I was asked to write this post in the week following our workshop in Sligo. It is an impressionistic account, written before the dust has had a chance to settle.
From Monday 12th to Sunday 18th May, Blue Raincoat Theatre Company generously shared with us their home at the Factory Performance Space in Sligo (which is also the Registered Office of the more nomadic Border Crossings). Each morning Sandra O’Malley (Cre-Actor, Border Crossings team) welcomed us through the doors and we had the run of the place for the day. There was uninterrupted sunshine for the seven days we spent exploring mythic narratives with settings in present day Greece and along the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye and Lebanon. We made much use of the theatre’s warm courtyard which has along one of its sides the studio of the sculptor Bettina Seitz. Through its large windows were visible various wax sculptures of the draped outlines of figures. In 2020, her ‘Underwave’ installation had featured such sculptures suspended in the waters of Sligo Bay, emerging and submerging with the tide. The sculptures are obviously hollow. The draped cloth encases no figure. On her website, Seitz explains that ‘the absence of the figure resonates a ghost like human presence and evokes associations with the past and otherness’. She describes her creative process as drawing on ‘landscape, history and mythology’ to explore ‘how we relate as human beings to each other and how we relate to the “Other” in the sense of our interconnectedness with everything’ (https://www.bettinaseitz.com/, access date: 27 May 2025).
We were incredibly fortunate in the setting for our devising workshop.
This week in Sligo was the first part of the devising process for this project. It was the first time that all the directors, dramaturges and actors had gathered together. Each working day began with a group warm-up led by Lucy Dunkerley (Associate Director, Border Crossings team). On the first day of the week, we did much of our work while arranged in a large circle. We walked across a circle toward each other during games to familiarise ourselves with each other’s names. Later, seated in a circle, we collectively recounted the story of Europa and a section of the story of her descendants on Crete, which we had been asked to familiarise ourselves with in advance of the workshop. A mask of a bull was passed around the circle. When the mask was handed to a person, they became the storyteller, remaining so until they passed the mask to the next person in the circle. Michael Walling (Director, Border Crossings team), who directed this week’s workshop, asked us to think of this collective, collaborative recounting of the Greek mythic narratives as a read-through; that tradition in which the rehearsal commences with the company assembling together to hear a reading of the script. Some of us assumed the voice of an omniscient narrator to tell the tale. Others spoke as one of the characters. One speaker simply offered a thick description of a single place. In contrast, another offered a plot-driven tale which skimmed across various locations. Chronology seemed inadequate and undesirable as an organising principle or trajectory. Speakers repeatedly chose to loop the narrative back to an event which had already been recounted in order to add further details, or to offer a competing version of it, or to allow a character who had been neglected or silenced in the earlier telling to reclaim their voice and be fleshed out. Thus, our polyvocal circle spun a narrative of returns, progression, meanwhiles.
One of the tasks set by director Michael was for each of us to select and give a solo presentation on an artistic representation of Europa. We chose to perform our presentations not as ourselves but as characters. A Nazi official interpreted through a lens of fascist ideology the image of Europa on a Greek vase dated to 500 BC, an art thief attempted to describe to her handler on the phone a baroque painting of Europa, a sex-positive vlogger read various depictions of Europa as showing an empowered woman engaging in consensual non-consent sex practices, a speaker staged a conversation with ChatGPT on the topic and a marketing executive made a pitch for using Titian’s Europa in a campaign to boost beef consumption among the female demographic. This is a sample of the presentations that were offered. In them we explored different languages; different ways of perceiving, thinking, identifying, objectifying, desiring, expressing and being.
