Theatre, Trees and Landscape Project
Holland 8-10th September
The first three-day meeting of performing artists, groups and organisations working in rural community contexts was in Peergroup, our host’s headquarters in the North of the Netherlands: We made our way there taking planes, trains and automobiles to reach this rural area of peat land, a resource once used as fuel by the small farmers in this area. Due to socio-economic developments there are fewer farmers and fuel is now in the form of gas extracted from the land and piped elsewhere to feed the needs of the ever-increasing urban populations.
We met to discuss, theatre, trees and landscape and the role of the performing arts in bringing socio-economic and ecological issues in a rural community context to our world stage.
Beginnings are always delicate as we’re entering into strange territory with limited experience of each other’s cultures and rural communities. We could only talk about our own experience as cultural creators in a rural context, and how we’ve been working with and getting to know our communities. Some of the groups are long established members of their community and the performing arts world, others less so.
Though our approaches differ what we all tended to agree on was the need for us to be involved with other everyday experts to preserve our natural and cultural landscapes: That is to say performances or events distinguished by the participation of non-professional performers or so-called ‘everyday experts’ talking about their own lives. This is a theatre of performers who are not necessarily actors, but specialists in particular spheres of life: ‘professionals of a theatre of the real world’ who are sometimes paid, sometimes volunteering, sometimes unaware they are performing for others.
According to the history and statistics of farming practices presented by guest speaker, Jan Harholt and representative of the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs Agri-cultural practices are dwindling due to modern farming methods and socio-economic pressures to thrive or even survive in a rural landscape. The question is how could performing arts strengthen the public debate about food, animals, landscape and the farmers?
While agricultural and artistic values may not always be the same there is a symbiotic relationship between our natural and cultural landscapes and whether it be in a rural or urban setting there is equal concern about the quality of our lives and landscape. In a world of fast food and faster communication it seems we know little about the production process and even less about the overall effects on rural life. We speedily travel from country to country, city to city or from home to urban workplaces along motorways that disconnect us from the countryside, small towns and villages. So despite an abundance of food and communication networks our rural heritage is struggling to survive and communities and individuals feel more isolated than ever.
With this in mind we’ve tried to come up with ways to reconnect with our communities and landscapes with the human and natural resources available to us.
A lot of our ineffectiveness to make the world a better place has to do with our limited perception as artistic performers working in a specific area. And we recognise the need to integrate other organisations and individuals within our rural communities to represent the macrocosm through the microcosm if our efforts are to be worthy of emulation, like the cultural villages or transitions towns set up by networks and communities similar to our own.
What our representations or presentations will consist of depend on our individual and combined efforts over the coming year: We plan with the aid of Erasmus Plus, a European mobility grant, to spend some time in each other’s company, workspaces and communities. The objective being to share our knowledge and experience to come up with ways and means of creating in and with rural communities rather than imposing our artistic values upon them: It’s about giving and receiving rather than taking and leaving, with no change of heart or understanding of how performance and landscape can represent each other for the good of agricultural and artistic practices in these communities.
Most stories or performances consist of a journey, whether physical or metaphorical, between places or states of mind transformed by the passage of time. After sharing our thoughts and aspirations we came up with the idea of mapping our journey, as a means of understanding our landscapes and making the creative process more transparent and visually easier to understand for ourselves as well as from other to participate and share in creative process with us. Our desire would be to link everyday experts in various fields to create performances, social events and landmarks that would leave a sustainable imprint on the communities involved as to the importance of preserving our countryside and rural culture together.
This requires working on creating entertainment that is educational, easy to understand and disseminate so the seeds are sown for spectators and participants alike to let nature nurture what we value and help us preserve our natural heritage and traditions in the face of trade, technology and human progress.
We met with some of the local farmers, forest and regional officials who mostly listened to what we had to say and offered us advice on ways of gaining much needed expertise and support for our project.
