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Met de voorstelling Fanfare de Wetering hoopt het fanfare corps meer jonge frisse nieuwe muzikanten aan te trekken.

Naast dit “Wetering”-project wordt er gewerkt aan een nieuw jeugdopleidingtraject, een intercultureel percussieproject en een community-art project in verzorgingshuizen.

Actieplan Cultuurbereik

Fentener van Vlissingen Fonds

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by Eugène van Erven
(NOTE: all translations from ‘In the Name of the Fathers’ are mine and are based on the unpublished script from 21 April 2007.)

Community art is currently attracting much attention from policy makers, politicans and from agents in the arts world. Because of its many guises there is unclarity as to what exactly it is and how it can be understood. In this essay, I will explore a so-called ‘hard-core’ community theatre project by drawing on two concepts — the ‘dialogic’ and the ‘intracultultural’ — which I believe shed light on hidden layers of meaning in these kinds of theatrical enterprises. I use the term ‘hard-core’ (or ‘community-driven’) to refer to projects in which professional theatre makers are invited by community residents to help them turn their personal experiences into as good a play as the circumstances allow and in which they themselves perform. In these enterprises, I contend, a much greater dialogical intensity occurs than in ‘soft-core’ (or ‘concept-driven’) projects, which work with a priori artistic concepts and where the involvement of community participants is consequently lower.

One of the great challenges for fairly validating community-based theatre productions is the necessity to adopt a longitudinal and multidisciplinary perspective that draws simultaneously on social sciences and humanities. On the surface, it would seem easier to measure the quality of this art form in purely social terms, by counting and measuring (Trienekens, 2006; Mak, Steketee and Tan, 2006; Oud and Oostdam, 2007), but these types of validation are problematic. For one thing, a direct rapport between community art initiatives and improved living conditions in an area is difficult to substantiate. This is why Matarasso proposes a knowledge-based rather than an evidence-based approach to validating community arts (2008). A knowledge-based approach documents and analyzes how community art processes work and in doing so considers the immediate context, the impact on participants ánd artists, the arts methodology, the ethics of artistic decision making, as well as how the people for whom it was intended respond to the resulting work of art. Such a multidimensional investigation also yields a more comprehensive picture than a conventional art critical approach. The latter tends to focus exclusively on the finished product, applies criteria of excellence that have been handed down through ages of western aesthetic philosophy, and foregrounds an individual artist’s autonomy. When considering participatory community performances through such a unifocal lens, one fails to appreciate the complex collective processes that precede production and the dialogical interactions that form the very essence of this context-sensitive way of creating art. The unfortunate result is that conventional commentators dismiss community art as ‘failed art’ (Kester, 2004, pp. 10-11), or regard it as successful by a social intervention standard but flawed in terms of aesthetics
(Jackson, 2005, p. 1).

Both Kester and Jackson point to Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic as crucial to a more appropriate critical framework for understanding community art. Although Kester specifically refers to visual arts projects and Jackson to audience response in educational theatre, their work creates space for incorporating process within critical considerations of community performance. Bharucha’s critique of the term ‘intercultural’, and of the alternative he coined ‘intracultural’, provides a further conceptual tool for analyzing community performances that involve participants from diverse backgrounds. He offers very precise perspectives on the speaking subjects in these intersubjective aesthetic conversations (Bharucha, 2001, pp. 3-8). Below, I will attempt to mobilize this conceptual arsenal in a critique of In the Name of the Fathers, a theatre production created with and performed by and for residents of Laakkwartier in The Hague. It premiered in June of 2007, continued to tour in Holland through May 2008 and involved thirteen men from eight different cultural backgrounds, ranging in age from 20 to 75 and in social classification from working class to middle class intellectuals.

• For the first phase of the project, Güner developed and produced a play with and about three generations of Turkish immigrants in Overvecht. The project was entitled ‘Familie a la Turca’ and was a great success. It continued to tour through 2008 and into 2009. You can watch a short clip of the process by clicking here. He is now continuing with a new project with youngsters from the village of Maartensdijk, under the smoke of Overvecht. It will premiere in April 2009 under the title ‘Flight’.
• Tessa created a visual arts project in the neighborhood of Zuilen, involving the unique window sill culture of this working-class part of Utrecht. It premiered in September 2007 during the community art cultural Sunday, Kunst in mijn buurt 2. Watch a video impression of the entire festival, including Tessa’s project:

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In 2008 Tessa expanded on her earlier experiences and developed a photography project that she implemented in June. She is now working on a video project in Zuilen, involving the inhabitants of one particular street.

• Erik worked on a project with bouncers in Utrecht’s night life. It never came to complete fruition.
• Anouk researched and wrote a script with and about teenage mothers. It was produced as ‘Meisjesstad’ [’Girls’ Town’] in April 2008. She is now working on a new project with migrant women in the neighbourhood of Lombok.

Opera Flat 2 was a new production of YO! Opera in the multi-cultural neighbourhood of Overvecht. It involved residents of a highrise apartment building at the Faust Dreef and children of a nearby primary school. The project started in early March 2007. It built on the earlier experiences of Opera Flat 1 (in 2005), the Opera ‘Water’ (which also involved primary school children, but more like extras than as contributing participants, and the opera/sound installation ‘Kuil’ [’Pit’] (2006).

Watch a video registration of the Kuil process:

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‘Kuil’ also worked on a pre-established concept - an opera on extinct animals composed and performed by professional artists - but with built-in space for children’s participation. The children’s contributions consisted of poems and sound effects of extinct animals and footprints in plaster. But the writing process proved too abstract for many of them, partly because there was not enough time for this activity.

