau and Emilie Leclerc, are valuab-
le and once the show gets into its audience participation phase, it starts to get interesting. “I wish to see my dad” wished someone who had recently lost her father. From the adults: “I wish that young woman (Leclerc/Sandra) would stop persecuting that sweet old man (Brazeau/Leo).” Laughter followed. And finally things got serious as the adults volunteered what they wished for: “World peace.” “Participatory democracy”. “Peacekeeping”.«
I WISH Teatro Elsinor and PH Theatre by Col Cseke, Nathan Pronyshyn, Linda A. Carson and Kim Selody Cast
Leo Sandra
Jay Brazeau Emilie Leclerc
Director Giuditta Mingucci Stage Manager Giselle Clarke-Trenaman Head Technician Matt Latimer Video Designer Cande Andrade Sound Designer Malcolm Dow Set Designer Joel Grinke Costume Designer Jessica Oostergo Lighting Designer Bradley Trenaman Props Melissa McCowell Opening: 16.10.2015 in Vancouver
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Left: Emilie Leclerc and Jay Brazeau in »I Wish« (PH Theatre) Right: »I Wish« Team: Kim Selody, Martin Alldred, Emilie Leclerc, Guiditta Mingucci, Jay Brazeau, Giselle ClarkeTrenaman at PH Theatre
I Wish
I WISH was a theatrical experience, inspired from interviews of youth from several countries. The play itself mixes fantasy with documentary style, live interviews of the audience. This was an artistic risk that was experimental to both the Canadian and Italian theatre companies. For the most part, the experiment was successful with audiences. The artistic team learned a great deal of the challenges and opportunities from combining these two forms.
I Wish
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PH Theatre
Jay Brazeau is a wellknown Canadian actor and director. He played in numerous award-winning productions all over the country (among others Man in the Chair in Drowsy Chaperone, Edna in Hairspray, Danny and the deep blue sea). He also works in USA as in Webber’s The Wizard Of Oz, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof (Santa Barbara Theatre Award) and Cyrano de Bergerac (Pittsburgh Press Critic’s Award). On screen he appeared in Stargate SGI, Supernatural, Whisperers and The Killing, in Best in Show, Watchmen, The Possession, We‘re No Angels, Double Jeopardy and recently in Sex after Kids (nomination for Canadian Comedy Awards). In animation, he has voiced The Big Snit and La Salla. At PH Theatre he directed Old Love and Three Viewings, other credits include Bad Jews, Poor, The Passion of Dracula, Three Viewings and Old Love.
»I Wish« (PH Theatre, Vancouver, CA)
The goals of I Wish are lofty and are synchronized with the curriculum of Grades 4, 5 and 6. I Wish opens up an opportunity for young people to talk about the future and to consider what they might do to make it brighter. That’s the mandate and it’s the participatory aspect of I Wish wherein its value lies.”
Timeline of the Production March to June 2015 Workshops with students in the schools takes place. Giuditta Mingucci joins the Vancouver writing team, composer, video artist, and set designer for a one week development workshop.
The direct involvement of the students in the project is incorporated into the outline of the script. Casting for the productions in North Vancouver and Italy takes place. The themes of the project were defined as immigration, poverty and wishes. Here is a little of what was written up about the themes: Immigration has made a strong mark on the society of Canada. Poverty, resulting from famine and war caused hundreds of thousands of people to depart from Europe in the past. If it weren’t for the European immigrants of the last centuries Canada would not exist as it does today. Now, new streams of immigrants are bringing even more new
and diverse elements to our society. Today’s modern migration confronts countries with new, challenges. How does the stream of migrants influence the societal and cultural structures of countries? What impact does immigration into Canada have on our First Nations Cultures? What tensions are caused by the collision of old and new immigrants and the indigenous people of a country? How does culture and identity develop in multi-ethnic societies? How does immigration shape the identities of young people in countries receiving immigrants? As the creative team worked on I Wish, they explored these questions. It became clear that the project had one
Educational work in Vancouver
July 2015 Linda Carson and Kim Selody travel to Forli, Italy to work with the actors and the team at Teatro Elsinor to further develop the script for the Italian production of I Wish. Italian set designer, Annamaria Cattaneo joins the team. September to October 2015 Giuditta arrives from Italy to work with the creative team at Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver. A four week rehearsal process leads up to a two and a half week run of the play for schools and the general public from October 14th to the 25th, 2015.
Theatre Education Work Presentation House Theatre conducted 8 workshops in different schools. Artists Emilie Leclerc, Brette Little, Mike Stack, Stefano Giulianetti, Andrea Yu and Caitlin McCarthy used drama exercises to build trust and respect and then explored the themes of identity, poverty and migration. The goals of the workshops were: • empower students to find their own voices within the community of the classroom
Emilie Leclerc is a bilingual actor and theatre creator living in Vancouver. Since graduating from Studio 58‘s acting program, Emilie has worked with Babelle Theatre, Théâtre la Seizième, Theatre, Chemainus Gateway Theatre, Sum Theatre Society, Twenty-Something Theatre, Enemies of the Stage and Terminal Theatre. Co-creator of the award-winning performance iShow, she toured throughout France with the show last spring. You can also see Emilie‘s TV debut on CBC‘s Strange Empire. Coming up is co-producing and acting in Vortex Theatre‘s bilingual production of John and Beatrice. Emilie will also be touring elementary schools all over BC and Alberta with Théâtre la Seizième production Mathieu Mathématiques in spring 2016.
»I Wish« at PH Theatre (Vancouver, CA): Jay Brazeau
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I Wish
more, very strong theme: Hope. Every immigrant we interviewed had a wish for their personal futures and the future of their families. Thus was born the second theme and the title of our new play, I Wish.
I Wish • give each the opportunity to participate in a video interview about their heritage and their dreams for the future. Teacher’s Comments »I can‘t tell you how much our class benefitted from having these artists work with us. We loved it!! It helped students to be more aware of their surroundings, each other and what is going on in class.« Janet Murray, Larson School.
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PH Theatre School Workshop at PH Theatre
Artist’s Comments »I could see the student’s eyes light up when we walked in the room. No one knew where their classmates were from, yet when offered the opportunity to talk, everyone was eager to divulge that information and were very proud of their heritage. It was rewarding to give each student a voice!« Brette Little, Artist Educator
»Opening the geographical questions opened the students to wanting to get to know each other. Everyone had more curiosity about their peers, and about the world. It formed a better community in the classroom.« Stefano Giulianetti Words From Students »I see myself as a person who is loving and caring - who cares for others, cause I didn’t really much have anybody in my life except for my mom so I kinda would like to take care of kids in preschool and after that be a paramedic.« »I see myself working at a Children’s Hospital working for kids that don’t have families, like kids under five. I want to work with them and give them a very good childhood… so they don’t grow up to be bad people!« »I wish everyone had rights, so everyone feels like they have rights. I think it is important to being able to do anything you want, like being gay or whatever.« »I think I want to fix the environment. Because in China the foggy day is very, very bad and all day you really don’t see the sun. And so, it is my first country and I hope the environment has changed and my first country should be beautiful.« »I’m Roger. My dad’s Squamish, maybe… I am not exactly sure, I’m kind of
shy asking my dad about his history with him, and my mom she’s Heiltsuk, Heiltsuk Nation. I want to focus on education. I really want to get out there and find a bright future. I was never really told that, I always got put down.« Kim Selody wrote to the teachers who booked for the show: »... The Greater Vancouver Area is home to one of the most diverse cultural landscapes in the world. It is also the home to one of the richest and one of the poorest postal codes in the country (West Vancouver and the Downtown East Side, respectively). Both areas have a make-up of recent immigrants, long time residents and First Nations peoples. There are strong barriers isolating these communities from each other: Economic, Social and Cultural. Our focus with this project is to build bridges over these barriers and connect the youth of this region, thereby increasing awareness and understanding of the issues rising from immigration and poverty. I WISH not only has a strong local base, but connects us to youth from other countries so we can develop a global perspective to help us all find our place in the world. It is my wish that you and your students will not only enjoy our play, but be inspired to share personal dreams and wishes in your more intimate classroom community ...
An African Story
is the story of Eugenia my mother’s sister who in 1950 emigrated from Italy to South Africa. Her daughter Emilia told the story in a book published for her mother’s 90 birthday. The experience of emigration for that family is unique. Emilia also decided to emigrate to Australia from South Africa and her brother Gianfranco to Switzerland, both for work. Despite the distance between us, we are keeping our family ties alive. Every summertime all the cousins meet in Forlimpopoli at grandfather’s house.
Migration Stories
and theatre collaborator Marie Farsi moved from France to Canada in 1998 at the age of 10. Her dad, an Iranian French painter suffered from racism in Paris. He and his wife decided to leave with their two daughters and make Montreal home, a city where people spoke their native language ; French. The couple also believe Canada to be a more progressive-thinking and safe country to raise their daughters.
Photo He‘s the second from the left. It‘s from when he had to work in the sugar cane fields as a visa requirement for his first 2 years.
Holly Fraser, Australia
My great uncle George
migrated to Australia from Greece at the age of 20 with no money. That‘s what we call the generation above our aunty/uncle in Australia: „great”. Although, he was also great. He started doing any job that paid, working 3 or 4 at a time. He paid out of his own pocket for a leagues club that he cleaned to be carpeted to save time and money by vacuuming rather than mopping. He was relentlessly motivated, and 10 years after being completely broke, he owned 2 restaurants, a bar, a cleaning company and was taking his wife and 3 kids to dinner with the Queen (that’s 100% true!).