We now have our homework to do to establish our own legitimate identity and clearly define what we would like to learn from each other and what we can offer in exchange to the communities. Though public performers with creative and personal freedom from the labour industry we, as part of the leisure industry, sometimes carry the greater responsibility and effort to keep audiences entertained and implicated in the lighter and darker truths of human nature that we collectively represent on our world stage. This is no easy task because we all have a role to play and often more than one to help make life an enjoyable journey.
Hopefully we’ll be able to look back at our performance footprint at the end of this theatre, trees and landscape project with humble pride having shared our dreams and worked to achieve something worthwhile for the right reasons.
The group's profiles.
PeerGrouP – Site Specific Theatre
PeerGrouP is based in the North of the Netherlands, in a rural area. Their work is usually site specific and site generic. A field, a big coaster or a whole village can be their performance site; they hardly ever perform in theatre buildings. They have built an enormous castle out of straw bales. Over two years, The Straw Castle became their performance space and ‘laboratory’.
PeerGrouP consists of people working in different art disciplines. Actors, architects, dancers, sculptors and musicians work with a director towards a theatrical presentation. Often the work is a mix between theatre (in the broadest sense), an exhibition and a (social) event. The audience eats, drinks and sits together with the performers.
The work of PeerGrouP can be described as site-specific in a socially engaged manner. Every site and every location has a history and specific features. The first focus lays on the people who ‘own’ the environment. These people are the key to the specific stories, the conflicts, the celebrations and ceremonies.
With every new project, PeerGrouP starts off as an outsider. They are strangers, with strange intentions: “Theatre, art… that doesn’t belong here, does it?”
Over the years, PeerGrouP has developed a special approach to bridge this gap: Integrate and infiltrate. In this approach they are working on a site and trying to find a (temporary) place in the community. By making use of the local artistic skills and fascinations, curiosity awakens. This is a starting point: from curiosity grows complicity and from complicity a desire to cooperate might emerge.
For example: in a village without a bakery, PeerGrouP started by building a bread oven and created a temporary bakery where the villagers were invited to trade their stories for bread. The final performance was as much a PeerGrouP performance as a performance of the villagers.
PeerGrouPs’ fascinations are often not ‘theatrical’ in an obvious way. Agriculture, landscape, food… Topics like these require a different kind of research for finding the stories which have a ‘theatrical’ quality. Therefore, PeerGrouP does research on people with a variety of professions. Sometimes they even learn the specific skills of those professions. For example: foresters, scientists, farmers or cooks. Local people and their skills also get involved in the performance. Working in this manner, the members of PeerGrouP continuously keep confronting themselves with the reality of their subjects, trying to find the ‘true’ stories. And they also keep developing new site- specific (artistic) methods and approaches to work with.
Instead of starting with a concept for a performance, the research starts with a fascination. During the research phase the results will be presented regularly to the people connected to the site. PeerGroup searches for artistic ways to do this; they create something tangible to share with the inhabitants. With the reactions to these provisional presentations, their search query can be specified and refined. To do this properly, they have to delay the development of ideas towards the final shape of the performance. Living and working on a site, being in contact with the inhabitants (who can also become the future performers/audience), PeerGrouP uncovers the specific content and shape of the performance. The final performance will be constructed out of the elements which come up during the research and prove consistent.
For example: during research in a village an archaeologist found an old road one of the villagers had told him about. The archaeological site became one of the performance spaces in a theatrical walk through the village.
When working towards the final performance, PeerGrouP selects the stories and materials allowing to create an event which is specific and universal at the same time. The performance becomes an event where an audience without knowledge of the specific site can enjoy watching.
You can find more English information about PeerGrouP in the project pages.
ScarlattineTeatro –Campsirago Residencia:
ScarlattineTeatro is a disease. Infectious, acute, contagious. Multi-faceted.
Peculiar to childhood, not only as stated age but also when we are bright-eyed and curious. When you catch it, you’ll have a mark on your skin forever.
That’s why ScarlattineTeatro are people who work, who worked and who will work for it.
