Image created by Martina D’Acosta & modifed by Bianca Mann
25 January 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
RETURN TO PALESTINE - THE FREEDOM Theatre
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Micaela Miranda, director
Ahmad Tobasi, Artistic Director of The Freedom Theatre
Kareem Samara, composer, musician and activist
Jad, a Palestinian born in America, decides to go to Palestine for the first time in his life. Wanting to know more about his people and identity, he finds out that reality is very different from what he has seen on the news.
Return to Palestine is directed by Micaela Miranda and devised together with an ensemble of graduate students of The Freedom Theatre School. It was created after extensive story-gathering through playback theatre with the communities engaged in The Freedom Theatre’s annual Freedom Ride. The play includes stories from Jenin refugee camp and city, Fasayel, Dheisheh refugee camp, Mufaqara and Gaza.
Register here to attend.
08 FEBRUARY 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
EXTRACTS - CHRIS THORPE
Photographed by Jonathan Keenan
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Chris Thorpe
Nimisha Patel
Tanuja Amarasuriya
Chris is a writer and performer from Manchester. Chris writes and tours in the UK and internationally (when it’s allowed). Recent work includes Status (Rachel Chavkin/China Plate); The Mysteries (Royal Exchange, Manchester); The Shape of the Pain (Rache Bagshaw/China Plate); Am I Dead Yet? (Unlimited); The Iphigenia Quartet: Chorus (Gate); There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Royal Exchange, Manchester/Soho/Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Theatertreffen, Berlin): Victory Condition (Royal Court), and upcoming collaborations with the Royal Court, Nationaltheater Mannheim/Javaad Alipoor, Rachel Chavkin/Lekan Lawal and Yusra Warsama.
Chris will perform extracts from
Always Maybe The Last Time (upcoming Royal Court/Methuen Climate Commission)
There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Royal Exchange, Manchester/Soho/Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Theatertreffen, Berlin).
Community Transmission (commissioned & first presented by Sismo Stories & Performances, Amsterdam www.sismo.nl)
Register here to attend.
22 february 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
sittarah the stars - MONIRAH HASHEMI
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Monirah Hashemi, theatre-maker
Asad Buda, historian, writer, and artists’ guide
Shala Nyx, London-based actor
Monirah Hashemi was born to Afghan parents living in Iran as refugees. Discovering early the power of storytelling, she moved back to Afghanistan in 2004 at 19, where she started acting in films and co-founded Simorgh Film Association of Culture and Art. At 21, she wrote and directed her debut play, Cry of History, which was performed in Herat to a mixed audience at the country’s first educational theatre festival in 2006. The play, the first one in Afghanistan to be produced solely by women, went on to win the festival’s best play award in Herat and Kabul International Theater Festvial and performed in National School of Drama Theater Festival in Mumbai and New Delhi in India.
Due to her involvement in theatre, writing and directing political plays she left Afghanistan and relocated to Sweden late 2013.
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08 march 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
WOMEN MAKE THEATRE POLITICAL
Political Theatre as Womxn’s Right
Join us for International Women’s Day for a celebration of Women in Political Theatre through showcasing work and a panel discussion with:
Nisha Abdulla , playwright, director, dramaturg and educator based in Bangalore, India. Her work centers intersectional realities & the dissenting body. She is also Artistic Director of Qabila, a collective she founded in 2018
Sonali Bhattacharyya, award-winning playwright based in London, currently under commission to the Orange Tree Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Kiln Theatre, Tara Arts & Fifth Word, & is writer in residence at National Theatre Studio.
Jo Brailescu, cultural educator & producer who will do any culture-related work, from management & strategy to driving & cleaning up in projects that emancipate, educate & bring joy to people. Forever devoted to the process rather than the result.
Kyla Davis, theatre-maker & a home-maker who cares deeply about the earth & the interconnected relationships between people & eco-systems. She believes in a just transition to a more sustainable future where life (human & non-human) is valued above profit .
ALSO SHOWCASING EXCERPTS OF THEIR WORK ARE:
Mireia Juanals, actress & theatre-maker from Barcelona, Spain. She believes in the power of theatre as a collaborative, healing and revolutionary tool. Her multidisciplinary and often multilingual work has been featured in festivals and theatres across the UK and Spain.
Lora V Krasteva is a theatre maker, political scientist and cultural producer. She works as Executive Producer at Arts & Homelessness International and heads Global Voices Theatre, a female and non-binary immigrant led company platforming international historically excluded creatives in the UK. Lora is part of Migrants in Theatre, a movement advocating for better representation of migrants on and off stage and a steering group member of the national What Next? movement, highlighting the importance of the arts in creating a more equitable society.
iulia isar & Tara McGirr:
iulia isar, Romanian theatre-maker & youth worker based in the UK. Her work is often a subject of tragicomedy & devised theatre & she is interested to explore political clowning as a theatrical language where the clown, even though is a delegate of humour can act as a social emissary.
Tara McGirr, actor & theatre maker based in Glasgow, Scotland. She is half Thai-half Scottish & grew up in Thailand. She moved to the UK to study BA World Performance at East 15 Acting School (graduated in 2019) & has been creating work since. Most of Tara’s work includes physical performances and light hearted comedy. Tara and Iulia met during their time at drama school but never worked together until 5 years later when they both moved to Glasgow.
22 MARCH 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
CORP URBAN - GIUVLIPEN
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Mihaela Drăgan, actor
Zita Moldovan, actor
Georgiana Lincan (Aldeza), activist
"Corp Urban" fictionalizes the stories of four Roma women and investigates the relationship between them and their own body, through a personal lens, but also in a social context: the body as a means of production, the body as property, the body as a cradle of motherhood; the healthy body, the sick body, the shameful body, the physical body as a mirror of social life and as the only personal possession. We make a foray into the universe of the marginalized, exploring the gray areas of morality and society and open for debate the controversial subject of sexual and reproductive rights, in a musical show, tender, assumed and brave, about body, sexuality, survival and identity, in 21st century Romania.
Register here to attend.
05 APRIL 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
CRIME - BÉZNĂ Theatre
Photographed by Adrian Crăciunescul
1991-1993. St. Petersburg, Russia.
Communism falls. Unfettered Capitalism rises. The student of law believes that the free market economy will bring his country freedom. The family is optimistic about the wealth of the new future. There is mass privatisation. The family is broken by debt. The unemployed man kills himself. Pensions are cut. The student abandons his old mother after she arranges his sister's marriage to a rich man. The single mother sells her daughter's body for a McDonalds meal. The student murders & robs the pawnbroker.
CRIME depicts the reality of a country ravaged by deregulated Capitalism.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Angel Lopez-Silva, actor
Mathew Wernham, actor
Dr. Penny Green, criminologist
Cast: Theo Green, Oliver Longstaff, Angel Lopez-Silva, Mathew Wernham
Written & directed by Nico Vaccari
Set & costume: Robin Soutar
Register here to attend.
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