The Guardian - December 14th 2011
Tena Stivicic - Four
Cities, Four Stories
Tena Stivicic and Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia) will be working together with
Birmingham Repertory Theatre (UK), Dresden State Theatre (Germany) and Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz (Poland)
and one of each country’s leading playwrights – Steve Waters, Lutz Hubner
and Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk to create a unique piece of theatre revealing
varying attitudes towards Europe across the
continent.
The writers will collaborate to create a multi-authored,
multi-lingual play based on research and interviews in their own countries. The
play, currently titled Four Cities, Four Stories will tour to each country in
2013.
Stuart Rogers, Executive Director at Birmingham Repertory
Theatre said: “With the current state of affairs in Europe
this project couldn’t be more timely. As the very future of our continent is at
stake, it’s vital that artists and the general public, as well as politicians
and economists, have a chance to make their voices heard in the great European
debate. This very exciting project will allow community members from Birmingham, Dresden, Zagreb and Bydgoszcz to
express their views on Europe through the work
of four leading European playwrights, and The Rep. is delighted to be the lead
partner on the project.”
Steve Waters wrote in the Guardian:
"When I first met with my playwriting counterparts last
year (2010) I was struck by how narrow my horizons were and how extensive
theirs were. While they seemed privy to a polyglot Euro-theatre in a number of
nations, I was marooned in my own parochial setting, obsessed with a circuit of
a few English theatres. And certainly the English theatre is hardly groaning
with European plays – our one lonely portal on theatre in translation, the Gate
theatre in London, has quietly changed its brief from contemporary plays to
contemporary versions of continental classics, making the staging of anything
from beyond our shores a relative rarity ."
In 2010 the project applied to the European Commision’s
Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) for funding. They
wrote in the compendium:
Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Zagreb Youth Theatre, Dresden
State Theatre and Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz will join together for the first time
in this unique collaboration to develop a multi authored, multi lingual play,
which will be inspired by the promotion of intercultural debate.
Steve Waters, Tena Stivicic, Lutz Huebner and Malgortzta
Sikorska-Miszczuk are four of the leading contemporary European playwrights and
will join forces to write one play, which will tour to the United Kingdom, Croatia,
Germany and Poland.
The premise will be the questions, which surround a
'contemporary European identity'. Do you have to agree to Europe
to be in it? If Europe had a temple what would
it be built out of, are just some of the questions the writers will pose to
audiences and community groups in each city.
The writers will
travel to each others' country exploring and exchanging creative development
and writing traditions before writing a play together. The play will be
produced in all cities and the creative team will be made up of artists from
each country. A community engagement programme will run alongside this process.
Education officers in each country will work with a different group, for
example elderly citizens in Poland
and Muslim women in the United
Kingdom. Each group will generate their own
creative responses to the ideas that emerge through their own cultural and
artistic exchange.
These will be performed in their respective countries at the
time of the production. A virtual discussion will be
opened from the beginning to enable any citizen of Europe or indeed the world to follow the story as it
develops via blogs or engage in the debate via twitter and Facebook.
The application was successful and the project is funded
with support from the European Commission. The world premiere of Four Cities,
Four Stories will take place in Zagreb, Croatia in March 2013, with performances in the UK in October,
2013 .
Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Steve Waters, My Fight to Save Europe
- and Brirish Theatre - EACEA