Watch the reaction of one of the teachers regarding ‘Water’ and ‘Kuil’:

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To prepare the children better for the writing process, this time more space was allowed for drama lessons that would stimulate their imagination. In April and May 2007, these drama and writing workshops were held with kids aged 8 - 10 at the Grote Trekdreef primary school. It resulted in the creation of original librettos for 1-minute operas. On 11 May 2007, the children handed them over to 25 student-composers from 9 Dutch conservatories.

Watch a video registration of the Opera Flat process up to and including the ritual handover:

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All these composers finished writing the music for these librettos by mid July and after the summer holidays they started rehearsing the mini operas with student opera singers. The day before the YO Opera Festival, the composers and singers gave a try out at the Grote Trek primary school.
Watch video:

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Opera Flat 2 was a good example of a ’soft-core’ community art project, one which is driven by a pre-established artistic concept (1-minute opera in a door opening) but with participatory space for residential input. As you can see in the above video, the process began in March 2007, when YO! artistic director Anthony Heidweiller and YO! education officer Debora Patty went door to door in the Faust Dreef to recruit residents willing to host a singer and participate in a residents choir. This process continued through April, when on Saturday the 7th Heidweiller held an impromptu concert in the mailbox lobby of the Faust Dreef to further enthuse the residents. Throughout this period, the children from the nearby Grote Trekdreef primary school worked on their librettos, handing them over to the composers in May. Barring a brief video report from one of the composers (which was screened at the primary school before the summer), the composition and rehearsal process took place beyond the children’s scope of vision (and experience). They were only reconnected to the project on 2 November 2007 when the mini-operas were presented as a try out in the classrooms. Several school children and a few of their parents came to see the show on Saturday 3 November.

Watch impression of the performances on November 3:

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In general, children were proud of seeing their creations produced in this manner, but some were disappointed that they did not get to perform themselves (which they had expected when the project was first presented to them). Those criticisms will undoubtedly be processed in the sequel, Opera Flat 3, which will go into development this coming fall.

Watch a video of how Jani and his mother experienced the performance:

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View the video.

Read the conference report of Who Cares written by Eugene van Erven (in Dutch)

Kunst in mijn Buurt 2007 

One of these activities included a seminar on ethics in community art on 9 September 2004. Here you can download a PDF file that contains excerpts from a report by Louise Lachapelle about this event. In this text she critically explores the values and motives influencing and guiding artists working with and for community settings. The seminar was organized by Myriam Berthelet and Devora Neumark, who recently participated at the Rotterdam International Community Arts Festival from 26 through 30 March 2008. In the seminar, participants reflected on their personal values and how these relate to intentions, behavior and decisions at each stage of their creative process.

Community Art or Finding the Way Back Home?

Zuidpleintheater, Zuidplein 60, Rotterdam // vrij 28 tm zo 30 maart

TUNE IN TO TENANTSPIN! (klik op het plaatje voor de live stream)

ICAF presents LIVE webcast:

Het Liverpoolse Tenantspin maakt Community TV. Op het ICAF 2008 zal Tenantspin vanuit een geïmproviseerde studio met behulp van festivalbezoekers het programma verslaan.
Daarnaast zal Tenantspin op zaterdagmiddag 29 maart samen met bewoners van bejaardentehuis ‘Simeon en Anna’ een Talkshow TV-programma webcasten. Bezoekers van deze presentatie kunnen live kennis nemen van deze talkshow en alles er om heen, zoals gesprekken met de makers.

Tenantspin is a Liverpool based Community TV Channel. At ICAF, Tenantspin will report on the festival from an improvised studio in the lobby, involving festival visitors in the camera work. In addition, Tenantspin will produce a Community TV talk show with residents of retirement home ‘Simeon and Anna’, which is located near the Zuidplein. Visitors to this live broadcast can see how this kind of community television is created first-hand, and can ask questions to the makers and the participants.

Tijden:
Vrijdag 28 maart // 12h – 13h
Zaterdag 29 maart // 15.30h – 17h
Zondag 30 maart// 12h -13h

TUNE IN TO TENANTSPIN!

Webcast TIP: webcast from Prison Theatre in Durban, Zuid Afrika. Tune in half April! www.community-art.nl

This marks the first time that a group of men has received this award, but the jury, composed of only women, was unanimous. The award was officially presented to the actors on March 6th by the vice mayor for Welfare, Health and Emancipation, Mr. Bert van Alphen.

(more…)

International performers include:

• Hector Aristizabal (Colombia, Los Angeles)
• The Grenada Playback Theatre (West Indies)
• Sami Gathi (Kenya)

Dutch performers include:

• Laaks Wijktheater with ‘In the Name of the Fathers’ (see current research for more information)
• Fort der Verbeelding
• Rotterdams Wijktheater with ‘Under Cover’
• Stut with ‘Chamber Questions’ (in Ondiep)
• Growing Up in Public with ‘Exit’
• Sering with ‘Strange Grandmothers’
• A special edition of Roots and Routes
• and many more…

This is the written version of a lecture delivered at the Lift Festival, Riverside Studios, July 3, 2001
In this presentation Rustom Bharucha (see biography below) reflects critically on the gap between past and future, he begins by asking a question - ‘where are we at this point of time?’ - posited at a juncture in time (the start of the ‘new millennium’), a moment of restructuring for Lift (the process of ‘un-framing’ the biennial festival format having begun) and a point of review and revaluation for himself. He evokes a journey with different paths taken, unpredictable and serendipitous; with divergence but also convergence.