Stefano Braschi, Italy
My good friend
Emilie Leclerc, Canada
My personal Migration Story
Photo Above: Scan from Emilia‘s book. Below: My auntie Eugenia picking up her daughter and her mother in law
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Pilot Theatre from United Kingdom and ... Pilot Theatre is an award winning, international touring theatre company based in York. We devise and develop projects with particular focus on working for and with young audiences. We also work across platforms to produce and distribute work digitally, run training conferences, livestream events and performances, and provide a wide range of online educational resources. Pilot is the leading organisation of the EU-granted project PlatformShift+. We work with established artists, leading practitioners and diverse teams alongside nurturing young and emergent talent to develop our practice across all our platforms of delivery. The audiences and communities we aim to reach are reflected by the diverse teams who make and deliver our work across all our platforms of activity. Pilot is the lead organisation of the four-year international cooperation project Platform Shift, grant from the EU culture funding stream, Creative Europe. We have delivered a wide range of work over the last few years, including the six-camera livestream of the York Mystery Plays for The Space and a range of specially commissioned plays including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Running on the Cracks, Blood + Chocolate and more recently the new adaptation of Antigone by playwright Roy Williams.
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Pilot The production »Blood + Chocolate« in front of the theatre buildings in the city of York
»Pilot is to be commended for producing thorny work for young audiences that neither patronises nor condescends.« The Guardian
St. Leonard‘s Place Y01 7HD York, UK www.pilot-theatre.com
ATYP from Australia
We love working with all levels of the arts industry, from the most celebrated national companies to the smallest youth theatres. Our work supports young people from their first theatre experience to their first professional production. Our vision is to forever raise the national expectation of what theatre with young people can achieve.
Australian Theatre for Young People specialises in integrating professional theatre practice with supportive youth theatre process. We do this through four inter-linked aspirations: 1. Be a fearless theatre company with a national impact that all levels oft the industry love to work with. 2. Build an active playwriting community that champions and supports young artists and their work.
3. By the first place teachers turn to for inspiration and support in drama and education. 4. Maintain a vibrant creative hub and company culture that young people around the country want to be a part of.
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ATYP
The Wharf, Pier 4/5 Walsh Bay NSW 2000 Sydney www.atyp.com.au
Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) has been bridging the divide between young people and professional theatre practice since 1963. Australia’s oldest and largest youth theatre company, we are driven to creative work that impacts the way young people engage with theatre nationally.
Australian Theatre for Young People The Wharf, Sydney
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ÂťIn examining the story of these women, we are forced to examine our own attitudes to outsiders and to the vulnerable in society.ÂŤ 4 stars in Downstage Centre
Outsiders
Fraser Corfield, director of Outsiders, describes the artistic process: We began the rehearsal process a bit like a script development workshop. I supported the writer Emteaz Hussain by looking at different ways of refining the tension that drives the play, ensuring that we honoured what she saw as essential aspects. We looked at the way that the themes of the play spiral into something much greater in a modern context, examining how the work that we were creating would have integrity and a structure that exists separate to Albert Camus’ original novel. We did this by revisiting the story and looking at it through a modern lens. The process was also about transferring it from novel to stage, transporting a classic story and looking at it through the eyes of 2015 and seeing how differently we view the world. How differently do we weigh our actions? How differently do we view tragedy and loss? I hope the play raises questions around a certain kind of perpetual injustice.
Are we learning from the past or are we continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again? Hopefully the piece will raise the question of what choices do we need to make individually in order to move forward to some sort of reconciliation. That’s really interesting and it’s an interesting approach that Emteaz took when creating this story. Marcus Romer, Pilot’s Artistic Director, describes the origination process: I have always wanted the company to create a piece of work inspired by Camus’ novel. I felt that the world we now find ourselves in has increasing parallels with the dislocation and division that the novel touches upon, which is why I approached Emteaz to help us to shape this new piece inspired by the original text. For both of us, the unnamed victim and his sister haunted our thoughts. We wanted to give voice to the two women central to the piece and to extend their stories, and to give them their voice and their time.
OUTSIDERS Pilot Theatre and ATYP by Emteaz Hussain Cast
Marie Cardona Lou Broadbent Sumaya Nuradin Sara Sadeghi Director Designer Lighting Designer Company Manager Pilot Team Artistic Director Producer Associate Director Administrator Digital Producer Digital Officer Financial Officer Financial Director
Fraser Corfield Lydia Denno Alexandra Stafford Luke James Marcus Romer Mandy Smith Katie Posner Lucy Hammond Ben Pugh Sam Johnson Jackie Raper Charles Moore
Opening: 25.9.2015 in Doncaster
The contemporary parallels are always key for us here at Pilot, and the drafts of the play I received were punctuated by the backdrop of real events unfolding in Europe, that highlighted divisions, separation, isolation, and above all, the concept of what is to be an outsider. It is with these thoughts at the forefront of our minds that created Outsiders. This is a story that has been repeated many times before in our history, and looks set to continue in the near future too. It is up to all of us to try and break this cycle of creating the notion of outsiders.
Fraser Corfield As the Artistic Director of the ATYP Fraser has been a passionate advocate for new work, commissioning and producing over twenty new plays and productions. Highlights include Australia‘s first major opera composed for young people, Dirty Apple (Backbone Youth Arts/Opera Queensland/Queensland Music Festival) and the new Australian musical Paradise (Backbone Youth Arts, published by Playlab Press). He has directed over thirty productions for professional, independent and youth theatre companies around Australia. He was one of seven Australians selected for the ‚Next Generation‘ international collaboration, which ran from the 2008 to the 2011 ASSITEJ World Congress.
Opposite: Sara Sadeghi (l) and Lou Broadbent (r) in »Outsiders«
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War Crimes
Both the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and Pilot Theatre are leading companies in their countries working for and with Young People. Their remarkable productions are highly acclaimed and their engagement work serves as a model nationwide. It was natural therefore that these two companies, with similar working methods and shared aims, became partners in the project. Both shows produced as the result of the co-operation were very successful; OUTSIDERS toured nationally in England and WAR GAMES got three nominations for the national theatre award.
A Restless Place
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Lou Broadbent (photo as character in »A Restless Place«) Lou trained at LAMDA, graduating in 2011. Since then she has featured in Holby City, Atlantis and Land Girls for the BBC. In theatre, her credits include playing Lady Macbeth for the Young Shakespeare Company as well as Keepsake and Two Rooms for Free Trade Productions. This is her first production with Pilot.
Following on from the sellout productions of In Fog and Falling Snow, Clocking In and Blood + Chocolate, Pilot Theatre offer you another unique opportunity to experience one of York‘s heritage sites in a completely new and unexpected way. Enter through the locked doors of the York Castle Museum into corridors and cells housing lost voices and found stories, tales of home and the search for belonging. Verbatim testimonies blend with folktale as you meet characters drawn from both myth and reality on their journeys into the unknown. The production is based on interviews with a range of people who have migrated to York, including Human Rights Defenders from the University of York‘s Protective Fellowship Scheme.
re many centuries ago other people similarly started or ended their journeys. The Working Process by Katie Posner - Director We started the process of creating a verbatim piece of work that focused on
A RESTLESS PLACE by Juliana Mensah Cast
Lou Broadbent, Matthew Evans Luke James, Falmata Lawan, Mandy Newby, Sara Sadeghi, Mustafa Shareef, Lucas Smith Director Producer Stage Manager Animator AV and Sound Production Assistant Director Ass. Stage Manager Design Assistant Operator & Research
Katie Posner Lucy Hammond Luke James Hondartza Fraga Fresh Label Ben Pugh Natasha Dawson Rose Burston Belle Kenyon Sam Johnson
Opening: 26.10.2015 in York
We commissioned the writer Juliana Mensah who works closely with individuals on the University of York’s Protective Fellowship Scheme for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
Katie Posner and Mustafa Shareef
Through the project we have discovered many personal stories and A Restless Place puts some of these accounts in performance in a space whe-
people who had migrated to the city of York. We aimed to discover how they had adapted to life here and what the city meant to them.
Juliana helped to gather, collate and shape these stories into a play. During the development of the text we spoke about wanting to explore the wider notion of migration and what it must feel like to not have a place to call home anymore. We felt that by including a fictional storytelling framing device, it would enable us to focus on the subject matter in greater detail and give our work more clarity. It was at that
A Restless Place
Juliana Mensah Writer, about the process I was keen that A Restless Place wouldn’t be staged in a traditional theatre space and decided to produce it to be performed in York Castle Museum’s Debtor’s Prison. It’s an oppressive space, full of dark claustrophobic cells,
which gave us the chance to work with the audience in an intimate environment.
by audiences. It proves how powerful storytelling can be in when it deals with the truth of human experience.
The cast were an international mix of community and professional actors. Everyone worked hard to create a powerful piece in a short amount of rehearsal time. I relished the chance to work with such a diverse group of people who had come to York from America, Iraq, Kenya and other countries. A Restless Place was an amazing project that was received particularly well
I was very excited about being commissioned to write Pilot Theatre’s verbatim play as part of the Boomerang Project. I knew from the beginning that it would be a challenging task - we were looking at a subject matter that was very much in the public consciousness. Migration was a topic that was constantly on the news, social media and on politicians’ lips.
Sara Sadeghi Sara‘s theatre credits include Come Closer and Hunger for Trade for the Royal Exchange, Veil for Mama Quilla and Aladdin for CAST in Doncaster. In television, Sara has featured in Hollyoaks, Ordinary Lies and Coronation Street. This is her first production with Pilot.
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Restless Place
point that the refugee crisis became a major news item providing us with an even more pressing motive for the play’s creation.
The community cast of »A Restless Place«
A Restless Place
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Pilot
Katie Posner is Associate Director for Pilot Theatre. Most recently she directed A Restless Place by Juliana Mensah and In Fog and Falling Snow by Mike Kenny and Bridget Foreman. Other credits include: Ghost Town by Jess Fisher, Running on the Cracks by Julia Donaldson, Blackbird by David Harrower, The Fever Chart by Naomi Wallace, Jack and the Mystery of Clones of Chaos by Richard Hurford, Romeo and Juliet and Parlour Song by Jez Butterworth. She is an experienced practitioner and educator, having Course led Drama and Theatre Studies A-Level and National Diploma Acting and has collaboratively written two BTEC study guides which are used nationally by schools and colleges.