ScarlattineTeatro believes that theatre has to catch, to face, to appeal, to seduce, to dazzle, to amaze, to desolate, to cheer, to distress, to consume, to change life.
It believes in multiplicity of voices and ideas, it loves taking chances lightly, playing.
It creates performances which can be set everywhere, following a specific poetic and political choice.
It always looks for a new way of staying together and producing art, promoting fusion of different languages in order to break barriers between theatre, performance, dance, music, visual arts.
It always looks for a new way of creating community.
The spectator is a fellow traveler who we want to infect and involve.
We believe that’s the way, the only possible in order to fulfill our work. Illusion of our theatre lives only through mutual look of people who live life.
Artistic biography
ScarlattineTeatro was born in 1998, after a training period at Pontedera Teatro. During the first years we wandered between Turin and Milan. In 2000 ScarlattineTeatro worked in Kosovo, devastated by war. Here we began to plan out the first choices, challenges, achievements, defeats. Since 2004 ScarlattineTeatro has been in Campsirago, a place rich in theatre, on Brianza hills, with a breathtaking view on the valley and the lake. The company has a branch in Turin, ScarlattineTre Association, which deals with projects with suburbs and social theatre.
Derrière Le Hublot
What it is… Derrière Le Hublot was created in 1996. It was founded by a team of volunteers in Capdenac-Gare, a town of 4,800 inhabitants that lies on the borders of the Aveyron and the Lot. Now recognized as Midi-Pyrenees’ street theatre ‘hub’, Derrière Le Hublot produces a range of artistic and cultural projects taking place in over 30 districts in the Aveyron and the Lot. Its wider aim is to enrich local culture and develop street theatre in which the relationships between the artists, local people and their surroundings take centre stage.
What it does…. Derrière Le Hublot is active all year round. Within the season of performances from May to December, it organises artists’ residencies, cultural activities and festivals for all ages.
Blaize Community Arts:
We are a good humoured bunch who love to see communities getting all fired up and creative.
Our official title is ‘community arts organisation’ but we can already see your finger hovering over the escape button!
So let’s just say we like to meet people, inspire them and help them enjoy the lighter side of life.
How do we do that? Easy! We bring the very best in quality theatre, music, dance, comedy and cinema straight to your community.
Which means you don’t have to travel for miles to enjoy a good night out.
We work nationally but mainly cover the north of England and are particularly active in isolated, rural communities where access to the arts may be limited.
We have lots of contacts with talented and experienced performers who have toured all over the country so you can be guaranteed that whatever we deliver will be worth ditching a night in front of the telly for. Just search through our website and take a look at some of our work - it speaks for itself.
Workshops
We don’t just deliver fun. We also create it! Have you ever watched a film, a play or a dance routine and thought to yourself ‘We could do that’?
With our help you really can!
We’ve seen teenagers cut their own CDs, helped a group of people with learning disabilities to produce their very own musical (complete with red carpet premiere) and encouraged patients with Alzheimer’s to sing their heart out.
We can work with any group that wants to create and loves a challenge, and can offer;
Workshops
Training
Guidance
Specialist equipment
Venues
We’ve been doing this for thirty years now and thanks to Arts Council funding we’ve still got an appetite for more.
Our Approach
We firmly believe that to get the best out of you, we have to give the best of ourselves.
This approach has worked well for us over the years and we have found that our zest for creativity and fun tends to rub off on the groups we work with.
Whenever we take on something new, we listen carefully to ensure we gain a good understanding of what each individual community needs.
We are friendly and encouraging and have excellent organisational and project management skills which help us to manage a variety of projects successfully.
We are also pretty good at networking.
Here are some of the many organisations we have worked with over the years:
National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB),
Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust
The National Media Museum and the British Film Institute.
The Alzheimer’s Society
Many county councils
Yorkshire Dance
Get Moving
Community and Youth Services
CYC – Connecting Youth Culture
Rural Stress Information Network
Why do we do that? Well, we believe that much of our work feeds into and compliments the work of other organisations so we work together to produce the best results.
