Collaborating in Europe the benefits for UK Artists - a case study
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David Monteith is an actor, teacher and blogger who has worked with Parrabbola on many occasions since Parrabbola was founded in 2004. As a black British man he has a particular take on the issues surrounding international work. For him going somewhere else is helping to lose the labels: whether you’re British, Romanian, Czech, Irish or Polish, you are still a human being. People’s backgrounds and culture may be different, but for him it’s about enjoying that difference and variation. When he first started travelling into eastern Europe he did wonder “As a black man, what’s it going to be like for me?” He remembers his first visit to Poland a five-year-old buying an ice cream turned to her gran to ask about him. But it wasn’t malicious – at that time and in those countries that had only recently joined the EU people hardly ever saw anyone who wasn’t white. He experienced little overt racism – the only time was on his second visit to Poland when he was jeered at by three drunks outside a bar, who were promptly chased off by three older ladies wielding their umbrellas! He said that the company were angry on his behalf, but he pointed out that like many black British, he was well used to that sort of behaviour at home. Working internationally has changed him; it has re-affirmed his status as a citizen of the world: “We’re not all the same and that’s fascinating.” It is important to absorb the different environments: “Different countries have different ways of experiencing things and you don’t know how much is out there until you do it.” Everyone brings something different to the table. Parrabbola’s core purpose of working within the community is something he particularly values. As a professional actor working with non-professionals he was aware that they sometimes “put you on a pedestal” but he works to avoid that by simply looking for what life skills he can offer to help ordinary people to be better actors. He does it by challenging and pushing – people are looking for guidance and he has found that the acceptance of criticism is amazing, while the way they have accepted praise is also humbling: “Watching people for whom English is their second or even third language struggling with Shakespeare is inspiring.” Working internationally has been life-changing and enhancing for him as the broadening of minds and communication is two-way. “When you leave,” he says, “you may never be in the same room again with those people – it’s both sad and joyful.”
For the past decade, Parrabbola has been working in Europe. We've toured productions large and small to festivals and street theatre events, but chiefly we have worked in partnership with the major European Shakespeare Festivals to create large scale, site specific, promenade community play productions of Shakespeare plays. To celebrate our most recent Creative Europe project Shaking the Walls 2019-2020, in which we made two projects The Winter’s Tale in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and Shake Fear | Break Walls in Poland, we asked some of our UK artists to tell us what working in Europe, and collaborating with European artists has meant to them, and what they've gained from the experience.
When Sonia Di Lorenzo was first asked to be a part of the Shake Fear | Break Walls project, she felt overwhelmed at the prospect somebody out there regarded her skills highly enough to involve her in a production of this standard. Having only trained in performing arts at a National Diploma level in her 20's, she hadn’t had the academic education that many professionals get to help them along their career path, and often fought hard to gain the opportunities the artistic world has had to offer. This was the first international project that Sonia has been involved in, so she didn't really know what to expect. When she finally arrived in Gdansk it became very clear that the task did not just consist of performing, but also mentoring the Polish community cast and helping with the development of the script. This included topics about racism, domestic violence, politics, social barriers and authoritarianism, all alongside the works of Shakespeare. “During the first week of our development in Gdansk we lost our venue, discovered we wouldn’t be performing to a live audience, got put into lock down and on a regular basis had flights home cancelled. This meant some members of the Creative Team were unable to join us and some decided to leave the project early. However, this didn't stop the rest of us continuing. We were aware we were producing this piece in the middle of a global pandemic, so things had to be done differently. Challenges are often met in our day to day lives and this production was going to make no exception. We knew we could find ways to adapt and make the project possible together, and the entire team, professional and community cast included, embraced the process with warmth, understanding and a general eagerness to learn new ways and skills to help this project reach the finish line. We managed to find a venue, complete the script and were able to produce a powerful piece of art which could be live streamed across the world.” From a personal perspective this project has allowed Sonia to grow as an individual in ways she never could have imagined. It has boosted her confidence, helped her transition into a new woman, and has inspired her to want to bring uncomfortable mental health issues to the surface, shaking the taboos and shame that surrounds them and breaking down social barriers using a visual and theatrical setting. . "Being able to lay yourself bare and immerse yourself in the truth, while surrounding yourself with people who will carry you at your weakest is something very special." Sonia would jump at the chance to do something like this again. It has changed her for life. She has learnt many new skills and her time working with European colleagues has inspired her to bring a new level of knowledge about the world and the societies we live in back to the UK and to her work in theatre.
