Towards Sligo

THE LEGEND OF EUROPA begins outside Europe (at least as the continent’s geography is conventionally understood), on the beach at Tyre, in modern Lebanon, on the Eastern edge of the Mediterranean. Our journey with the story begins on the other side of the continent, at its extremest West, in the town of Sligo on the Wild Atlantic Way.

This feels appropriate. Europa’s name derives from ancient Greek, and implies a wide gaze, looking beyond the self. Europe has always been defined by that which is outside it, or on its edges. It is a continent with a history of reaching out beyond itself; a space which many from outside crave to enter, while others arrive by dint of force or despair. Our continent is named after a woman from western Asia who was kidnapped and raped by our white gods.

I’ve wanted to make this piece for more than 20 years, ever since Josip Rainer sent me his gloriously insightful paper called Europa: negotiating border myths for contemporary playwrighting. It could have been written especially for a company called “Border Crossings”. “In terms of re-thinking contemporary border consciousness for the playwright in Europe,” Josip wrote, “the ‘striking’ aspect lies in being able to transform defined border spaces into imaginary pathways between categories: - and this is where contemporary playwrights ‘dig in’ and write the cultural narratives of our times as cultures collide.”

This is the reason why our project, our creation of a new performance responding to the Europa myth in the context of contemporary Europe, has to be intercultural and multi-vocal in the most profound and extreme way we can manage. Yes, it was my idea all those years ago, but in order to realise it I have had to let it go: otherwise it will only reflect one viewpoint and come to contradict its own raison d’être. The first step was to devolve and share leadership across a consortium of European organisations - our partners in the CRE-ACTORS partnership, plus the wonderful Riksteatern, itself an organisation notable for its co-operative governance structure and operational model. The next step has been for each organisation to gather performers and devisors whose cultural backgrounds reflect the kaleidoscopic nature of our continent today. Some of the people I will be “directing” next week, I have never even met before. I’ve had to adopt a position of radical trust - and that is in itself an exercise in modelling how we might move forward as a continent that claims to honour democracy, diversity and dialectic. We have to recognise the value of the polyvocal, and to open not only our cultural selves but our political processes to multiple inputs and widely varying opinions. So I find myself in the strange position of beginning a project some 20 years in gestation, and having not a clue what may actually happen.

Josip’s article does not speak of “playwriting” but “playwrighting” - play making, not sitting in your study writing down words. Through the CRE-ACTORS project, we exchanged approaches to playmaking that might enable genuinely intercultural and deeply collaborative performances to emerge: now we will put these into practice. And so we begin on the edge of Europe. And from that periphery, we will work our way ever inward.

by Michael Walling, Border Crossing

photo by Taryn Elliott