The Legend of Europa

   ph. John Cobb Border Crossings (Ireland) is a new theatre company based in (or, perhaps more accurately, “based out of”) Sligo: a small town on the Atlantic Coast, with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants.   5.5% of the population forms the significant Polish minority, and 4.1% are described by the census as “people from countries outside the EU”.   The census statistics date from 2016, so the latter figure does not yet include British people. It’s not the sort of place that is usually associated with intercultural theatre: that tends to be the preserve of large cosmopolitan cities with histories of migration and complex populations.   But Sligo is surprising.   As you walk from the centre to the railway station, you pass a bust, given by the Indian Embassy in 2015, which portrays the Bengali playwright, poet, painter and educator Rabindranath Tagore.     Tagore is celebrated in Sligo because of his friendship with W.B. Yeats, who throughout his pe...

ph. Lucio Summa In 1994, twenty young theatre artists decided to get together to develop a special idea of theatre. A theatre meant as an open and inclusive space and action. A theatre which regains its ancient social and political feature, together with its artistic and cultural value. A theatre that can metaphorically become the centre of our cities and societies again, an agora , a place of encounter not only for spectators, but for people of any age, gender, culture, experience, background, status. A theatre whose function is not limited to what happens on stage, with artists and performances, but also includes what happens in the audience, what are the needs and desires of spectators; a theatre which takes care of the relationships between people through artistic practices on the border between art, culture, education, social. And those practices are occasions and tools for exchange, enrichment, wellbeing, intergenerational and intercultural dialogue, and active citizenshi...

Chemnitz Salon The Fence is an international Network of playwrights, dramaturgs and freelance theatre makers across Europe and beyond. The Fence was founded on the core principles of:  the importance of the playwright to culture and wider society that in practice, diversity and mobility are the same thing and that through engagement with others our own work develops.  The network exists as a space to think, to be and to do. The founding aim was to create a network based primarily on relationships, rather than scripts and translations, that would enable people to come together and work out for themselves what they wanted to do together. Established in October 2003, the network in 2021 comprises 250+ members from 50+ countries. Created originally in the UK, as of 2018 The Fence is based in Stockholm, Sweden. The Fence network meets on average twice yearly - these typically feature 15-50 participants, and last between 5 and 8 days. Fence Membership is via recommendation from exis...

ph. Michèle Laurent Ariane Mnouchkine is the director of theatre company, the Théâtre du Soleil, which she founded in 1964 with her fellows of the ATEP (The Theatre Association of the Students of Paris). In 1970, the Théâtre du Soleil created 1789 at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, where Giorgio Strehler warmly welcomed the young company and gave them his support. The company then went on to choose its home at the Cartoucherie, a former bullet-making factory, in the Bois de Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. The Cartoucherie enabled the troupe to expand on the notion of the theatre simply as architectural institution and allowed them to focus on the concept of the theatre being a place of haven rather than just complying with the traditional architectural notions of a theatre building, and all this at a time when urban change and development in France was transforming the place of man in the city and the place of theatre in the city. In the Cartoucherie, the Théâtre du Soleil foun...