»A Restless Place«. York Castle, from where convits were sent to Australia
I was in South Africa when I agreed with the Pilot team via Skype that the title of the play would be A Restless Place and later that day I was sent a draft publicity image. It was meant to evoke a butterfly with a web on its wing, or simply a fly. This image was suggested because I’d been exploring the use of a trickster spider man or spider woman character who would take the audience through the narratives, and butterflies were a recurring image in the piece. A couple of weeks later British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke out about the ‘migrant crisis’ and referred to those migrating as ‘swarms’. Suddenly the fly on our publicity image
resonated in a way that couldn’t have been planned. And that wasn’t the only occasion when the process of creating A Restless Place seemed to speak to external events in unexpected ways. I would be editing someone’s testimony or playing around with a fictional idea, allowing it to evolve and then current affairs would unfold in ways that made the writing process feel charged and alive yet also fraught and heavy with responsibility. The play was very rooted in York. It gave the stories a destination – an end point for the present, even when the futures were open-ended or unclear. Very early on Katie and I decided we wanted to look at migration in the most open
way possible. So we went in search of any migration narrative, because we all have some sort of migration story. It was important to me that we represented migration stories that are considered ‘normal’ or even ‘ordinary’ and to put these beside the migration stories that were filling our news channels. It was important to me that we didn’t simply present a series of asylum narratives that draws sympathy from its audience, yet risks inadvertently othering the people it represents. I wanted to place the ‘ordinary’ beside the ‘tragic’ and to make people feel implicated by this juxtaposition. The promenade format and Katie’s directorial choices, which included the actors walking amongst the audience and experiencing elements with them, really served to heighten that particular aim. In the writing and the performance of the piece it actually transpired that there were no ‘ordinary’ stories. Even those who were from particular countries with particular privileges had stories of their identity, their documents, their family’s identities or nationalities, being at risk and under suspicion as a result of events that were out of their control. So in addition to achieving my initial aim, of implicating us all, working on the production also served to highlight the vulnerability we can all be at risk of, and the need to engage with uncomfortable stories even when, at this point in time, those stories are not our own.
A Restless Place people I love. Home is in the feeling of warmth that is inspired to radiate from me« Falmata Lawan »Home to me is that feeling of physical and emotional relief when you walk through the door and you know you are accepted for who you are« Mandy Newby »Home is with the people I love« Lucy Hammond
»Home to me is a big table full of delicious food with my family around it chatting and laughing and enjoying life« Katie Posner »In the words of one of our interviewees - „home is being with the people I love, and that could be anywhere, it could be the moon!“« Juliana Mensah »Home to me is where I have my family, where I’m happy« Natasha Dawson »Where I am surrounded by friends and family« Luke James
»Home was the only one who I could share my whole life with. It would never betray me, but it did!« Mustafa Shareef »A big table, lots of friends, and copiLucas Smith ous food and booze!« »Home is where you feel comfortable and safe enough for your family to be an active part in the larger community, to make it a better place so that others can also feel ‘at home’« Matthew Evans «My fiancé, my family and my friends« Lou Broadbent »Home for me has become more of a feeling than a location. I am home when I am surrounded by my family and the
»The ever-innovative Pilot TheatreDirector Katie Posner has helped to shape a powerful drama... a collective „memory play“ that demands a lot of self-discipline and condensation, both of which [the writer] Mensah seems to have in abundance.« Yorkshire Post
Restless Place
What HOME Means To ME
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Thanks to all the people who were interviewed as part of this process, to The Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, The Protective Fellowship Scheme, and the staff at York Museums Trust. REVIEWS »This is a moving show in every way; vital theatre for these troubled times« **** York Press »A well-paced and craftily-structured set of monologues and small interactions is ably supported by a strong ensemble, drawn from a mixture of professionals and community perforBritish Theatre Guide mers.«
Falmata Lawan in »A Restless Place«
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Charlotte Hazzard (left), Hannah Cox
War Crimes War Crimes is a play which explores violence - violent thought, violent language and often violent action. It presents a world as experienced by a group of young women who are just discovering their place in a small and suffocating town, whose sense of loss and isolation provide a charged energy and volatile fragility. Within these individual stories however, we are also aware of the effects of complex historical, national and international conflicts which are being played out on the deeply personal level of the characters on the stage. When I initially read Angela Betzien’s charged and energetic writing I was immediately blown away by the passionate and bold use of language, compelling relationships and thematic content of this stunning piece.
worked to create the visceral and textural world that the characters inhabited. Our design concepts were created to portray a world on the stage which reflected the anguish and turmoil of the central characters.
I knew in an instant that this play was an important and unique piece of work and that I was beyond lucky to be placed in the unique position of travelling across the world to direct it at ATYP.
Over the weeks I spent in Sydney, my cast and crew became my friends and these relationships have continued since I returned to London. The play lives on in my memory and is a piece of theatre which I think made a difference to the audiences who came to see it. It shouldn‘t be rare in 2015 to see five young female performers on stage in these types of roles, but somehow it was and that’s why it felt like a critical piece of work.
In rehearsals I split the first week between improvisation and text analysis, this grew to then creating believable characters, playing with motivations, dynamics and power. We used physical techniques to create beautiful and abstract depictions of extreme violence; we used song to promote listening and teamwork; our fight choreographers developed the cast‘s physical endurance and skill; Pinterest was used as a place to share research; the bar was where we laughed about our experiences together at the end of the day. As a company we
It pushed boundaries. It confronted the human tragedy of conflict without remorse and exposed the responsibility that we now face as global citizens to demand from our authorities the fair and humane treatment of people affected by conflict. Alex Evans, Director
WAR CRIMES ATYP and Pilot Theatre by Angela Betzien Cast
Jade Charlotte Hazzard Lara/Samira Jane Watt Ricky Holly Fraser Jordan Hannah Cox Ishtar Odetta Quinn Director Assistant Director Set & Costume Light Design Sound Design Movement Coach Stage Manager
Alex Evans Grace Partridge Emma Reyes Alex Berlage Tom Hogan Tia Jordan Sorie Bangura
Opening: 15.7.2015 in Sydney
Alex Evans is a Director, Facilitator and Visual Artist based in London, UK. He trained at the University of Hull and Wimbledon School of Art and has since worked across the world on numerous projects and residencies alongside professionals, young people and communities. He has worked in collaboration with numerous arts organisations across the UK.
Nominations for Sydney Theatre Awards War Crimes is nominated in Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Ensemble, Best Production for Young People and Best Newcomer for Charlotte Hazzard. The Sydney Theatre Awards are presented annually by a group of leading theatre critics to celebrate the strength, quality and diversity of theatre in Sydney. »... this is the sort of story we should be telling to young people in the theatre. One that is honest, engaging and completely engaged with the world.« Daily Review
Holly Fraser graduated from McDonald College of Performing Arts. Theatre credits include two plays with Sydney Theatre Company; and Spur of the Moment (ATYP).Some film and TV credits include My Place, Packed to the Rafters, In Your Dreams. Holly is member of ATYP‘s Youth Advisory Council.
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War Crimes
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Jane Watt moved to Sydney in 2010 to study a double degree of Arts/ Science at the University of Sydney. In 2012 she began studying acting at WAAPA. Jane also recently starred in the ABC TV miniseries The War that Changed Us as army nurse Kit McNaughton (dir. James Bogle and Don Featherstone). This is her first time working with ATYP.
Charlotte Hazzard trained at the WAAPA and graduated from the Acting stream in 2011. She has worked with ATYP in The Voices Project (2012), on Channel 7‘s Packed to the Rafters and crime drama Winter, the ABC miniseries Anzac Girls, and Channel 9‘s Love Child.
Playwright’s Notes: In 2007, in response to a spate of attacks on war memorials in towns and cities across Australia, a war memorial legislation amendment bill was proposed in parliament increasing penalties for vandalising, defacing, deliberately damaging or behaving inappropriately around war memorials. While the bill was not passed it enflamed debate over the ANZAC legend and sparked a call for a resurgence of pride in this national story. War Crimes was created in response to this and several other real, contemporary Australian events with the intention of stirring up some big questions
about our national history, identity and future. Importantly the play raises the question of what is sacred to us as a nation? Tragically, forty-three Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning of the war declared by the United States in 2001. Figures vary considerably but some sources estimate that over a million civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since this time. Countless others have been driven from their homes to seek refuge in other parts of the world, including urban and rural Australia. In Australia, some of our neighbours have experienced the reality of war first hand. They have fled torture,
imprisonment and death on a scale unimaginable to many. It seems there’s a constant debate about who belongs in this country. Whose home is it? The vast majority of this country’s population have ancestors who were immigrants at some time in the last two hundred or so years. They arrived either by boat or by plane and it’s fair to assume that all of them were seeking a place of belonging, a home. This is a human need, a human right. In the midst of all this global and local conflict, it’s vital that we become critical of what’s happening in this country and the world, to form opinions about local, national and global events ba-
at ATYP in Sydney sed on a variety of sources not just the mainstream media. Often it’s the voices that we don’t hear, such as those of young, poor, teenage girls, that can be the most insightful. Every story is important and our common ground has to be the land we inhabit, a land that was the home of a people for thousands of years, a land that is undeniably ancient and sacred. I’d like to thank ATYP, Alex Evans and the cast and crew for bringing this work to Sydney audiences. Angela Betzien REVIEWS »… a significant production… Alex Evans’ production never falters. It’s raw and authentic…showing how tough and confused young life can get be… The five young actresses are exceptio-
nal and demonstrate great range.« Sydney Arts Guide »Director Alex Evans has pulled together an inventive production and found the more natural rhythms in Betzien’s text, which gives “teen speak” a poetic quality, complete with rhyming couplets… « Daily Review »It’s exciting to see a young, all-female cast portray multiple characters within quite complex relationships. It’s a thoroughly organic and seemingly unrehearsed dynamic between the performers, which you rarely see among more mature performances.« Arts Hub »War Crimes is beautifully brutal, rough and funny and movingly messy. It‘s any Australian community cut down the centre and examined via its members who are never heard: their young
women. It barrels inexhaustibly from one feeling to the next, bringing to the stage gorgeously difficult ideas that director Alex Evans has shaped into one of the most compelling, feels-like-home dramas of late... War Crimes is epic in the classical narrative sense, structured with liberal use of heroic couplets. It reminds us that girls like these are just as important and worthy of having their stories told as any Greek hero. It gives girls just like these real voices and real dignity. It says, girls are fighting to protect their bodies, their ideals, their futures, and their identities, even when the definition of their most basic foundation - home - seems to shift and change all the time…‘War Crimes says: These wars matter. These stories matter. And Time Out Sydney they do.«
Charlotte Hazzard
Odetta Quinn is currently completing her Higher School Certificate at SCEGGS Darlinghurst. Her theatre credits include differend lead roles at Sydney Grammar School.