It’s a pleasure to return to Lift. In 1993, Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal had invited me to speak on ‘Somebody’s Other’—a provocative title that compelled me to make my first articulation in public on the subject of religious sectarianism or ‘communalism’ (as it is known in the subcontinent). Over the years I’ve been witnessing the normalization of this phenomenon within the growing hegemony of the Hindu Right in India, and I’ve also been observing the different manifestations of sectarianism burgeoning in different parts of the world. A sectarianism that is increasingly more imbricated in the larger narrative of globalization.

In response to this collusion of globalization and communalism, I’ve written a new book The Politics of Cultural Practice, where I find myself positioned today at a very different point in time from 1993, when Theatre and the World had just come out. Indeed, Lift itself is positioned at a very transitional point in time, as it prepares to restructure the format of the ‘festival’ in which it has gained tremendous success over the last twenty years. In this lecture, I would like to reflect on a certain convergence in our agendas today, a meeting point, which does take me by surprise, because Lift and I haven’t really kept in touch in the intervening years. We’ve gone our separate ways, and yet, we meet up again, rather like travellers in a journey that cannot be fully predicted. So I’d like to reflect on journeys, differing routes, meeting points, and divergences.

Let me begin by throwing open a question for all of us: Where are we at this point in time? Speaking for myself, I would say that I find myself at a very critical juncture that cannot be explained through the millennium (if indeed it was the millennium), which has already passed, leaving you in London with an empty dome—a very telling sign indeed of the ‘sound and fury’ animating spectacles of the state which amount to ‘nothing’. I think we need to interpret this juncture in time more critically, more introspectively, as a ‘gap’ between past and future.

Here I draw on the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s remarkable book Between Past and Future, in which she calls our attention to a parable by Kafka, which she re-interprets as a ‘thought-landscape’. In this landscape, we are presented with a battleground—a ‘fighting-line’—in which the protagonist is positioned in the middle of two forces—time past and time future—converging onto him. Arendt hypothesizes that had he not inserted himself in the middle, these two forces, rather like missiles in a Star Wars narrative, might have clashed and neutralized each other. Given this grim possibility of extinction, Kafka’s protagonist dreams of jumping out of the fighting-line, so that he can assume the position of a celestial umpire looming over the two warring antagonists. But this is a transcendental solution, and it is not agreeable to Arendt, and I daresay it is not agreeable to us, because we can’t opt out of where we are positioned today—the juncture is far too critical.

local partner
Stut Theatre

Personal site: homepage.mac.com/matarasso

Keynote speech François Matarasso - 23 November 2006
François Matarasso’s reflections on the ‘Art in my Backyard’ conference, 23-26 November 2006

(1) THE OPERA FLAT 2 (YO! Opera)
(2) LIVING WITH DIFFERENCES (ZIMIHC/HKU/Theaterwerk)
(3) IN THE NAME OF THE FATHERS (The Hague, Father Centre)

Periodically, we visited rehearsals and other activities related to these projects, wrote updates and published video reports on this site, so cyber surfers could follow the developments from week to week, or month to month.

Stefan van Hees (1969) was born and raised in Rotterdam. After a technical education he changed to profesional theatre training in Eindhoven, where he graduated in 1997. He immediately joined Rotterdams Wijktheater and has been working there ever since as head of technique and design and as a theatre director. He has been involved in Rotterdams wijktheater productions as Fawaka, Jebbel, Players, Full Colour, Crime City, Pendrecht, and the two Dry Dock productions. Most recently, he has been working on Hand in Hand, a play with and for FC Feyenoord supporters.

National partners
Rotterdams Wijktheater

Jana graduated from the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 1992 she completed dance training in Japan under Min Tanaka. In 1998 and 1995 she prepared solo acts for the Bread and Puppet Circus in the USA. In 1994 she acted as assistant director to Peter Schumann for the B&P production of The Day is Morning, Noon, and Evening, in 1995 as choreographer and assistant director in the performance commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Dachau, and as a performer in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. With Jan Sedal and Peter Schumann she developed the show They Sat Across the Table and Ate in 1996. From 1997 she has concurrently worked as a playwright, director, and performer with Petr Nikl: Solstice (Johannesburg, Kyoto, London, Brussels, Belgrado), In the Mirror, Through the Mirror, Secondhand Dreams. She is the co-author of the script for Archa Theatre’s Vainly Questioning Heaven, for which she also worked as choreographer and assistant director to J.A. Pitínsk. She further directed for Archa Theatre: Ark 2000-Theatre in Motion (2000), The Good Anna (2000), Tender Buttons (2002), Chat-Dangerously Easy Liaisons (2003), KarMa Tearoom-A Spiritual Horror (2004), Second Hand Twilight (Bloemfontein, South Africa; Summer 2004). In the summer of 2005 her show Chat-Dangerously Easy Liaisons was presented in Tokyo. In 2005 her show At 11:20am I Will Be Leaving You! performed at a refugee camp featuring residents of the camp alongside professional artists; 8 performances of the show attracted an audience totaling 1600. She is now directing the play Dreaming.Andersen, which features street artists alongside a Chinese singer and one of the most impressive contemporary Czech composers.