We have built up an enviable little black book full of contacts and have a strong pool of artists to call upon whenever we need help.
And we have developed links with the wider European community through our work.
Have you heard of international network for contemporary performing arts (IETM)? Well, it’s a network for people and organisations like ours which has enabled us to form links with other organisations all over Europe. There is more info here http://ietm.org/ if you need it but basically the IETM does what it says on the tin.
If you like the sound of what we do, call us on 01943 607030
Other Projects
Here are some of the other projects we manage;
ArtERY Live - the group responsible for firing up communities in the East Riding of Yorkshire, providing live entertainment and cinema to isolated communities.
http://www.blaize.uk.net/articles/18/1/Artery/Page1.html
Cine North - the group which enables you to watch big screen films like American Hussle in your local village hall in North Yorkshire. Your job is to turn up with the popcorn. Our job here at Blaize is to work with the National Media Museum, Screen Yorkshire and the British Film Institute which give us Lottery Funding to make it all happen.
http://www.cinenorth.co.uk/about.php
SECRET HOTEL
Secret Hotel creates audience-based, participatory performing art – experiences which are sensuous and at the same time stimulating for the intellect. We view Secret Hotel as a spacious ”place” with multiple and diverse ”rooms”.
At present our focus is to heighten the awareness towards our surroundings. We do this by investigating connections between us and the world around us. Inspired by the Deep Ecology philosophy, we ask ‘what happens if there is no difference between culture and nature?’.
Our work is often site-specific, but it can also be a dancing lecture in the gym-hall of your school, a walk in a landscape or something else. We wish to extend the notion of ‘theatre’ which we partly do by viewing the audience as guests and as co-creators. Our work can also be summed up in: ”Pleasantly awkward and surprising meetings 1:1”
Secret Hotel was founded in 1999 by director and dramaturg Christine Fentz and dramaturg Synne Behrndt with the scope of creating a forum for multiple artistic investigations and meetings. Artistic director of Secret Hotel today is Christine Fentz.
Secret Hotel has toured abroad and in Denmark since 2008, and created a good nordic and international network. We are based in Aarhus, but have our own studio-space in the countryside outside Aarhus – here both residencies and performances are organised. Throughout the years we have also organised guest performances, residencies and workshops, as well as curated and produced for Danish and international artists.
The present board (2013) counts Synne Behrndt, Kjetil Sandvik, Charlotte Mors, Jacob Knudsen and Henrik Krogh. Read more about the board here.
Former board members are Pernille Møller Taasinge, Louise Fabian, Steen Madsen, Hanne Svejstrup, Jóna Ingolfsdóttir, Erik Petersen, Thomas Wiesner, Jesper Lützhøft, Kamma Siegumfeldt, Helle Trap-Friis.
OTHER SPACES (in Finnish Toisissa tiloissa) is a Helsinki based live arts collective. Founded in 2004, the group consists of artists from various art fields.
THE WORKING PRINCIPLES OF THE COLLECTIVE ARE
I continuous training
II exercise as a mode of performance
III metamorphosis as a common theme of exercises
WAYS OF WORKING
OTHER SPACES invents and develops collective physical exercises through which people can visit “other spaces”, i.e. enter in contact with the modes of being and experience other than human.
The group performs its exercises regularly in practical demonstrations and organizes public workshops for the youth and adults. Following the same principles, the group also has created also thematic, experimental performances, such as Aniara (2006), Odradek Variations (2007), Golem Variations (2011), Reindeer Safari (2012) and Car Park (2013).
EXERCISES
OTHER SPACES has invented around one hundred exercises through which we can change momentarily our mode of being. Shortest exercises last for a couple of minutes while longer ones take several hours. The exercises are based on bodily techniques and a set of rules so simple that anybody can do them.
WHY AND HOW WE WORK
OTHER SPACES implements the dream of an equal, justified form of performance. Through its activities the collective wants to reduce planetary fear and to grant hope to survive. A secret that cannot be deprived is shared with the audience.