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Hannah Cox Her passion for performance increased when upon moving to Indonesia, she discovered acting at school, leading to her participation in three productions with the Jakarta Opera. She became an active member of SUDS (the University of Sydney’s Dramatic Society)
Teatro O Bando from Portugal and ... Founded in 1974, Teatro O Bando is one of the oldest cultural cooperatives in Portugal. It is a group that chooses the aesthetical transfiguration as its mode of civic and community.
O Bando 44
Street theatre and activities for children in schools and cultural associations, integrated in decentralization projects, are the basis of the company’s work.
Valle dos Barris 2950-055 Pamela, Portugal www.obando.pt
O Bando creations are defined by their plasticity and staging dimension, characterized mainly by the Scene Machines. The dramaturgical work is also very important, providing the explicit pasting of literary materials and the inclusion of colloquial expressions. The texts used are mainly derived from Portuguese authors, rather than standard dramatic texts.
Fifteen years ago, after several moves, O Bando finally settled on a farm in Vale dos Barris, Palmela, where unexpected, potential stages made of stars, of trees and cliffs can be found. O Bando is waiting to welcome you there with soup, bread and cheese, Muscatel and a cosy chat next to the fireplace.
The company has created more than 100 different shows, the 4,500 performances have been seen by approx. 1,3 million spectators, not counting PEREGRINAÇÃO, which in EXPO’98 reached an audience of 3 million. Teatro O Bando continues to search for originality in their productions, aiming to create art works, which surprise and have a cutting edge. These art works are the result of a collective methodology where a shared artistic direction accommodates the differences and conflicting points of view, until the conflicts reveals their potential. The resulting work of art is often way beyond Teatro O Bando what the collective first envisaged and in Valle de Barris, Palmela. quite unpredictable.
The company aims to transgress a wide range of borders, rural or urban, adult or child, learned or popular, national, or universal, dramatic, narrative or poetic. Throughout their journey, the group was linked to multiple national and international projects. The group continues its touring activities, presenting several shows throughout the country.
DynamO Théâtre from Canada
Over the years, the company has visited Asia, including Japan, China, Taiwan and Singapore. In the early ’80s, Montreal was the focal point for the rediscovery of body language in the performing arts. And in 1981, a group of artists of various backgrounds (gymnastics, theatre, juggling, mime and clowning) was the first to set up a company whose aim
would be to focus on movement to create a new theatre form: Theatre of Acrobatic Movement and Clowning. To create this form of theatre, the company combined various acrobatic and theatre techniques. In an art form such as this, not only does the storyline need to be created—as in most plays—but above all a unique physical
vocabulary in which meaning, feeling, drive and virtuosity are conveyed through movement. With each new production, the creative team rebuilds the relationship between movement, text, lights, music and set. Over 35 years, this form has spread far and wide. Yet, as it develops productions, the company keeps questioning this form and pushing it further.
DynamO
911, Jean-Talon Est, bureau 131 Montreal (Québec), CA H2R 1VR www.dynamotheatre.qc.ca
Based in Montreal, DynamO Théâtre is an internationally renowned theatre company whose work focuses on developing, producing and performing Theatre of Acrobatic Movement and Clowning productions. Since it began in 1981, DynamO Théâtre created 21 productions by Canadian artists and gave over 4,335 performances in 28 countries on 4 continents for 1.5 million spectators. The company toured Canada and Quebec in addition to 40 American states and 15 European countries.
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I ON THE SKY, production by DynamO Théâtre
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Ausência (Absence)
This show aims to share the stories of exodus and goodbyes, of disappearances and returns. João Neca‘s text evokes feelings hope and remembrance for travellers, refugees and those that have emigrated, creating the foundations for this poetical and politically engaged creation. A traveller, filled with absence, searches for a new territory. Without looking backwards, moved by memory and hope, he travels through places with many days and many nights not knowing were he is heading. If the mouth speaks, the legs walk, the ears listen, the eyes see and the arms move, what‘s this absence made of?
When we leave we’re absent. We always talk about the people who leave but we rarely speak about the people who stay… For those who do not part, by choice or not, they are the guardians of houses, rooms, trees, gardens, dreams, and the stories and myths of those who left. We wanted to work with this absence, to speak of those who are and always
AUSÊNCIA Teatro O Bando and DynamO Théâtre by João Neca Cast
Director Co-Director Set Music Costumes Assistant for set Light Design Education project
Raul Atalaia João Neca Nicolas Brites Jacqueline Gosselin João Brites Jorge Salgueiro Clara Bento Fátima Santos Guilherme Noronha Isabel Atalaia
Opening: 3.12.2015 in Palmela
were here. We wanted to talk about absence because this is a feeling that touches us all.
Jacqueline Gosselin took part in various acting workshops with Philippe Gaulier (London) and Volcano Theatre company (Swansea). She directed workshops at the National Theatre School of Canada and Cirque du Soleil and has been teaching clowning at the Cégep Lionel-Groulx college since 2004. She is a founding member and co-artistic director of DynamO Théâtre and has been involved as a performer, an acrobat, a playwright or a director in most of the company’s productions. Jacqueline is also in charge of the physical-actor training program that DynamO Théâtre provides to some 30 artists annually.
A traveller with the certainty of all the doubts, with no absolute truths nor blind directions, pursues a limitless horizon, a future without stone built borders. Today our children leave and our grandchildren think about leaving. Over the past three years more than 300.000 young Portuguese have emigrated.
Raul Atalaia in »Ausência«
Ausência
Teatro O Bando and DynamO Théâtre have been working for children and young audiences for more than 30 years. The artists from the companies actually met many years ago at festivals in Europe. They both appreciated each others exceptional productions, even if the artistic results were very different to their own in both aesthetics and content. To get to know each other through a common working process was impossible in those times as there were no resources for such an exchange. But our project has enabled that idea to happen.
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Educational work
O Bando 48
Raul Atalaia Born in 1952 in Tomar, he has attended different workshops in Lisbon, Paris and Brussels, in areas such as movement, music, masks, circus, juggle, and others. He has worked in Teatro O Bando since 1975, becoming a member of this cultural co-operative one year later. From 1975 onwards, he has lead several courses and seminars of theatre at primary and secondary schools for students and teachers. He is also responsible for the management of international affairs at O Bando. He has performed in most of the plays of this company, and has also worked as stage director.
Photo by Daniel Gonçalves (school workshop in preparation of the production Ausência, Teatro O Bando)
Photography The photography left the film, the darkroom, the alchemy of silver dust. Today photography is such an accessible form of communication, so common and reachable by our fingers on our phones, on our tablets. An everyday thing, infinitely repeatable, cut, enlarged, coloured, manipulated, shared. We photograph our stuff, the sites we pass, where we live. We photograph our food, our friends, our family, our loves. We photograph ourselves. Why not use this communication tool and take the picture of the absence, creating a relationship between the concrete and the figurative, abstract feeling. Creating relationships between ways of communicating. This work demanded reflection, distancing, critical spirit and we could not be happier with the result. The Place of Hope Following an investigation with class 7B, we found out that 68% of the students are thinking of emigrating . Very recently the Presidency commissioned a study with some echo in the media, on the Portuguese youth. This study resulted in an astounding figure showing that 74% of Portuguese youth want to leave the country. How do you build hope in the face of these numbers?
This figure requires a profound reflection from all of us that is critical and involved. In the current crisis with massive migration flows, growing xenophobia, the physical walls and/or bureaucratic that multiply, very few are the open arms. What is the place of hope if a smaller, mediocre, ugly Europe is coming up? What if a more self-centered world, closed and retrogressive is emerging? It is in these projects that we build bridges, open windows to other realities, and create a place for hope. The role of art and culture is to create dialogue and critical thinking.
Thanks to the direction of Agrupamento de Escolas José Saramago Poceirão and especially the teacher Ana Nogueira for opening the doors of your institution to us. Thanks to Ana Catarina, Beatriz, Beatriz, Beatriz, Cátia, Catarina, Cristiana, Daniel, Geraldo, Ricardo, Sofia and Vica for your willingness, for bearing with us, for helping us to embark on this adventure. We are very proud of your work and we will keep a lot of memories when we are absent from this school. Teatro O Bando are returning the Boomerang to you all through the performance we have created inspired by the material, stories and photographs you gave us.
Casaverde A renowned scientist becomes engulfed by her theory and practice. This powerful, megalomaniac is consumed by her research. For her the sane mind is an indication of all craziness. In Casaverde this character believes all deviations from the norm are an outburst of latent madness. So she finds increased motivation and political support to commit more and more people. Nobody denies that crazy people gesticulate a lot. Megalomaniacs, our
hands take hold of our gestures and will.