Between 1997 and 2006 she created a number of performances that served as a reflection on the social problems in the Czech Republic, which after the historic changes of 1989 continues to exist in a state of flux. In 1997, together with visual artist Petr Nikl, she initiated a series of projects that developed cooperation between Czech and South African artists who live and work in the townships outside of Johannesburg. Across the cultural and social divide, they discovered experiences that they had in common as people living in societies undergoing severe social and political changes.

Since this cooperation began, various shows have been developed and presented in the Czech Republic and South Africa, where the work was notable for the fact that it was deliberately performed for black audiences, who normally do not attend theatre. This project was documented in Pavel Kouteck’s television film ‘Come Closer, Candy’.

Jana considers it crucial to such projects that everyone works together in the development of a performance, because it results in a situation where the audience cannot recognize who of the performers are professionals and who are not.

contact Zed books: http://zedbooks.co.uk/books.asp?catid=275

Facilitator: Eugène van Erven (Utrecht University / PSAU / Community Art Lab)
Speakers: Donna Risa (Stut), Hans Lein (RWT), Cees Bavius (BAF), Jacques Micquel (Théâtre du Fil), Mia Grijp (Sering).

Stut: ‘Máxima Comes’

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This session is about community artists and their relationship with community participants. Directors from different community theatre groups from the Netherlands, Belgium and France explain their way of working while creating community art performances. The session began with a documentary made by the Community Art Lab about the creative process of the Stut production ‘Máxima Comes’. You can watch an abbreviated version of this video below. For reasons of privacy we have left out footage pertaining to a conflict between two actresses, which caused director Donna Risa many headaches before it was solved a few days before the play opened on November 18th, 2006.

After watching the film, several people in the audience asked how participants felt about being filmed. This is obviously the major challenge of documenting these kinds of processes. On the one hand, one wants to create as frank a picture of the process as possible - including crises and clashes - but on the other hand one has to respect people’s privacy at all cost. The video clip below was cleared by Donna and the actors of ‘Máxima Comes’ before we published it on this site. They understand that its purpose is to provide aspiring community artists with insight into the difficulties of managing complex community-based processes. During this session, Donna also explained that in principle the participants are proud to tell their stories and are, in a way, capable of laughing at themselves and their predicaments. Having audiences laugh at their antics is, therefore, no problem for them. Often, audiences consist of neighbours or people in similar positions and their laughter is generated by identification, not by ridicule or a sense of superiority.

Local partner
YO! Opera Festival & Laboratory

International partner
Caja Lúdica

Recent interview in Performance Paradigm (February, 2007)

What kind of community art research do we need?

Between Past and Future: Re-imagining ‘our times’ in theatre today

Watch the stream of the interview with Rustom Bharucha

Bharucha on Slavery

National partner
Rotterdams Wijktheater

Apply now for opportunities in Guatemala and El Salvador that begin in January 2008.  Candidates must be proficient in Spanish.  For info and application, visit www.artcorp.org/artist_placements.html.
Deadline for full application is May 7, 2007.  Contact Suzanne at jenkins@nebf.org

The projects
(1) Yo! Opera has established creative partnerships with two schools in Utrecht, the Rietendak primary school and the Utrecht Zuid College, a secondary vocational school. Both schools are located in relatively low-income neighbourhoods (Ondiep and Kanaleneiland, respectively) and attract many children of non-Dutch backgrounds. Yo! involved these children in aspects of the creation of Kuil [Pit], a mini opera and visual art/new media installation about extinguished animal species. The goal of this partnership is twofold: (1) the personal development of the children and (2) artistic innovation through partnership with the children.

(2) Growing Up: once a year, director Jeroen Kriek makes a performance with students from the Rietveld secondary school in Utrecht. Participants are selected through audition. The goal of this creative partnership is both to attempt to change the students through theatre and to change Jeroen Kriek as an artist through the partnership with these young people.

The partnerships
Yo! Opera’s artists work directly with the children themselves, but also prepare material that the school teachers can use to prepare the children for the interaction with the artists. After their first project with the Rietendakschool, Water in 2005, Yo! decided to hire an education officer, Debora Patty, who has become indispensable in these creative partnerships, which also include work in the neighbourhoods surrounding the schools, and involving parents. As the following response of the school’s director and the liaising teacher indicate, projects such as Pit can also put stress on the regular school activities, however.

Like other Utrecht-based arts organizations, Growing Up in Public ‘adopted’ a high school a few years ago. Once a year they make a performance with youngsters attending Rietveld College, a high school located on the edge of Overvecht. Their latest production made in collaboration with the school was Exit, a multimedia theatrical collage about male-female and intercultural interactions among the students there. These kinds of projects allow the company to infiltrate at every layer of the school. The shows also enthuse new students to participate in future productions, which, taken together, form an informal collective history of the school.

The processes
Yo!’s Pit is a performance about a man who is looking for the last surviving animal on earth. The Rietendakschool children all adopted an own animal of their own, for whom they wrote a poem, created a clay footprint, and a sound. The process lasted two months, with the artists meeting the children once or twice a week. Separately, teenagers at vocational technical college Utrecht Zuid, carved the names of extinct animals on woodblocks, which served as pedestals for the footprints in the sound and visual art installation that served as set for a ten-minute opera. This opera was created separately from the school processes, something which Anthony Heidweiller, Yo’s artistic director, somewhat regrets in retrospect. Likewise, the children and vocational college students could perhaps have been involved more in the digital processing of the soundscape, which the Polish composer now created in isolation.