During the nine years of the collectives existance the themes of the works have become more political and ecological. The role of the audience has developed and the performances are increasingly participatory.
PEOPLE AND FRIENDS
The members of the collective come from various fields of arts, including actors, choreographers, film directors, painters, sculptors, theatre directors, writers, dreamers and many other. The convenor of the collective is Esa Kirkkopelto, a philosopher and an artistic reasearcher.
OTHER SPACES is a founding member of PERFOMANCE CENTER (in Finnish Esitystaiteen Keskus). The Center is a meeting and working place for live arts and performance professionals, as well as their umbrella organization in Finland. www.esitystaide.fi
JGM THEATRE COMPANY
João Garcia Miguel was constituted as a company in October 2002. Since then creation and research have converge. The venue Espaço do Urso e dos Anjos was funded in Anjos, Lisbon and, thus, creating a place of reference for the presentation of cutting edge performance and visual art. The investment on a contemporary repertoire has been made, with a strong performative and plastic component, JGM also increased a number of creative partnerships and co-productions, becoming Associate Artist of O Espaço do Tempo, Casa d'Os Dias da Agua. JGM is a structure financed by Direção Geral das Artes - Governo de Portugal
João Garcia Miguel started his professional artistic activity between the late '80s and early '90s during his Fine Arts - Painting degree at FBAL - Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon. He then started an inter-disciplinary journey that led him to the performing arts where he became involved as a founder and participant in many alternative and important art collectives – these reach different artistic areas such as painting, installation and performance – denoting a concern in facing the social organization and self- management from the viewpoint of the artist. He is one of the founders of the experimental group based on performance and installation Canibalismo Cósmico – and Galeria ZDB and OLHO – Theatre Association of which he was the artistic director between 1991/2002. During his activities with OLHO he directed several plays for Porto 2001 Capital of Culture, in particular "Fábrica do Corpo Humano" and "DQ – éramos todos nobres cavaleiros…" which was co-produced by ACARTE in 2001.
In 2003 funds his own theatre company giving it his name – JGM. Garcia Miguel now starts working under his name as an artistic director, theatre director, actor and artist. By this time he also founded a new artistic and cultural venue in Lisbon, The Bear and the Angels Venue. In 2008 he was appointed Artistic Director of Teatro-Cine de Torres Vedras, a theatre owned by the municipality of Torres Vedras 40 mins away from Lisbon centre. Garcia Miguel is also affiliated in the Actor's Center, in Rome, Italy and of O Espaço do Tempo in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. Since 2002 he has been seriously involved with academic work, teaching and researching. His Master degree in Communication, Culture and Communication Technologies has led to the development of an introductory study that hybridizes visual culture and the performing arts. Since 2007, he has developed new research fields and advanced training by attending a class of PhD in theater and visual arts trying to deepen his studies at the University of Alcala de Henares and the University of Granada and now a days in FBAUL Faculdades de Belas Artes de Lisboa. This work as an artist- researcher has been regularized and monitored by the various professional practices deepening them and harmonizing them. And this is his new and most recent challenge.