Unbearable and unstable Nobody denies that doubt divides and reflecting multiplies. In the future we will be seen as unbearable, unstable and repeatedly ridiculous in our search that makes our behaviour absurd and incomprehensible, guided by the exemplary excess of the unquestionable.
CASAVERDE from O Alienista by Machado de Assis written by Guilherme Noronha Cast Sara de Castro Director Guilherme Noronha Set Design Rui Francisco Costume Design Clara Bento Video Design Guilherme Noronha Rita Louzeiro Music Louis Thomas Hardin (Moondog) Opening: 15.2.2015 in Palmela
Isabel Atalaia 1959 – she got her degree in ESBAL - superior art school in Lisbon. She worked as a Theatre educator at Théâtre de La Guimbarde (Brussels) and as an actress in Teatro O Bando (Palmela). She is currently a producer for Seconda Pratica (The Hague) and also for O Bando where she works as general manager.
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Sara de Castro in »Casaverde«
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Inner Migrant
For the international Documents of poverty and hope project, DynamO Théâtre was paired with Teatro O Bando from Portugal. This first international collaboration experience brought us out of our comfort zone and we came up with a movement-based production that is not acrobatic or clownish in style. Inner Migrant is both a coming together and a piece of collaborative and shared writing. This opportunity for companies to challenge each other is an artistic endeavour that both Teatro O Bando and DynamO Théâtre took up enthusiastically. It is a privilege for 2 companies that are so different and yet have so much in common. Together they total 75 years of expertise, challenges and achievements. Cross-culture contamination between companies and artists does work. Inner Migrant is a play written in a pinch. In fact the script was going back and forth between Lisbon and Montreal. The sensitive resource that connec-
ted us was the interviews conducted with people, both young and not so young, who went through the immigration experience. Inner Migrant is a premonition as current events are so eloquently reminding us. In the beginning the theme of the Documents of hope and poverty project seemed somewhat remote and “picturesque”. All of a sudden, the numerous disruptions in the lives of people adrift –most of them without lifebelts or GPS– moved us deeply. And today everything seems so close-by. Inner Migrant is a project that will provide many opportunities for genu-
INNER MIRGRANT DynamO Théâtre and Teatro O Bando by Jacqueline Gosselin, Yves Simard and Nicolas Brites Cast
Director Co-Director Set & Costume Music Video Design
Yves Simard Françis Guérard Jacqueline Gosselin Nicolas Brites Marjolaine Provençal Françis Guérard Pierre-Luc Schetagne
Opening: 20.11.2015 in Montreal
ine meetings thanks to a significant theatre mediation effort spread out over 2 years. Benefiting from it will be the students and teachers in the Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension borough. Inner Migrant embodies hope for a better world. It is a story based on real events where imagination plays a crucial role.
Nicolas Brites studied theatre for 4 years with Cândido Ferreira after graduating from the Lycée français school in Lisbon. He then studied film and audiovisual arts at Lisbon’s Institut Franco-Portugais institute, dance and creative movement at Forum Dança as well as acting and mask work. He worked in television in Macau, China. In 1997 he joined Teatro O Bando as an actor, director, playwright, trainer and production / stage manager. Since 2000 he has been the director of the artistic association of Lisbon and in 2006, he became trainer and director at GTIST – university groups.
»Inner Migrant« Opposite: Yves Simard Right: Françis Guérard
Inner Migrant
A Montreal actor puts himself in the shoes of a Portuguese immigrant and takes the stage with a musician. Through movements, words and music he will be re-telling parts of Antonio’s life. Doors will help the story take shape. They may be invisible at first but will eventually emerge. Interspersed with appointments at the immigration office where Antonio must show up to try and get his residency papers, this fictional account is based on fragments of real immigration stories. It is a story like so many others, a story of tensions brought on by hopes for a better life as opposed to regrets about all that had to be left behind.
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Theatre Mediation Initiatives
DynamO 52
Yves Simard is an actor, a playwright and a director. He performed in many productions with companies such as Carbone 14, Les Deux Mondes, and Dulcinée et cie. He also worked as a dramaturg for the Cirque du Soleil production of Wintuk in New York City. Since 1995 he has been working as a director, a co-writer and a puppeteer with the Théâtre de la Dame de Coeur company. Since 2008, he has also been coartistic director of DynamO Théâtre and performed in The Challenge, Echoes of the River, Misstart, a production for stage clowns, Ghosts and ladders and The big bad wolf. In 2011 he wrote and directed I on the sky.
Yves Simard in: »Inner Migrant«
We at DynamO Théâtre have been raising awareness among audiences for many years and several theatre mediation projects have in fact significantly impacted our community. So we were hoping that the international project would have a positive effect in our environment. That is why we set up a major theatre mediation project spread out over 2 years and supported jointly by the ministère de la Culture et des Communications (culture and communications department) and the ville de Montréal (city of Montreal) in the context of an agreement on the cultural development of Montreal.
170 workshops in 3 schools We are established in a multi-ethnic borough where 43% of inhabitants are immigrants. So we organized 170 workshops for grade 1-to-6 schoolchildren (6 to 12 years old) enrolled in 3 schools in the Saint-Michel, Villeray and Parc-Extension neighborhoods. The entire team of designers of Inner Migrant met the kids and introduced them to clowning and movement theatre. The children read excerpts of plays for young audiences, took part in set-, costume-, lighting-, video-, photo- and soundscape-design workshops. The projects were set up in classrooms. DynamO Théâtre workshops are simple and straightforward and take into ac-
count school realities. Schoolchildren and their teachers also attended test performances followed by meetings with the designers. Next they teamed up and created scale models of a city that would welcome them. The models along with costume drawings, lighting plots, soundscapes and a few lines of dialogue are designed to fit into a suitcase and will be exhibited during performance runs in neighborhood venues. In addition some suitcases will be selected and follow tours wherever it will be possible to showcase them.
Lastly when the project began, we were asked to conduct 20 interviews with people who went through the immigration experience. In total we conducted 32 interviews. These accounts, linear for adults and more fragmented for the kids, helped us understand the impact of migrations that were often forced rather than chosen. The mediation work will have a positive impact on our community, but we at DynamO Théâtre will also benefit greatly from it. DynamO Théâtre firmly believes that theatre can be a remarkable tool in greeting newcomers and making them feel very welcome.
My father, born in Poland in 1926, grew up speaking German and Polish. As a young man, he was forced to join the Nazi army, was arrested by the British and found himself in Berlin at the end of the war. There he studied, became a translator of Polish literature and started a family in what became East Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic. To visit his parents he always had to cross a state border, which was extremely difficult in the 1980s, when the Solidarity movement was actively fighting the Polish communist state.
My mother was born
Photo My parents
in Hanley, a small community of 500, in the south central portion of Saskatchewan, Canada. I don‘t know much about her parents except that they were Mennonites who had immigrated to Canada in the twenties I believe. Eventually her family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba and that was where I was born. My father (so he told me) was born in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reserve in Northern North Dakota, around 1896. And he somehow ended up in Haywood, Manitoba in the early 1900‘s. Apparently the borders were a
lot easier to cross back then. And eventually he settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba where... my father met my mother when she was selling popcorn in a movie theatre. So it was love at first bite. He married my mother when he was 56 and she was 21. I guess one might say my parents were in show business and that‘s where I got it from. This is one of the only pictures I have of my parents together. When I was younger my parents got into an argument and he destroyed all the photos we had. Luckily through the years kind relatives have passed on pictures to me and I have been able to piece together pictures of our life.
Jay Brazeau, Canada
Photo Me with my father and my grandmother
My paternal grandparents, Maria and Joseph, lived near Katowice, now a coalmining region in Poland. But in the early 20th century, they were born as Germans into what was then the German town of Kattowitz. In 1795, Austria, Russia and Prussia had annexed the Polish kingdom. Poland did not come into existence until 1918, when the country was rebuilt after the First World War. So it was that my grandparents, as young children, became Polish. In 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland, ushering in the Second World War and Poland again disappeared as a sovereign state. My grandparents became Germans again. In 1945, at the end of the war, Poland became a republic, this time with new borders - the Soviet Union to the east and Germany to the west. Thus, Maria and Joseph lived as Poles until they died.
Migration Stories
It is not always necessary to move away from your home in order to change your nationality.
Odette Bereska, Germany
My personal Migration Story
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Patrice Balbina‘s
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Opening 20.1.2016 Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) in Sydney Performances ATYP, Sydney: 20. - 23.1.2016 PH Theatre, Vancouver: 11. - 15.2.2016
Something unsettling has crept into the neighbourhood. It’s a feeling, a suspicion that disappears when you look at it directly. Patrice Balbina has noticed that small things are starting to disappear. The butcher has lost his laugh, the man with the pigeon is losing his patience and Mum says the government has lost its mind. Everything seems to be slowly changing. But you wouldn’t expect the end of the world. Then it rang the doorbell. »Patrice Balbina‘s Chance Encounter with the End of the World« looks at the experience of leaving home and moving to another country through the eyes of a twelve year old girl. Devised by an international creative team over two weeks, the play reflects the common experience of fear, courage and hope that drives the search for a better life. Created at a time when the world is experiencing the greatest displacement of people since the Second World War this important new international story reflects on the contrasting fragility and resilience of the human spirit. The production is the final stage of the international collaboration Boomerang: Documents of Poverty and Hope and draws on over fifty interviews with people who have migrated to England, Italy, Portugal, Canada and Australia. The process of creating this work has been as important as the story it tells. »Patrice Balbina‘s Chance Encounter with the End of the World« has been created over two weeks by artists from five nations that speak four languages. In a short period of time team has been forced to find an international performance language that can be clearly
understood by artists from different backgrounds and experiences, looking to find universal experiences that can resonate with audiences form any age or culture. The creative team range in age from 21 to mid 60’s. Their expertise encompasses writing, clowning, film, dance, circus, dramaturgy, directing and sound design. Set in a fictitious world, »Patrice Balbina‘s Chance Encounter with the End of the World« charts the very real emotional journey faced by millions of young people forced to leave their home in search of a better life. Faced with the challenge of leaving everything you know and having to choose only those objects and clothes that can fit into a single suitcase, this production asks the question: What would you take with you? What are the elements that are most important to you? And how would you cope having to adapt to something completely new? The work is driven by the quest to find the common elements that connect all people, the things that touch us regardless of age, experience, language or culture. The migrant story is an
international story. The flow of people throughout the world has made nations what they are today and continues to affect all of us. In countries like Australia and Canada the entire population is either migrants, descended from migrants or have had their ancestral world changed by migration. If we were forced to identify a central theme that has driven the development of this story we would say it is ‘resilience’. The decision to leave your home and travel across the world to build a life somewhere new is a frightening prospect for people of any age. Whether that journey is carefully planned and supported or a mad dash into the unknown it will always be a test of courage and faith. It takes a great deal to find a sense of belonging in a new land. Always it takes years, sometimes it takes generations. If Patrice Balbina is going to find a new life in a distant land she will need to find the resilience within herself to keep going.