In this exercise and in subsequent ones in the days that followed, we played around with placing the classical Greek mythic story in different contexts, for instance in a realistic setting in contemporary Sweden. We explored negotiating the borders and transitioning between genres, histories, times, landscapes, places, cultures and languages. Sometimes, as Rembrandt does in his painting of Europa, the story was entirely extricated from its original context and grounded in a new, contemporary one. At other times, no such neat distinctions were made between contexts. In these queer and hybrid contexts, very different worlds interacted, clashed and mixed. God Zeus in the guise of a white bull and contemporary migrants existed side by side in a magic realist Mediterranean world stretching from Lebanon to Ireland and Sweden, policed by the European Union. The Pythia, priestess of the Oracle at Delphi, was to be found in Ireland, in a pub down the country, and Queen Maeve’s cattle raid of Cooley from Irish mythology was overlaid onto the story of Europa’s brother Cadmus. We kept sight of the fact that we are making theatre which engages with our contemporary realities and is concerned with the current condition of Europe and the world beyond. It is with this understanding that we explore these classical Greek mythic narratives which serve as a key source for contemporary European culture. For instance, we devised various scenes which focused on the differing experiences of migrants in various E.U. states and cultures. It is vital for us to develop this work, to further research these subjects and deepen our understanding of these experiences and contexts in their particularity.
There was no one verbal language shared by everyone in the group. In this sense, there was no common medium of communication. The languages in the mix during performances, discussions and chats included Irish, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Swedish, Italian, Kurdish, Arabic, Farsi and Dari. If something spoken was intended for the ears of everyone in the group, it had to be uttered in Italian, French and English. There was a constant need for translation and those with the enviable grasp of multiple languages stepped up to serve as translators. Chief amongst them were Micaela, Oméya and Vincent. The indefatigable translators facilitated communication both during and outside working hours. What they were called upon to translate included chat, banter, direction, instructions for tasks, improvisations, performances and discussions. This required them to grapple with a variety of speech including complex arguments and theories, subtleties of meaning, figurative and idiomatic language, longwinded points and thinking out loud. They had to translate while being ever conscious of not causing the speaker to lose their chain of thought and of the very tight schedule within which we were working.
Much was communicated by means other than verbal language, including through the body, physicality, facial expression, vocal volume and gesture of the speaker. Moreover, when one does not know a language, one tends not to listen to it principally or exclusively for the meaning it may carry. This allows for orientation away from its functionality and towards its characteristics such as its rhythm, pace, stresses, musicality, articulation and phonetic qualities. This is why when Sanam Naderi (Cre-Actor, Teatro dell’Argine team) shifted between languages during a monologue which was not being translated for us in the audience, those of us who spoke none of those languages nevertheless registered the shifts.
There was a diversity of language also in the sense of theatre language, including creative process and performance style. For instance, for many of us from an anglophone tradition, it was remarkable how integral costume, props and sound seemed to be to the process of the French performers.
Devising in small, mixed language groups challenged us to try new ways of working. Often what evolved was a hybrid of the instincts, ideas, processes and languages of the group’s members. While these small groups were not led or directed by any of their members, the larger group and devising process, and the project itself, are being led by the five directors (Michael Walling, Border Crossings; Andrea Paolucci and Micaela Casalboni, Teatro dell’Argine; Dominique Jambert and Vincent Mangado, Théâtre du Soleil). They are joined by two dramaturges (Jonathan Meth and Edward ‘Buffalo’ Bromberg, The Fence) and an associate director (Lucy Dunkerley, Border Crossings). Andrea and Micaela are directing as a pair, as are Dominique and Vincent. The directors/ directorial pairs direct a week each of the three initial, week-long devising workshops. They participate as Cre-Actors in the workshops which they are not directing. This first week in Sligo was directed by Michael. Amongst other things, he constituted the small groups, framed and assigned tasks, redirected scenes and chaired discussions. The other four directors participated as Cre-Actors. This, then, is a piece of theatre which is being devised collectively by a group of theatre makers with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds through a process which distinguishes between the roles of director-actor, dramaturge and Cre-Actor. It is necessary, important and valuable for us to ask questions of, and experiment with, the process itself. For instance, we might ask how these roles interact and what the power dynamic is between them.
Building on our work in Sligo, we will bring to the Teatro dell’Argine in Bologna in July a wealth of content, ideas, working processes and structures. These will be available to develop, build upon, learn from or set aside. We will also bring a familiarity with each other, a greater awareness of issues and challenges, and, of course, our questions.
Shadaan Felfeli (Cre-Actor, Border Crossings team).
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