Growing Up’s Jeroen Kriek treats the high school students he works with the same way as professional actors. They rehearse in the Growing Up studio after school hours, thus providing a neutral space away from school power structures. Jeroen’s exercises are physically quite strenuous, but he also builds in Buddhist-type meditations to increase the students’ concentration levels. Through this work, he establishes positive group dynamics and trust that allow him to embark on long, open-ended improvisations that form the basis of the resulting script. The attitude of the students changes substantially through the process. As the following video illustrates, they appreciate being taken seriously, being treated as professional artists, and being given responsibility for the show.

——-

I was born in Holland, in Velsen. When I was fifteen years old, the boy I was madly in love with was involved in theatre. He had long hair. For me he represented a different way of life. My parents forbade me both the boy with long hair and the theatre workshops. Being Dutch did not make my family open or understanding, and those were very different times. (more…)

(based on reports by Barbara Borgman & Noëlle van den Brand)
Speakers: Hooman Sharifi and Lotte van den Berg

Introduction:
The main question this discussion addressed was: What is community Art? What is its quality, and what are critical comments one could make about this kind of art?

In an earlier interview Anke Ottema conducted with Hooman Sharifi on 18 May 2006, she asked him what he thought of community art. He responded polemically:

‘I think that the best starting point is that I hate communities. So I would do anything possible to create dis-communities.I have no problem when people call my work community art. Of course I have to know what do they mean with it, their definition of it. And than I can argue in favour or against it. Even if people call this not art at all, I don’t care. It is your business, I don’t care, I spend very little time worrying about what people call what I do. I think, of course, that community art itself is important as a way of working. We could discuss the artistic level in it, which is much more interesting. How do you work with the community that you are involved with and why should they involve themselves in this community and do arts?

If I go and work with a community it is probably because I want to know what is in this community. What is moving, what is stuck? I would want to enter into a dialogue. Just to find out what is going on, to get new ways of thinking. I would get shocked probably by somebody, and go: “wow you think like this?” or, “this is your life?”. And hopefully my intervention will then bring a new way of thinking. I don’t mean that I want to convert them, but to make them enter some kind of dialogue. I think that in this community art way of working there is always much more dialogue than doing artwork. Even though you know that it should look like art once they get on stage.

What are you planning to do in this direction?
I am planning projects with older people. I just want to sit and talk with them for days to get them to talk about their memories and I want them to whisper it into the ear of the public, that’s it. When you are eighty you have dealt with al lot of things: war, industrial revolution, material changes in their houses. So they have a lot of visual and verbal memories that are nice to hear.

And what would be the role of medium dance?
I don’t know and I don’ t care. As long as the idea is good enough, it will communicate something. I will definitely talk about movement, about time and about type of bodies, and then, as far as I am concerned, it is already dance.
Unfortunately we are unable to reconstruct verbatim comments by the two speakers. The following is a distillation of what they said. First, they discussed the complexity of the term ‘’community”…

What is a community?
Who decides people form a community in the first place? Must it be a conscious decision to form one? And is being together in one geographical place enough to form a community? Must people agree on something ideological or resemble each other ethnically to form a community? Must everybody agree to be a member of that community? Or is an individual feeling of belonging to a group sufficient? Is a shared opinion about an issue essential to a community? Is spending time together to create shared experiences necessary to form a community? And does the kind of experience make a difference in the question of a community’s identity? Does the diversity of the members of a community make a difference? Or do people only start sensing they belong to a community when they are confronted with outsiders? And does the diversity of the members of the community then make a difference at that point? Is a community not just the same thing as a target group?

Many questions to which the two speakers did not really have concrete answers. Then they moved on to the attractions and drawbacks of community art.

Read Rustom Bharucha’s comments on the complexities of the term ‘community'’ from an Indian point of view

During the production process, community art projects fulfill a natural, personal need of people to belong, it helps to construct a community’s identity (or to help people think about what that might be), and to bridge differences.
The process points out differences between the people in a community, but also helps to form a group at the same time.
When the artist is honest about the role the people play in the creation of this kind of art - who controls what? - it can be a fulfilling process for both parties.

During community art performance, audiences are confronted with other communities or representatives of theirs. Performances give a voice to the communities, its people and its problems. And performances can give rise to interactive communication between the community and the public.

During our festival and conference last November, Elena acted as a reporter, providing feedback on the event on the final Sunday afternoon. Read more.
 

Related links
www.multimedia.org.mk/
www.unys.edu.mk

Facilitator: Tim Prentki (University of Winchester)
Speakers: Cristina Marchán, Julia Escobar, Els van Poppel, Odak Isaiah, Sami Gathii, Berith Danse, Fre van Hoofduinen, Roel Twijnstra.
Student performers: Mareen Klijn, Maike Flick, Swaantje Nijkamp, Kristien Sonnevijlle, Sanne van Willemswaard, Maaike Kres.

Introduction
The session begins with a theatrical presentation of 7 students of the Utrecht School of the Arts about their experiences in developing countries as Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras and Kenya.

During the rest of the session, different statements explore the relation between community art, theatre for development and collective art processes.

Presentations
(1) The art collective Caja Lúdica from Guatemala claims that art is not a privilege, because ‘creativity is for everybody’. In a slide show we see how art and culture help in the social reconstruction of Guatemala after 36 years of civil war.