Pru Montin is a sound designer and composer from Melbourne, Australia working in film and theatre. She graduated with a Master‘s in Screen Music and Interactive Design from the prestigious Australian Film Television and Radio School in 2012 which helped her development a unique approach to the creation of sound and music through innovation. She has a strong focus in sonic material and sculpts soundscapes symphonically from predominantly found sounds, exploring their potential to affect audiences.
Patrice Balbina
Chance Encounter with the End of the World
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PATRICE BALBINA‘S CHANCE ENCOUNTER WITH THE END OF THE WORLD ATYP, Elsinor Teatro, DynmO Théâtre, Pilot Theatre, PH Theatre, Teatro O Bando Created by the Ensemble Cast
Raul Atalaia Holy Fraser as Patrice Balbina Emilie Leclerc Giuditta Mingucci Yves Simard
Director Fraser Corfield Dramaturge Odette Bereska Choreographer Jacqueline Gosselin Production Design Ben Pugh Sound Design Pur Montin Education Mandy Smith Contributing Artist Isabel Atalaia Stage Manger Sven Laude Producer Dirk Neldner
Patrice Balbina‘s Chance Encounter
Patrice Balbina‘s 56
Ben Pugh Since 1998 Ben has been providing management infrastructure for projects, productions, festivals and events in the creative and cultural industries. His work crosses disciplines in theatre, music, visual arts, festival, film, community and education. His credits range from producing the huge Bradford Mela Festival to event managing the York Mystery Plays. From co-ordinating a young people’s carnival parade in Sri Lanka to working as the creative producer of shows for the 2012 Olympic cultural programme in London. As Digital Producer for Pilot Theatre Ben was involved in the site specific theatre show Blood + Chocolate and recently for A Restless Place in the cells at York Castle Museum.
Rehearsal photos »Patrice Balbina‘s Chance Encounter with the End of the World«
Sven Laude During last year of secondary school he started performing in a youth theatre group in the city theatre of the small town he was born in. He graduated from University as an actor and later as cultural manager. Since more than 15 years he has been working as project co-ordinator, tour and stage manager for several international theatre networks and productions. He also works in a Berlin based theatre company specialised in political comedy theatre as a director and educator with young comedians.
Patrice Balbina
with the End of the World
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The final production was rehearsed in Sydney. For most of the participating artists this was their first encounter with that impressive city and the surprising Australian continent. Just as it would have been for migrants. Lots of new discoveries were made; differences, but also similarities to their home countries and home towns were found. The photos, in connection with some thoughts on the following pages, represent these impressions. For the Australian artists this was the chance to introduce their foreign colleagues to their favorite spots, to their beloved places, to tell of the roots of their families. Places, they would miss, if they would have to leave Sydney or Australia.
Giuditta Mingucci Actress Wherever there is sea, I feel a bit at home.
Patrice Balbina‘s 58
Yves Simard Actor
Patrice Balbina
I like park benches. I have one in the backyard of my garden. It is a symbolic object for me. One of the first things which I make when I travel, it is to find a park and to sit on a bench. It allows me to keep an eye on life. The bench, it is a space of reflection, where 59 my thoughts derive and float towards the horizon. Sat on a bench in Bicentennial Park in Sydney Australia, I think of my family, to those who are dear to me. I imagine them seated as me on the bench in the backyard of my garden back home.
Raul Atalaia Actor By the way, only one way? The way things are going should we stay this way?
Patrice Balbina‘s 60
Any way, I don‘t like this way. I always liked to go against the way. So, maybe the better way it‘s to change ways... or at least try another way.
Patrice Balbina
Emilie Leclerc Actress This totem pole is a token of friendship between our countries. Today, it lives in Victoria Park here in Sydney and was gifted by the Canadian Government in 1964. It reminds me of home because there‘s a series of nine totem poles standing high and proud in the center of Stanley Park; Vancouver‘s largest 61 city park. It reminds me of the outdoor concert celebrating Vancouver 125‘s anniversary I‘ve attended there, biking around the sea wall with my friend Mylene and seeing some of our country‘s oldest trees when my parents visited. It‘s a reminder of our country‘s First Nation Heritage, a story we share with Australia.
Holly Fraser Actress
Patrice Balbina‘s
This is a table in my home full of photos. They‘re mostly of my mum, dad, brother and I. But there‘s also photos of our friends, our extended family, and our dog Daisy. My favourite thing about still living in my hometown of Sydney is having the people I love 62 around me.
Fraser Corfield Director
Patrice Balbina
The photograph is from Palm Beach from the Northern Beaches of Sydney. As someone who has lived most of their life in the country I find it difficult to escape the bustle of the city. The beaches remind me of the beaches of northern NSW where I grew up 63
Ben Pugh Video Design
Patrice Balbina‘s
Coming from a cold wet and grey winter in York - ving in Sydney to a cold wet and grey summer I was immediately struck by familiar everything was - having travelled 10.500 miles, over 2 days, it seemed as though I had just driven a few hours down the motorway at 64 home.The buildings, cars, shops, language were all just like back home in the UK. This image shows one notable exception. York is a city full of ‚terraced houses’ as are areas of Sydney - the streets seem the same, the bins, the bikes, the rows of houses, the size and shape… but the style is distinctly different.
Jacqueline Gosselin Choreographer
I see many so many humains during so many many years. Where do they come from ? Where do are they going ? It’s a big mystery for me !
Patrice Balbina
Moreton Bay Fig Tree
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Mandy Smith Summer School
Patrice Balbina‘s
For some reason it surprised me to turn the corner on the way from circular quays station to ATYP and see this so British icon of the red post box - but with the much more ornate top somehow proudly declaring its difference from its originator.
66 It’s my first visit
to this wonderful city and the sense I have is very much of a place I recognise and feel at home in and yet is so different strange …. or in a phrase strangely familiar.
The Victorian Dandenong Ranges is up the road from where I grew up. I practised my trumpet with the birds, I listened to the wind through the trees and sought solitude there to clear my mind from the rest of the world.
Patrice Balbina
Pru Montin Sound Designer
The sight, sound 67 and smell will always remind me of my childhood.
Odette Bereska Literary Manager
Patrice Balbina‘s
Last summer we had the chance to visit Uluru. To walk along this magic red rock in the middle of a desert became one of the strongest impressions I ever had.
I don’t remember anything comparable - this feeling of getting in touch with the ancient 68 history.
Sven Laude Stage Manager What is different from home? What reminds me home?
Patrice Balbina
The number plate in this picture is really different to the ones we have in Germany. We have a different code system and the color scheme is black and white. But what me reminds home is 69 the guy taking the picture...
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Travellers - Summer School Sydney
In all this work we have been struck by how different and yet how universal the stories are, real and fictional, as they explore what makes us feel safe, loved, brave enough to make new friends, connections, choices and conversely what makes us feel scared, neglected, withdrawn and unconnected with our world. We have just finished a series of workshops with a group of 8 year olds based on the fantastic Dr Seuss poem, Oh The Places You’ll Go!, exploring how we can make those sometimes difficult internal and external journeys to achieve what we think is important in life. On life’s journey where would we like to go, what would be there and what would it look, smell, sound like? Who would we take with us on our travels, what would we take with us, do we want to go anywhere else at all and what happens if we are forced to leave our home? The world we live in can feel very uncertain and scary at times but it can also be a place full of wonder and hope. And it is with this spirit of possibility, asking questions, using our imaginations and fostering a creative spirit that we will approach the summer school
workshop at ATYP inspired by Danusia Iwaszko’s play Wonderful which she, in turn, wrote from the young people’s ideas and thoughts during a week with our summer school in York.
Travellers Travellers, all of us travellers. Travelling through, travelling through. The journey is cruel, And the journey is kind, But we offer our hands to you. The roads interweave and the roads intercept, They cross, they fork and they end. But the journey never feels as long If you share it with a friend. Danusia Iwaszko
Mandy Smith Mandy has been Producer at Pilot Theatre, England since 2000. Prior to that she was Education Director for Sheffield Theatres, Artistic Director at Humberside Theatre in Education, Associate Artist for Nottingham Playhouse Roundabout Company and also first worked as a Stage Manager and Actor for numerous theatres and companies in England. She has directed and/or produced over 60 productions - mostly for young audiences. She has a BA in English and Drama from the University of Exeter and a Post Graduate training in Education from University of Nottingham. She is delighted to have had the opportunity to work on this international theatre project.
Patrice Balbina
Over the last year at Pilot Theatre we have been running projects with children and young people, as well as our wider community, around the themes of migration – exploring moving from place to place, from home to home, from country to country, continent to continent.
