Jonathan Chadwick, ex Artistic Director of Meeting Ground has set up a sister company to explore War Stories and other developments. For further information please visit www.aztheatre.org.uk or e-mail info@aztheatre.org.uk

War Stories Project.

For Background information on War Stories

For information on the workshop which took place on 11th July 1999

War Stories

War Stories An international exploration of theatre and war

This project is a partnership between five theatre companies: Meeting Ground Theatre Company (England)
Theatre de l'Opprime (France)
Masrah el Tedj (Algeria)
Theatre for Everyone(Palestine)
Growing Up Theatre (Yugoslavia)

in association with Sibiu International Theatre Festival (Romania)

Supporters:
William Gaskill Harriet Walter Maggie Steed Ariel Dorfman Caryl Churchill

Aims
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The aim is to create a programme of encounters, workshops, spectacles, presentations and performances which will explore the roots, causes and impact of war and add to a common pool of wisdom and knowledge that will contribute to its eventual abolition.

At the same time the project will be an investigation of theatre, its capabilities, its forms of expression and its potential.

Out of this will come a series of theatre pieces, some of which may be co-productions. It will be a seedbed of creative thinking and theatre activity. There will be publications of texts and a documentary film.

Each of the companies will work with a group of non-professionals as a way of developing and sharing ideas, working practices and stories. There will thus be a potential for these groups from the different countries to share their work.

The project will be focused on the 'home towns' of the participating companies and the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. The World Social Forum will be another contact point for the project.

The project will be long-term with a prospect of a five year programme of work. Each year will be planned separately and the project will be financed through contributions to a central administration fund as well as elements of the programme being funded by partners from local sources. In the initial period Meeting Ground will provide the key administrative and organisational centre

Focus
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The work is being undertaken from the point of view that war is a historical phenomenon and is capable of being superceded and abolished. Looking out at how this human activity is occurring we have to simultaneously look into ourselves.

The focus of the project will be on the psychological and social relationships which surround the activity of making war rather than directly on the activities of killing and inflicting injury.

The diversity of the companies involved will provide a variety of perspectives involving different proximities to the central activities of war. Exploring this activity which is embedded in nationality in an international context will create rich discoveries.

How consent to war is created and mediated, how war is made into a spectacle, how it alters the composition of social relations and of the individual, how it works on our sense of destiny and fate, on our sense of impotence and power and on our sexuality are all central questions for us.

The fact that the area where hostilities take place is called the theatre of war has implications for what theatre is and what we consider action to be. The fact that war effaces the individual and transforms collective relations in terms of both consciousness and responsibility has implications for the structure of character and the definition of the human being.

The imaginative processes entailed in destruction are capable of being transformed into sources of creativity.

Plans
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At the current time at the beginning of 2002 we are developing our knowledge of each other as companies. We are creating an agreement of the principles by which we will work. We are looking for support for our work. Meeting Ground and Theatre de l'Opprime sent delegates to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil in January 2002 and Theatre de l'Opprime presented a new show about human rights. We are planning to bring the companies together later in the year in London.

The companies
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Meeting Ground Theatre Company
55 Windsor Road
London N7 6JL
44 (0) 207 263 9807
chadwick@meetingground.demon.co.uk

Co-Artistic Directors: Tanya Myers, Stephen Lowe, Jonathan Chadwick

At the heart of the company's artistic policy and vision is the theatrical exploration of what we call "the politics of the imagination". The controls on our imagination shape all our destinies.

Our work is based on the belief that, by taking artistic work across barriers and frontiers, whether they be national, psychological, intellectual, cultural, spiritual or disciplinary, new sources of energy and creativity can be engendered.

Since 1985 Meeting Ground has been celebrating the meeting of artists from different disciplines and cultures. Building a strong international reputation for new production work of the highest innovative standards and qualities, the company has toured extensively throughout Germany, Poland, Italy and the UK also appearing at numerous festivals. More recently it has developed a musical play about globalisation with a company drawn from the culturally diverse communities of North London.

Drawing together people into extensive and intensive programmes of workshops and performances the company focuses on new work and uses developmental research as a central inspirational force.

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Theatre de l'Opprime
78 rue du Charolais Paris 75012
33 (0) 1 43 45 81 20
tdopp@clubinternet.fr
Director: Rui Frati

Founded by Augusto Boal the company works in communities near its centre in Paris which also hosts productions of visiting companies as well as working internationally. It bases its work on the repertoire of theatre games and exercises developed by Boal and presents performances related to its development projects.
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Growing Up Theatre
Centar za Kultura Stari Grad,
Kapetan Misina 6a,
11000 Belgrade,
Yugoslavia
381 11 639 639
cedeum@infosky.net
Directors: Suncica Milosavljevic, Ivana Despotovic

Started in 1991 and based at the Cultural Centre in Belgrade Growing Up Theatre explores the relationship between theatre and the emotional and creative development of the company members. Its work is an opening up of a creative space in which dramatic language can be rediscovered as a reflective tool relating changes in the individual to changes in the world. It engages in long-term developments of thematic material and creates performances as a logical and organic part of these creative journeys.
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Troupe Masrah el Tedj
BP 13 A - Bordj Bou Arreridj 34000 Algerie
213 5 67 10 55
masrah_tedj@yahoo.fr
Directors: Halim Zedam, Omar Cherrouk

Founded in 1995 as a part of the Association for the Defence and Promotion of Culture the company espouses a theatre without frontiers creating through a series of innovative productions a bridge between the indigenous culture of Algeria and the world community.
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Theatre For Everybody
Gaza, Palestine
jththeatre@hotmail.com
Directors: Jamal al Rozzi Hossam Madhoun

Founded in 1997 out of the Gaza Theatre Lab the company works on modern texts by Fugard and Pinter as well as deriving plays based on the immediate experiences of people living in Gaza. It also uses forum theatre techniques in the development of its material and in its work with people from the community.

"We are theatre makers and we want to take part in the society through art. We believe in theatre as artistic production as well as a way to bring awareness in the society toward all the main problems. We believe that through plays, we can contribute to change the attitudes, to shake the preconceived ideas or at least to bring out the problems (social, psychologicalŠ).

Through entertainment, through shows, we don¹t lecture people, we just stimulate them, we question them about themselves, about their beliefs, their behavior. Our theatre is committed to life but not directly political: we don¹t deliver messages.

The artistic quality of our work is constantly our goal: the challenge for the coming years remains to create an audience and to make from theatre a daily cultural need as well as a usual event. Theatre considered as a tool to build the society is our concern but we would like to reach the point that a play could be chosen only because of its artistic value."
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