Garcia Miguel's main artistic work features is the rewriting and interpretation of classic texts and biographies, including Brecht, Cervantes, Chekov, Jean Genet, Peter Handke, Fernando Pessoa, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Strindberg, Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol and Virginia Woolf, in addition to the production of original texts. In the last few years Garcia Miguel has collaborated with artists and performers such as Andres Beladiez, Alberto Lopes, Anton Skrypiciel, Carlos Pimenta, Chema Leon, Clara Andermatt, Edgar Pêra, Francisco Rocha, Lucia Sigalho, Luis Guerra, João Fiadeiro, João Brites, Michael Margotta, Miguel Borges, Miguel Moreira, Nuno Cardoso, Rui Gato, Rui Horta, Sara Ribeiro, Steve Bird and Steve Denton amongst others. His work has been exhibited in France, England, Walles, Germany, Senegal, Norway and Spain, where he was awarded in 2008 with the Prize FAD Sebastià Gasch. Since 1995 Garcia Miguel has regularly presented his work in the most important theatre venues of the country. Disrupção (1995) CCB, Muda (1997) TNSJ/PONTI, Zona (1999) TeCA, Anoz (2000) CCB, DQ (2001) Teatro Rivoli, Dia do Desassossego (2002) CAM/ACARTE Gulbenkian, Special Nothing (2003) ACARTE Gulbenkian, Ruínas (2005) TeCA, Burguer King Lear (2006) TeCA, Made in Eden (2007) Teatro da Politécnica, As Criadas (2008) CCB, O Banqueiro Anarquista (2009) Teatro Maria Matos, Antígona (2009) Teatro A Comuna, Mãe Coragem (2010) CCB, The Son of Europe (2010) TeCA and Culturgest, amongst many others. He regularly presents his works on National and International Festivals such as Festival Internacional de Almada, Festival A8, P.O.N.T.I. in Porto, Citemor, in Montemor-o-Velho, Festival les Bernardines, Marseille, Festival Fringe of Edinburgh, Festival de Almagro, Festival AltVigo, MadFeria de Madrid, etc...
Garcia Miguel is characterized by his taste for risk, for the provocation, the obscure deepness, and the enlightenment of crossing boundaries, the enchanted machinery, the baroque conceptualism and sophisticated sense of humour. All of this gave him his nickname of The Bear. He uses contradiction as a methodological element. He puts himself frequently in antagonistic positions as an instrumental resource for the development of aesthetic perspectives. He seeks a theatre that works like a hallucinogenic. He differentiates himself through the utopia that theatre must serve to change the private world of those who still have the chance and ability to enjoy theatre as an art form, providing them with inner experiences, developing perceptions that allow for the expansion of reality.
The Non Prophet Organisation is about cultural activism in a (rural) community context, in particular through live performance and documentary. We’re concerned about the social conditioning of mass culture through mass-media entertainment in a consumer society; the waste of human and natural resources and how we can resist this destructive evolution through a festival that celebrates life.
The Non Prophet festivals are gatherings of local and international performance artists, theatre and filmmakers collectively considered as “artivists” – artists who are social activists, concerned about the socio-economic welfare of the earth’s natural and human resources. We’re interested in collaborating with other artivists and every-day experts* to create entertainment to reinvigorate the socio-economic and ecological structure of our community. Through our Arts festival of live performance, site specific projects, documentary, community TV and radio we wish to entertain and effectively communicate with our local and global community to address cultural issues that concern us all.
Our hope is to help our natural and human resources to flourish within our locality by being a cultural hub for the various community organizations and infrastructures already in place and together create a representative voice that addresses the cultural needs of humanity.
The rural community is a microcosm reflecting our global macrocosm. In this digital age of multi-media and alternative theatrical practices there is a window of opportunity to recreate entertainment and how we produce it: What we’re proposing is to some extent a revolution to the origins of theatrical entertainment in the Dionysian festivals where the community played an active role in celebrating life.
We will be working on a local and international level with a global outreach through the World Wide Web. We already have envisaged a number of performance projects working with like-minded international and local artists and festivals such as Scarlattine Teatro & Il Giardino delle Esperidi Festival in Italy, Other Spaces in Finland and Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival in Ireland who are already working at local level to make the world a better place.
If you would like to know more about us or participate in any shape or form in The Non Prophet Organisation and Festivals please feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to welcome and accommodate you.
*Distinguished by the participation of non-professional performers or so-called ‘everyday experts’ talking about their own lives. This is a theatre of performers who are not actors, but specialists in particular spheres of life: ‘professionals of a theatre of the real world’ who are sometimes paid, sometimes volunteering, sometimes unaware they are performing for others.
Das Letzte Kleinod
The international ensemble Das Letzte Kleinod (The Last Treasure) develops performances about places and their stories. An unoccupied island, a cold storage house or a harbour quay become the sites of unusual theatre performances. Das Letzte Kleinod continues to present their work in Germany, Europe and overseas.