Brian D. Hanlon was brought up in Liverpool, where his father was a docker. He joined the Everyman Youth Theatre at the age of 10, and this became a life line for him as a young gay man in a working class area. It set him on a performing arts trajectory, but community theatre is his passion, because, as he said “it is literally life changing”. His career has taken him all over the world, places as varied as Romania and Serbia, Brazil and Ireland, Norway and South Africa. He’s designed and made pieces as varied as shadow puppets to massive installations for parades, costumes and props, but much of his work in recent years has been in countries from the former Soviet bloc. He discovered that these countries didn’t have a tradition of community theatre – by which he means theatre that is produced for, by and with the local community, and some of his most vibrant experiences and memories of working in these countries are around the way community participants’ creativity was given an opening by working in this way. But he also learned a lot himself. He has enjoyed enormously meeting people from all walks of life and from many different countries – for Brian people are people no matter where they come from. He worked in Ireland recently, which reminded him of working in the Falls Road area of Belfast in the 1980s – this to him was as foreign as going to Romania and yet the participants came together regardless of which side of the divide they were. As a designer working in international community theatre he has also had to learn to be flexible. “it is never the same twice,” he said, and this is what excites him. “Whenever we go in we are never quite sure of numbers of participants, of the location, of the audience.” “Everyone does things differently,” he said, “Even in Ireland.” In Romania it was hard to buy fabric. And just sourcing simple construction materials such as glue, foam and nails is a new learning experience wherever he was working. While in Gdansk during the Polish lockdown in November 2020 they scoured second-hand shops for clothes (for some reason they were open, while regular retail outlets were closed), and the set was created out of discarded cardboard boxes. The original venue was unavailable, so the piece was produced in a closed nightclub, and filmed for online streaming. The cast were from several different countries and sometimes language was an issue, but he has always found this as an exciting challenge not an obstacle. Brian relishes this constant adjustment – it increases his creativity rather than the other way round, and enables him to bring new insights into his work back in the UK. “it’s crazy,” he says, “really invigorating.” He claims in his time he has done every single job in the sector, from on stage, front of house and backstage, and being able to travel overseas to work with like-minded people makes him appreciative of every one: “It’s brilliant – all the experiences and the travel, and it’s fun!”
Andra Chelcea has been living and working as an artist in the UK for four years. The great benefit of working internationally hit home to her possibly even more than a UK citizen. She is Romanian by birth and grew up in Sibiu where there is a big international performing arts festival every year attracting big names from all over Europe and beyond. She was struck by the diversity of arts, skills and approaches she found there, in contrast to Romania which in her view is not very diverse and has its own culturally specific style. Meeting people from outside Romania was inspirational and this led her to move to the UK because it is so diverse by comparison. While here she has learned more and more. Working with Parrabbola particularly on Shake Fear|Break Walls in Gdansk, but also on other European collaborations, has built her skills and widened her knowledge. The unique aspect of working on projects like this is the exchange of people from many different places, sharing the similarities and differences but enabling one to get outside the bubble and to understand different things in many different ways – it enables “an exchange of energy in the room” she says. Collaboration is the word she highlights – it has enabled her to grow as an artist and as a person. To work in this way “you have to jump a few fences and challenge yourself” she says. “You have to go and see other people’s work – it might be wild and weird by it’ll always spark something new. It’ll click even after time.” For her, the biggest cultural experience she has so far experienced was going to Bangladesh. This was a shock – she had never been out of Europe before. There was a language barrier as they worked with young girls with no English. Yet they managed to work with them and they created something new together “which still makes me cry”.“They learned, we learned, and brought back things – actual practical things, like how do we work with them again, how can we strengthen the ties between the countries.” Andra’s experience of working on Shake Fear|Break Walls and elsewhere has inspired her. She want now to bring something back to her homeland. She says she is collecting things from elsewhere which she will be “unfolding from her suitcase” to share. Working in the community is now her main aim wherever she is based – for her, international work is the four ‘C’s: challenging, collaborating, connecting and creating.
Text from interviews conducted by Nicky Adamson, and edited by Philip Parr. Shake Fear | Break Walls was a production by Parrabbola, made in Gdansk as part of the Creative Europe funded Shaking the Walls project, (2019-2020) working with partners from Czechia, Iceland, Ireland, Poland and the UK. Photographs by Pawel Sudara, Daithi Ramsay, Greg Goodale. www.shakingthewalls.eu All material is copyright to Parrabbola, for information contact info@parrabbola.co.uk