(2) Theatre group Malayerba from Ecuador has been creating theatre about exile, oppression, poverty and condemnation since the late seventies. They connect these themes with the social-political reality of the country to present many stories that have to be told. Their improvisation-based stories, created collectively, are performed on the street sas wel as indoors. Malayerba collaborates with activist organisations, scientists, lawyers and social workers to face the problems in the community, such as domestic violence against women. They also work with orphans, elderly and female prison inmates to provide them with a platform to tell their stories.

(3) Performance group K-Pag from Kenya works a lot with kids from the streets in theatre- and dance projects. They use theatre and dance as a language. Because African culture is very much based in the communities, they are very curious why the people from Overvecht (the neighbourhood where the conference is taking place) are not more involved in this community art festival here in the Netherlands. However, they are also keen to learn from the diverse cultures in the Netherlands and have already been here more often to exchange experiences and ideas with young people.

(4) Crossroad Production from Kenya feels that ‘theatre and development’ is a much better term than ‘theatre as development’ to illustrate their vision about theatre as a magnification of life. They think the human factor needs more attention. They use the the term IPSI (I for Interdisciplinary, P for Participating, S for Storytelling, I for Initiative) for their work. Storytelling is an inspiring way to explore this human factor and share other people’s values, because people’s anxieties and hopes are embodied in their stories. Interpreting stories together is also a suitable way to open children’s minds, but the most effective way to involve children in creative projects is to create an atmosphere of togetherness with singing and dancing, in which the relevant themes come forward automatically.

(5) Youth Theatre Group Waterhuis from Rotterdam works together with several local theatre groups in southern Africa. The main goal of their collaborative projects is to increase the number of people who are aware of the HIV-problem in the continent. After the shows, spectators are invited for counseling and testing. The street kids from townships work together with professional actors from South Africa and Rotterdam, and are involved in making videos about the HIV problem in collaboration with video artists and composers.

(6) Theatre Embassy from Amsterdam (Netherlands) is a platform for Dutch theatre makers who want to work in developing countries. Theatre Embassy questions why artists aren’t involved more in developmental policy and thinks the intrinsic value of this work is very high. Their vision about approaching the neighbourhoods of the world has already led to several workshops and plays, for instance about violence in Central America.

(7) Theatre group Movitep-SF from Nicaragua thinks that artists, in order to grow, have to exchange ideas and experiences throughout the world. The plays they initiate in Nicaragua about social themes are very visual, in order to reach a large amount of local people. They collaborate with all people who want to make theatre and organise discussions after the performances. Sometimes, when they are ‘fed up’ with the problems, they play Shakespeare, which also invokes much discussion afterwards. They think theatre should be more than just issue based.

Panel discussion
Most panelists agree that theatre is more and more becoming an important tool in developing countries. Much more is written about the subject as well. UNESCO and UN see theatre as useful in development as well. Despite this, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fund the projects. In the Netherlands, recently the funding of fourteen organisations were cut by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Netherlands). Likewise, other international funds give priority to medical projects. The theatre group from Guatemala asks forgiveness to the government if they won’t give any money.
Then the panelists discuss the image of the Netherlands as a ‘developing country’ (due to its lack of intercultural consciousness). The economic pressure is closing up the cultural field. In addition, most panelists agree that it is important that the Netherlands keeps initiating theatre projects in developing countries, because there is not enough discussion about theatre and development in these countries themselves.
Professional artists have to preserve the artistic quality of community theatre. But in places like Guatemala and Ecuador it is not possible to talk about subsidising the arts. And it is also unthinkable earn a living through the theatre.
A more delicate question dealt with the consequences and effects of theatre projects with westerners in developing countries. What is the use of somebody that flies in and flies out? Sustainability is the most important. It is productive if theatre makers of developing countries see productions in the Netherlands to develop their own aesthetics, or to expand their views about different art forms and working processes and create a spirit of sustainability. But it is also important to show artists from developing countries different sides of the Netherlands.

The general conclusion is that the principles of theatre and development and community art hold true everywhere in the world.

(from left to right: Saleh and Chris)

The session begins with a short performance by Iraqi performer Saleh Hassan Faris from his autobiographical monologue, Where is There?, about the complete disorientation of refugees. Read the complete script. After this, Chris Keulemans gives the floor to a number of theatre directors from Holland, the Czech Republic, France, and Italy. (more…)

Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me be frank with you:
This performance will be useless to you.
Useless to anyone.

Except to me.
To me, and those who resemble me
Those who, like me, feel the heaviness of time,
And don’t know how to kill it.
We don’t have time anymore.
All we do is pretend to kill it.
I want to dance, sing, fly,
Nothing else.

So, this performance is pointless for anyone,
No point to it, as long as we are ‘here’.
It is my story about the moon;
The moon that’s up there.
So what’s the point about sitting down here,
While everything’s happening over there?

But you’re sitting here now anyway.

You don’t remember me?
Me, who, riding on the round back of a question mark
Roamed through your mirror
Me, who forgot about my tears in your mirror…

There…
Each time I went ‘there’
I felt like I was still ‘here’

Maybe as long as I stay here
I will feel like I’m there

It’s terrible to be here
And terrible to be there

Here and there the night spreads out

The night
Black waters
So black that the moon can’t even see its reflection in it.

The moon
Has anyone of you seen the shadow of the moon?
The moon
Where is he?
Here?
There?

I’m going to be brutally frank with you here today
It’s useless to watch this performance.
It’s about my story with the moon
The moon that’s up there and you down here

There is no point in watching
As long as you are here.