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Migrant Stories 72
Mauro Berti, Italy
Emteaz Hussain, UK
My personal Migration Story My parents were young children
when the brutal partition of India took place in 1947. They were forced to migrate and, along with millions of others, forge the birthing of what is now known as Pakistan. The next major journey was solely my fathers who flew to England as an economic migrant at the tender age of 18. With just a slip of paper in hand he was directed, by some kind stranger, to a taxi. The driver delivered him to the address somewhere in London! After a couple of years of working in London, my mother flew to join him. Three children later, the next significant move of my parent’s epic journey took place. A move to Sheffield where I was eventually born.
Ten years ago I was moving to a new
house. I went to Milan’s city hall to ask for some relevant paperwork. My file reported: “Immigrated to Milan in 1962”. I was 10 years old when I moved to Milan. My mother was a housewife and my father a miner in Tuscany. Despite their modest origins my parents were open minded and decided to leave the village where we lived to build a different life for their kids. At the time our life in Tuscany was happy and wild: every day my brother and I were free to run in the fields; we could do anything we wanted. But one day a truck parked in front of our house to collect all
Meanwhile, my grandfather answered the call out from Britain for economic migrants to come and work, specifically, in the industrial north in the late 50’s. At the same time, there was a major construction of a dam in his village in Pakistan, which, to use my parents generations words ‘tore the land apart’. So, the call out from Britain was welcomed. Many years later, in conversation with my brother, I was touched to learn of my late grandfather’s pivotal role in being the main contact in the Sheffield steel industry, for these young migrating men from Pakistan - that also included my father from London. So, my benevolent maternal grandfather was responsible for my parents move to Sheffield where they eventually settled around fifty years ago and where I was raised. our belongings. Little as I was, I cannot forget how miserable I felt seeing our furniture amassed, ready to be shipped to some unfamiliar place far away from home. In Tuscany we used to live in a beautiful house with a garden, chickens, rabbits and a well. We had the luxury of a spare bedroom for us two kids. The new apartment in Milan was a shock: only one room for the whole family and no private bathroom – we had to share the toilet with the other people living on the same floor of that awful grey building. We could play in the communal courtyard only at a given time of the day. We had no open field where we could run freely; just crowded streets that smelled bad, a new school and people speaking in a weird accent and making fun of ours. My brother and I used to cry every day. I was lucky to be very bright at school, so it was not hard for me to be accepted by my new classmates. But a new painful feeling started to build inside of
I was born a daughter of a steel worker Son of a farmer from a land in the east Full of colour, spices warmth and smells Pain and hunger fear and oppression I was born a daughter of a steelworker Baby of a mother with the name of Asha Daughter of a farmer from a land in the east And we were sewn and watered fed and grown And we struggled as we were moulded and formed in the heat Because I was born a daughter of a steel worker And I kicked and a ran to face the night With those hungry and those desperate searching eyes I faced reality in the homeless And the shame of the rejected And I ran and danced to face the night And from the lightness and darkness Their formed a balance Because I was born a daughter of a steelworker And we were raised in the life of love and hope Cos I was born a daughter of a steel worker And the baby of mother with the name of Asha And I was raised in the light and I was born to fight © Emteaz Hussain 1991 me which has not left me since then: being rootless. Sometimes I try to see myself now through the eyes of a ten year old boy and I realise how different I am. The immigrant boy I was would have never imagined that my present life could exist. So when I meet the new immigrants I wish for them to reach what I reached, but I hope they will never forget the memories from their land and their roots. Because a tree can only grow on deep and solid roots.
Migration facts
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Migration facts: Our project “Documents of poverty and hope” started with a one-week-encounter with two representatives from each company in Vancouver (Canada) in June 2014. We spent two days of our time together listening to each other‘s presentations about migration in our respective countries. Of course all of us – as interested citizens and well informed media users - live with the conviction, that we are well informed of the essential facts concerning this matter worldwide. So we were quite suprised to discover how little we know, how filtered the news and messages we get, are. Here is some of the material we collected.
More recently, in the 1990‘s and early 21st century, Portugal received a large number of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Brazil. As the global financial crisis crippled Portugal in 2011, half a million of its youngest and most highly qualified citizens (10 % of its
POR 1: Population per age group, annual % change,
Portugal
Migration Facts
Portugal has long been a country created by waves of migration. By the end of the XV and XVI centuries, when Portuguese explorers led colonial expansion into Africa, Asia and the Americas, the Portuguese empire had spread 30% of its population across the globe. The Portuguese diaspora has continued ever since, reaching its highest peak in the 1960‘s when, during the time of the dictatorship and the colonial war in
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POR 1: Portugese Emigration
Chart POR 1 and POR 2: source PORDATA.
dotted line indicates unavailable data
Africa, many Portuguese sought refuge throughout Europe. After 1974, with the installation of a new democratic regime and the break up of the Portuguese empire, half a million people from the country’s former colonial possessions were integrated into Portugal in less than a few months. The diaspora had come home.
workforce), fled to Europe and overseas. Portugal was one of the European countries to register a decrease in population.
Canada »Schoolchildren in Canada have long been taught one big thing about their big country: The United States is a melting pot, Canada is a mosaic, they declare. This is a point of pride; in Canada, there is an enduring belief that immigrants may remain largely unassimilated. If the melting pot demands conformity, the mosaic offers distinctiveness.«
Portugal, Canada
First Settlers: 1600‘s to 1700‘s • Took place over the 17th and 18th centuries with a slow but steady French settlement of Quebec and Acadia, and smaller numbers of European and American entrepreneurs and British military settling in Ontario. • An influx of 46.000 – 50.000 loyalists fleeing the American revolution settled into lower Ontario and the Eastern townships. (1783-1785) • Another 30.000 from America and Scotland in 1812 with the promise of land in lower Ontario from America and Scotland
• 1848 the Irish Potato Famine and some rebellions in Europe sent a new wave of immigrants. • Immigration had been restricted to English speaking people from the United Kingdom or America and people from France and Northern Europe.
First Wave of Immigration: Moving West 1897 – 1913 Between 1895 and1905 large tracks of land in the Prairie were freed up from the large companies and given away to Europeans, Americans and Eastern Canadians. The government was pressed by business, railway interest and a new demand for Canadian resources to increase immigration. »A stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, and a stout wife and a half-dozen children is good quality.« Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior Yet Canadian Immigration Policy essentially remained racist. Prior to 1885 there was no official discrimination policy but in 1885 the first Chinese Head Tax was implemented in response to the Chinese immigrants working on the Pacific National Railway and 1923 saw The Chinese Immigration Act completely excluding Chinese from entering Canada. An apology and compensation was announced in 2006.
• In 1914, 400 East Indian potential immigrants aboard the ship Komagata Maru were refused entry. After many months of being trapped aboard their ship they were finally sent back. • When black people tried to settle in Alberta from Oklahoma in 1910, since nothing in the Immigration Act specifically barred black Americans, the immigration inspectors were instructed to reject all black Americans on medical grounds. The immigration authorities considered anybody not from Britain or America “foreign.” A list was made up of the ideal settlers in a descending preference. British and American agriculturalists were followed by French, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Swiss, Finns, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Germans, Ukrainians and Poles. Close to the bottom of the list came those who were less desirable such as the Italians, South Slavs, Greeks and Syrians. At the very bottom Jews, Asians, gypsies and blacks.
2nd Wave of Immigration: Post 2nd World War • There was very little immigration from 1913 – 1945 due to the great wars and depression. However, after WW2, Canada experienced a booming economic climate with low unemployment rates and once again welcomed new immigrants. Canada’s population went
In 1903, 138.660 people entered Canada and annual totals began to top 200.000 • 2.530.799 immigrants arrived between 1903 and 1913 • Almost one million of the new arrivals were farmers.
Migration Facts
Immigration is central to Canadian history. It has been and remains a catalyst to Canadian economic development and a mirror of Canadian attitudes and values. Before the Europeans set foot in North America, Indians and Inuit were already living on the continent. In 1534, the French began settling Northern North America. Shortly after the British seized the French colony following the 1760 Conquest. This period will see the emergence of an “ethnic “ duality that involved Canada’s two founding and competing nations: the Englishand French-speaking communities. In a way today’s society is a result of the immigration, a migratory movement whose purpose was to colonize the country.
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Migration facts: In 2001, 250.640 people immigrated to Canada, relative to a total population of 30.007.094 people • Since 2001, immigration has ranged between 221.352 and 262.236 immigrants per annum.
from 11.5 million in 1941 to 22 million in 1976. • A post-war human rights movement in Canada, saw legislation put in place against discrimination on account of race, religion or origin, and the federal government moved to eliminate racial, religious or ethnic barriers. Racial discrimination was gone from Canadian immigration legislation and regulations by the late 1960’s. 1971 saw - for the first time - the majority of immigrants into Canada not of European ancestry. It remains this way to present day.
CAN 1: Immigration Canada
Migration Facts 76
• Canada has a point system for immigration applicants. Points are given to do with age, education, ability to speak English or French, and demand for an applicant’s particular job skills. Once established in Canada, applicants become “landed Immigrants” and have all the rights of Canadians other than voting rights. After a specific number of years (3) they may apply for citizenship and gain equal political rights. A landed immigrant may apply to sponsor (financially) close family members into the country.
Three main reasons for high level of immiragration One: Economic immigrants Citizenship and Immigration Canada uses several sub-categories of economic immigrants. The high profile skilled worker principal applicants group comprised 19.8% of all immigration in 2005. Canada has also created a VIP Business Immigration Program which allows immigrants with sufficient business experience or management experience to receive the Permanent Residency in a shorter period than other types of immigrations. The Province of Quebec has a program called the Immigrant Investor Program. Two: Family class Under a government program, both citizens and permanent residents can sponsor family members to immigrate to Canada. Three: Refugees Immigration of refugees and those in need of protection. • In 2010, Canada accepted 280.681 immigrants (permanent and temporary) of which 186.913 (67%) were Economic immigrants; 60.220 (22%) were Family class; 24.696 (9%) were Refugees; and 8.845 (2%) were other.
