How to use this e-book

“In any movement towards liberation it will be necessary to deny the normative authority of the dominant language”

(Seamus Heaney)23

This documentation cannot be, as it were, value neutral. It must recognise first the hegemonic tendencies of the English language. English was the main administrative language of the CREACTORS project, and it is the main language of this e-book, because it happens, as a result of colonial histories, to be a common meeting point in a globalised world. However, it was not the sole language for the project’s creative work, which was rich in its linguistic and cultural complexity. We wanted to reflect this in the e-book, and so have chosen to keep the Umbrella Stories in their original languages - the languages in which their authors chose to write them.

The main sections of the book deal with the training work we undertook in each of the project locations: Paris, Bologna and Dublin. Each of these, plus the shorter fourth section called Stockholm, begins with an “Abbecadario” or ABC, describing how the participants from each organisation saw themselves. These pieces were written by Nicola Bonazzi of Teatro dell’Argine in response to interviews with project participants in Bologna, working in the language of the partner organisation. We have reproduced them here with English translations, and there are also links to hear them performed in their original language. The Fence, based in Sweden, operates as an international network, and had a more lateral project role: so its ABC is in the common project language, English. We hope these creative elements give a taste of the project’s multilingual cocktail.

At the heart of each section is an account of the Intercultural Devising Practices offered by each partner, together with images from and around their training workshop, and comments from the reports written by participants in response to the training. We have deliberately placed the methodologies, images and commentary together so as to generate dialogues 24 between them, with the intention of provoking our readers, particularly those wanting to apply the practices in their own work, to further thought and development. This dialogic approach is at once dramatic, intercultural and democratic; and we hope it will prove empowering.

Each account of the training methodologies is complemented by a discussion of a production that was rooted in that approach, and by other contextual materials that relate the approach to wider intercultural contexts and discourses. In theatre, context is everything.

The e-book’s Afterword is a conversation between Michael Walling and Ariane Mnouchkine, which took place in 2004, but which could in retrospect be regarded as providing the seed of the CRE-ACTORS project. This previously unpublished conversation offers further possibilities for thinking through devised theatre as a response to an increasingly intercultural European space.

Seamus Heaney: The Redress of Poetry. London, Faber, 1995 p.723

Because the Paris workshop took place on the Cartoucherie stage in the presence of the set for L’ÎLE D’OR, prior 24 to the production’s opening, the opportunities for photography were more limited than elsewhere. 26

Song Ru Hui in CONSUMED (Border Crossings) Photo: Richard Davenport

“The border crosser… goes between the living and the dead, between eras, between different circles, between the different ‘houses’.”

(Hélène Cixous)

“Rien n'est, tout devient”

[“Nothing is, everything becomes”] (Aimé Césaire: UNE TEMPÊTE)

1. PARIS

• ABC - Théâtre du Soleil • Introduction to the Théâtre du Soleil • Intercultural Devising Practices: Paris Training -

Dominique Jambert and Vincent Mangado • A Reflection from The Fence - Jonathan Meth • “A Place of Exile and Welcome” - L’Île d’Or /

Kanemu-jima - Rosalind Fielding (Border Crossings) • Lepage au Soleil - an online discussion

Duccio Bellugi-Vannuccini in LE DERNIER CARAVANSÉRAIL (Théâtre du Soleil) Photo: C.H. Bradier