Her strength lies in analyzing situations and inventing specific forms and solutions that go beyond an immediate problem. She prefers to work in places that are new to her, so that she, as an outsider, can offer a fresh look and a new perspective and where her work can become an added value. These places can be a neighborhood, a village, a psychiatric ward, any place that is alive and subject to change. She involves the people who live there, making them co-owner of the production. She is always looking for the unusual in the usual and for stories that move her, which she wants to share with a broad audience.

When she was artistic director of Dogtroep, the company produced shows in living locations like the Passengers Terminal in Amsterdam harbor, Bruges prison, Revolution Square in Moscow, and the construction site for a housing development in Leidsche Rijn under the smoke of Utrecht. In 2004, Titia founded 5e Kwartier together with Ted van Leeuwen, her partner and a musician and composer, to create community documentaries with social partners. Earlier in 2008 she and Ted completed ‘Binnenwereldbuiten’ [’inner world outside’] in the City of Delft and currently they are both working on a long-term project in the Slaughterhouse district of her hometown Haarlem.

National partner
5e Kwartier

Jos Thie

From 1991-1994 Jos Thie freelanced as a director for Dogtroep, Mini and Maxi and the musical ‘Joe’. From 1994 until 2003 he was the artistic director of Tryater and made many successful productions, such as the theatre and soccer spectacle ‘ABE’ in the Abe Lenstra Stadium in Heerenveen, ‘Peer Gynt’ in the dunes at the Oerol Festival in Terschelling, and ‘Orfeo Aqua’ on the Frisian lakes.

Since 2003 Jos Thie has again been freelancing for the National Theatre Company, the Northern Dutch Theatre company and once more last summmer in the Heerenveen soccer stadium, where he directed a large outdoor spectacle based on the city’s history entitled ‘Heeren van het Veen’ [‘Lords of the Peat’]. Recently, he was appointed artistic director of the Utrecht city theatre company Paardenkathedraal [’Horse Cathedral’].

Peter van den Hurk (1945) graduated from the Maastricht Theatre Academy in 1970. He subsequently directed theatre projects for La Mama in New York and for the Limburg Professional Theatre Ensemble GL. In 1972 he was one of the co-founders of GL2, the educational theatre company of Limburg. Since then, he has continued to direct professionally and began teaching at the Arnhem School for the Arts in 1980 where he stayed until 1992 and initiated many neighbourhood theatre projects.
In 1992 he co-founded Rotterdams Wijktheater. In 2001, 2003 and 2005 he organized the Rotterdam Wijktheater International Community Theatre Festivals, which was recently renamed International Community Arts Festival (ICAF). In 2005 he was appointed Professor (‘lector’) of Community Arts at the Rotterdam School for the Arts, a position which he combines with the artistic directorship of the very successful Rotterdam Wijktheater.

websites
more information about Peter van den Hurk (in Dutch)

national partner
rotterdams wijktheater

Paul de Vries

Local partner
Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht

She was born in Nevis, West Indies and has lived in the UK for most of her life.  She has worked in various posts using the arts in its entire genre to highlight issues of a sensitive, political, and racial nature to disadvantaged communities, primarily the Black community.  Issues addressed have included education, health, and cultural diversity in and for a number of institutions, for example, schools, arts institutions and local authority amongst other organisations.  She has sat on the Board of West Midlands Arts Council, Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Midlands Arts Centre, to name a few.

Evette has worked with Winston Farrell using Popular Theatre to develop issues relating to mental health diagnosis (in the UK) with the community and mental health professionals.  Her current PhD research is on ‘The Over Representation of Young Black Men in Mental Institutions’.  This research examines the diagnostic and assessment process with particular emphasis in values and how they impact, or indeed, it they impact, on the diagnostic process.  She will be using popular theatre to explore these issues in her field research, both in the Caribbean and the UK.

Jos Zandvliet

The performance in the prison of Bruges was the high point of Bruges Cultural Capital of Europe 2002, not in the least place thanks to the ‘jail house humming birds’, a choir of inmates organized by Jos Zandvliet. The music formed the cement that helped this group become close and served as a spiritual catalyst for the theatre project as a whole. After two months of rehearsals, the prisoners performed for fellow inmates, wardens, and festival visitors. Since then, Jos Zandvliet has set up many other prison choirs in the Netherlands.
In addition, Jos has worked with his ACCU-foundation in many villages and neighbourhoods to get communities together. He wrote and performed ‘Peace on the Square’ for the Treaty of Utrecht with 20 choirs, brass bands, an imam and the bells of the Dom tower, He direct the yearly multicultural parade ‘Patatatoe’ in Amsterdam, memorizing a social action of 1917 by handing out a ton of potatoes to passers-by. Last June, he directed the final ceremony of the Oerol festival, ‘the Rise of Liberty’, for the third time. This massive event will involve local craftsmen, brass bands, choirs and festival visitors. Together with his company ACCU he is also working on a neighborhood art project called Jalan Jalan in the Indonesian district of Amsterdam.



Since 1989 he has also done countless forum theatre projects in Holland on such themes as sexual harassment, racism, teasing, violence, emancipation, values and norms, and self-defense. His projects have included refugees, homeless people, prisoners, youths, and patients. He has been awarded the Together Social Prize in 2002 of the Province of South Holland, the Hein Roethod Prize in 2003 and RIBW Alliance Trophy 2006 for his work with the homeless and psychiatric patients.