Canada
»Canadians support open immigration, welcome its economic benefits and accept its social challenges. But unlike virtually every country in Europe, we have no nativist party or institutional xenophobia. The reality is that immigrants to Canada don’t have to struggle for acceptance the way they do elsewhere. They take a place of their choosing in this nation of outsiders, where, for better or worse, diversity is identity.« Andre Cohen, New York Times, 2012
Facts about migration in Vancouver, B.C. • More than half of Vancouver residents have a first language other than English • 39,6% of the Vancouver’s metropolitan area’s total population (2.098.000.) are immigrants to Canada
• In 2006, Vancouver ranked 3rd in it’s proportion of foreign-born amongst major Canadian, American and Australian cities. (Los Angeles 34,7%, Melbourne 28,9%) Toronto ranked second with 47,7%. The percentage for the whole province of B.C. is 27,5%
Immigrants make up 12,6% of the Quebec population while non-permanent residents represent 0,9% for a total of 67.090 individuals.
In 2014 Canada welcomed approximately 260,000 immigrants for a total population of 35 million citizens.
Canadian immigrants in Quebec come mainly from French-speaking countries such as Algeria, Haiti, Morocco, Tuni-
CAN 2: Immigration Québec
Migration Facts
Immigration Today Canada’s current government has quietly made some massive changes to the immigration that will effect the kind of society Canadians build for the future. »Canada’s path-breaking immigration policies are being transformed into a system that mainly serves employers, treating immigrants as future citizens or members of Canadian communities and families, but merely as convenient or cheap labour.« Morton Bauder, 2014
• Vancouver called “city of neighbourhoods” as there are many neighbourhoods with their own distinct character and ethnic mix.
Facts about migration in Quebec In 2011 Quebec population amounted to 7.732.520 individuals and immigrants accounted for 974.895 individuals.
sia, France, Cameroon and the Dominican Republic. The “Economic Immigration” category is the largest group and includes 72% of the immigrants. This group is mainly made up of skilled workers (62%) and to a lesser degree business people and family workers (1%). The “family reunification” category accounts for 19% of immigrants while the “refugee and persons in similar circumstances” category accounts for 8% of immigrants.
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Chart CAN 1 and CAN 2 source 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) Ethnocultural data, 2014, Ministère de Immigration
Migration facts:
Migration Facts 78
In 2013 in Quebec, the unemployment rate among newcomers reached 11,6%, i.e. 4 points higher than in the general population. Yet most of these people are highly educated with 54% having at least 14 years of formal education.
re-north of Italy. The largest of these communities are Romanians, Albanians, Moroccans and Chinese.
made in Italy, a number that is more than double the number of applications made in 2013.
9% (800.000) of the total number of Italy’s students are born outside of the country.
Out-migration Between 1865 and 1929, approximately 900.000 French-speaking Quebec citizens moved to the US Midwest, California and mainly New England because of the economic crisis. These migrants worked in the labour-intensive cotton, wool and leather processing sectors. According to a 2006 survey, it is estimated that 1 Canadian in every 1.000 leaves Canada in any given year. Departure rates generally follow economic cycles. Canadians have a large number of destinations to choose from, but the destinations of choice are Australia, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the early 21st century, 1,1 million Canadian citizens resided in other OECD countries, including 82% in the United States.
Among foreign-born children (6-13 year olds), 69,1% state that their best friend is Italian.
In the first five months of 2015 there have been about 25.000 applications for international protection. There are bout 82.000 migrants that have arrived into Italy as of June 2015.
Italy Annual Report 2015 In January 2015 the number of inhabitants in Italy were nearly 61 million. Over 5 million (8,3%) are foreign citizens and more than 40% of these citizens live in the cities in the cent-
Over the 60% of migrants say they can speak and understand the Italian language correctly, but writing and reading is still hard for 49,8% of them. 60% of them speak Italian with friends and 38,5% in family. In 2014 there were about 65.000 applications for international protection
ITA 1: The Journey to Europe
The Incredible Exodus As of the 31st December 2014 the number of Italians living abroad was 4.636.647. This is an increase of nearly two hundred thousand units from the previous year.
Italy, United Kingdom Almost half of expatriate Italians are young people between 20 and 40 years old, numbering 47,901. Compared to 2013, the percentage grows for 20-30 year olds (23,503), which is now equal to that of 30-40 year olds (24,398).
nage«. He has also promised that a referendum about Britain’s membership in the EU will take place before 2017.
UK 1: Immigration into UK 2015
Since 2011, long-term net migration has increased to 330.000, a figure that is 94.000 higher than it was in March
United Kingdom Opinions about migration regularly feature in various media in the UK, and have been prominent in political discussions, specifically when debating the UKs relationship to the EU. In 2011, the Prime Minister David Cameron stated in a speech that he was giving a »no ifs, no buts« promise about bringing immigration numbers down to 100.000, »levels our country can ma-
2014. This is the highest net migration on record. Discussions about migration divide many people. This has only intensified with the increase in people seeking refuge and asylum in Europe in recent years and most intensely this summer with the continued conflicts taking place in areas of Africa and Western and Southern Asia. There were 25.771 asylum applications between June 2014 and June 2015, an
UK 2: Reasons for immigrating into the UK increase of 10% compared with the previous 12 months (23.515), although this remains low when compared with the peak number of applications in 2002 (84.132). The largest number of applications for asylum came from nationals of Eritrea (3.568), followed by Pakistan (2.302) and Syria (2.204).
Migration Facts
ITA 2: Italians moved abroad per year
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Chart ITA 2 Source: Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Chart UK 1 and UK 2 Source: Long-term International Migration - Office for National Statistics
Migration facts: A total of 11.600 people were granted asylum or an alternative form of protection.
pared to 6,2%) regionally. Recent plans to expand York’s single, small Mosque were met with some local hostility.
Immigration and York York has a lower percentage of migrants than the national average but is a rapidly growing city, fuelled mainly by local migration and birth rates.
There is a significant secondary group of migrant workers who are mostly from Eastern European countries, aged 18-39 years old. York also has a small but established Turkish community. There is an established (approx. 300 households) British Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller population, and a small refugee and asylum seeker population (approximately 30 adults and 50 children). From January 2016, North Yorkshire County Council is expected to offer refuge to 200 people, with York housing 60 people.
York is in North Yorkshire, which together with East Yorkshire and the Humber, is an area with less than 4% foreign citizens, 2% recently arrived migrants, and 6% foreign born people. This is well below the national averages.
Migration Facts 80
In 2009, a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation identified 92 different ethnic and national origins in the city and 78 different first languages. The majority of this group are settled, aged 25-39, living in rented accommodation, the largest single ethnic group identifies as ‘asian’. The 2011 census shows 60% of York’s population identifying as Christian and only 1% as Muslim (com-
AUS 1: Population born oversea
Following the government’s announcement that the UK will take in 20.000 refugees in the next five years, over 1.000 people marched through the city centre of York with the slogan „York Says Refugees Are Welcome here”. This resulted in a mix of criticism and support on social media and in local press. It also led to a counter-demonstration entitled “York Says No To Refugees”. That event attracted 20 supporters and 60 protesters.
Australia Australia’s original migrants arrived in 1788 displacing the traditional custodians of the land. There were originally over 500 different clan groups or na-
UK, Australia AUS 2: Country of Birth
tions of indigenous people in Australia. Today Indigenous Australians comprise 2.4% of the population 1 in 4 Australians were born overseas and many more are first or second generation Australians. Population of Australia is currently 23 million people. The number of settlers arriving in Australia between July 2012 and June 2013 totalled 152 414. They came from more than 200 countries. Most were born in one of the following four countries: • New Zealand (17.7 percent) • India (12.1 per cent) • China (11.8 per cent) • United Kingdom (7.7 per cent) Globalisation has resulted in a major flow of people who often do not intend to stay in Australia permanently, therefore, migration has become increasingly circular and temporary in nature Australia currently has a policy whereby people migrating to Australia by unauthorised means while seeking asylum are detained offshore indefinitely.
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Imprint
Boomerang - Documents of Poverty and Hope 2014 – 2016 Editorial Stuff Editor Publisher & Design Printed by
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English Corrections
Odette Bereska Dirk Neldner FastPrintService NSW Sam Johnson , Lucy Hammond Mandy Smith , Jenny Medway , Peter Scollin
»Boomerang – Documents of Poverty and Hope« is a European Theatre Project supported by the European Commission. The views expressed in this publication are only the views of the authors. The Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein. Contact: Odette Bereska | odette@platformshift.eu
Picture Index Robert Etcheverry, Pierre-Luc Schetagne, Jimmi Francoeur, Alexandra Stève (for DynamO Théâtre), Chris van der Schyf (for PH Theatre), Paolo Fontani, Sonia Santagostino (for Teatro Elsinor), Daniel Gonçalves (for Teatro O Bando), Tracey Schramm (for ATYP), Ben Bentley, Ben Pugh (for Pilot Theatre) and private family photo archives
Head Organisation: Elsinor Centro di Produzione Teatrale |Milan, Forlì, Florence | Italy; Via G.A. Boltraffio 21, Milano | www.elsinor.net
© Boomerang – Documents of Poverty and Hope, January 2016
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A Global Theatre Intervention 2014 – 2016
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A Global Theatre Intervention 2014 – 2016
boomerang – documents of poverty and hope 2014 - 2016
A Global Theatre Intervention 2014 – 2016 Teatro Elsinor Milan - Florence - Forlí | Italy Teatro O Bando Palmela | Portugal Pilot Theatre York | United Kingdom Presentation House Theatre North-Vancouver | Canada DynamO Théâtre Montreal | Canada Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) Sydney | Australia
with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
www.internationaltheatre-project.com
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