Formaat has created a special programme for women detainees that includes scenes written by the participants themselves. These scenes pay special attention to the possible obstacles these women may encounter on their way back from the edge of society. This programme is based on the ‘Blagg’ methodology developed by James Thompson at Manchester University.

Blagg is focused on offenders, on incidents that have somehow led to judicial sanctions. Aim of the programme is to let participants themselves discover alternative behaviours that would not have led to sanctions. Blagg (or ‘Slimm’ as the method is called in its Dutch version) is an interactive drama workshop that encourages a high degree of participation. To accomplish this, Slimm/Blagg is presented first and foremost as a game that helps people reflect on norm-breaching behaviour. The emphasis is placed on playing a game, not on the drama aspect. The essence of the game is a fictional incident / offense that could have involved anyone of the participants but is not one they have actually committed themselves. This allows the participants to reflect on their lives one step away from their own reality. Step one is to create a fictional character, who becomes a member of the group. The participants are instructed to think how this character (named Johnny or Shane Slimm) could stay out of trouble. The character will also confront others who have been involved in the fictional incident, like family members, friends, but also victim(s).

This technique helps to avoid the impression that the drama programme itself is part of the sanction. The participants are not confronted with their own specific guilt, but deal with the guilt of a fictional group member, J or S. Slimm. The activity stimulates a positive atmosphere, which helps to overcome resistance. The participants are encouraged to tap into what they know how to do well rather than dwell on their failures. In addition, this technique focuses on the values and norms of the group, not on the societal norm that has been breached.

Earlier this year, Augusto Boal officially opened the new performance space of Formaat in Rotterdam. Formaat and CAL will be collaborating on the June 2008 tour of Jana Sanskriti, a large theatre of the oppressed company from Bengal, India.

website
www.formaat.org

He is also an actor, producer and theatre director. He has performed in more than fifteen plays, directed ten and produced seven. Among his productions stand out “False Chronicle of Joanna the Mad” written and directed by Miguel Sabido, “The Imploring Man” directed by Manuel Bauche Alcalde. “Oscar Wilde´s three trials” directed by Francisco Franco and produced together with OCESA, “The Door” Written and directed by Edgar Ceballos and, at present, “De Poli a Diva…y de regreso”, a play written and directed by Arturo, and performed by an actual policewoman who promotes labor rights for women.
In 1996, Arturo was awarded the Guild of Theater Journalists Prize for Best Theatre Producer. He founded and organizes the Hispano-American Pastorelas Festival, which celebrates its 14th edition this year and by means of which he promotes the integration of several local and immigrant social groups (amateurs, children, independents, and prisoners). Arturo is Executive Director of the IntegrArte Project S.A de C.V., a company dedicated to the organization and consultancy of cultural and artistic projects. It collaborates with several companies, institutions, and local and foreign governments.

He writes plays, screenplays, poetry, and novels. In 2002 he co-produced a short film in London and recently Letras Vivas published a collection of his poems, “Líneas de Madrugada”. Soon his novel “El Umbral de la Cordura” will be published as well. He has hosted several radio programs related to youth topics, among which stand out “Rollo Urbano” y “Contacto Humano con Tacto Joven” both in Televisa Radio.

Since 1999 he has been working in prisons. In May and November of 2005 he created the third edition of “Don Quixote: a Shout of Freedom”, a project that explores the influence of Cervantes on inmates of Mexican jails. It included readings of “Don Quixote” and the production of a free interpretation of the musical comedy “The Man of La Mancha” with a group of almost three hundred prisoners.

At the moment he is working on the post production of a documentary film about the Don Quixote project, he is preparing a new performance in the Center of Treatment for Smaller Violators and producing the sixth season of “De Poli a Diva… y de regreso”.

www.poryectointegrarte.com

Each year between 10,000 and 30,000 people are asking the Netherlands for protection. Every asylum seeker entering the Netherlands is first brought to a centre where they register and a first selection is made. This is called an ‘aanmeldcentrum’. After a brief initial stay at such a centre, the asylum seeker is then transferred to a so-called ‘asielzoekerscentrum’ where they await a definite answer to their asylum request. All these centres are meant to be for a short period of stay, with a maximum of seven months. In practise this period is much longer. In the Netherlands, there are approximately 80 such centres located throughout the country. The average time an asylum seeker lives in these centres is 1.5 years, but sometimes it is much longer and three years is not an exception. Asylum seekers hardly have contact with Dutch society.

www.vrolijkheid.nl

The inspiration for di Nascosto’s work with refugees came in 1996, when Henneman saw gruelling images of boat refugees from Turkish Kurdistan arriving on the coast of southern Italy. She and her Italian partner Gianni Calastri decide to go live in refugee camps for 5 months, experience what it is to be homeless among illegal aliens in Rome, and go on a risky research trip to Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The real-life stories they record during these trips become part and parcel of Teatro di Nascosto’s documentary theatre, which features Henneman, Calastri and actual refugeees as guest performers. At the moment, Teatro di Nasccosto is creating a new series of performances that include prominent politicians from Italy and London. A similar enterprise is on the drawing board for members of the European parliament.

www.teatrodinascosto.it

In 2004 Samba began to do stand-up comedy, and in 2006 he won the Leids Cabaret Festival: one of Holland’s most prestigious comedy prizes. His international and multicultural upbringing and his diverse experiences and studies in Theatre have made Samba into the inspiring, strong and talented artist that he is today.
Join him for a hilarious ride as he shares his wisdoms and experiences with you: both from Africa and abroad!

www.sambaschutte.nl

www.growingupinpublic.nl