2023

My Heart is in The East

In June we were kindly provided with space and personnel to rehearse and tech the belt and braces version of the MHITE production at Mind The Gap’s studio in Bradford, where we shared an initial presentation with an invited audience. This was tremendously helpful and enabled us to travel the following day to the Manchester Jewish Museum where Jessica gave a poetry workshop before we presented the production to a paying audience of 50-60, followed by an excellent discussion with around 30. In August, while Jessica was working as mentor on one of the LaMama Umbria residencies, we presented the production in Spoletto at the Creative Hub Cantiere Oberdan to a very engaged and responsive audience of 30.

Kranj

In April I attended part of the week of Slovenian Drama and European Theatre Convention’s satellite meeting at the Prešeren Theater, in Kranj. This was thanks to Kim Komljanec, Fence playwright and also advisor to the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. This paved the way for the Fence meeting in September and also, via Prešeren Theater, Director Jure Novak,  for potential collaboration as part of DoSEL – the Drama of Small European Languages project for which funding is being sought via the Creative Europe programme

The Fence 30, Prešeren Theater, Kranj, September 8-12th.

As this was the first major meeting since pre-pandemic, Fence 30 was an opportunity to regather ourselves and think together about the next iteration of the network.

·      The Fence as a network at 20. Taking stock, moving forward.

·      Network and Board membership, and comms platforms.

·      Network mode and project mode.

·      Greener travel and network meetings as starting in smaller groups meeting on trains.

Out of this and other preceding collaborations, The Fence in 2024 will explore 5 potential projects and a number of network meetings.  

Dramaturgy

This year I worked with Jason Lam in Hong Kong (online) on his innovative new play Black Dots; with Matthew Xia on his preparations for Tambo and Bones, Dave Harris’ play, given a very fine production by him for ATC at Theatre Royal Stratford East, which will hopefully be reprised in 2024; and with Penny Black on her splendid Mariedl, selfies with a Giantess which premiered at the Josephinum in Vienna before touring Austria and heading off to Australia. Playwright Yves Baigneres, director Giles Croft and I continued working on Chair, including a very useful meeting with Jo Read at the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford. Chair benefited substantially from a closed reading with Toby Jones at Go Live Theatre projects in Shaftesbury Avenue.

Vienna

In May I went to Vienna to see Mariedl with Penny, also to meet with Rector Dr. Mailath-Pokorny at MUK (Music and Art Private University of the City of Vienna ), thanks to his Deputy, Dieter Boyer; then with Dieter himself and Esther Holland-Merten who has just taken over running  Das Theater Am Werk – two linked performance spaces in Vienna, as well as the Chairing of the Dramaturgische Gesellschaft. These meetings relate to future Fence collaboration possibilities, but were also part of an ongoing exploration of my own Viennese heritage via my father; my recently acquired Austrian citizenship (thanks in part to Dr Mallath-Pokorny’s previous work towards the necessary legal changes made).  These included trips to the Jewish Records Office and the Zentralfriedhof, where my grandfather and other family members were buried prior to the Anschluss. I hope to return to Vienna in April 2024.

Netherlands

In November, thanks to Anja Krans, I spent a few days in Rotterdam, Den Haag and Amsterdam. This was mostly to enable me to explore the Dutch landscape for contemporary playwriting, within the context of transnational collaboration – partly to feed into projects already on the slate to be developed towards EU Erasmus+ and Creative Europe bids in early 2024. One of these is an idea to bring together individuals linked to guilds / unions / playwriting development agencies to share practice and strategise for a changing theatrical landscape. Then to meet with policy makers and funders. Maaike Bergstra, Boom and Fence playwright ,was my anchor for this trip, in particular via her involvement with the Auteursbond and Theaterauteurs. Tom Helmer at Bellevue where much new writing is produced; Remco van Rein gave me a tremendously useful baseline from his position as Dramaturg at National Theatre. His Creative Producer colleague Rachel Feuchtwang provided further useful context. Iris Slee gave me insight into a different way of getting things done via her company Punch based in Leiden. Sophie Kassies, a writer with a long and very diverse career, who knows about many aspects of the field was a very welcome spirit guide. In addition, I had a good meeting at Theater Babel with Deborah Stolk and her colleagues around future Crossing The Line collaboration.

Building on the Cre-Actors project (2020-22) the partnership expanded to include Riksteatern in Stockholm, who had kindly hosted our final project meeting. The partners spent 2023 working towards Creative Europe / Erasmus+ submission in 2024 for The Legend of Europa, a new collaborative intercultural production.

My work at Goldsmiths, at the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship consolidated around 0.4 fte, mostly working on the MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy. This year I also worked on the BA in Arts Management. This was illuminating both in terms of the different emphases, as well as getting to know other departmental colleagues a little better.

The Crossing The Line partnership completed the reporting on the Trasna Na Lina project, then made an unsuccessful application for a follow-up medium-scale project - La Traverse - to the EU Creative Europe programme. Following this, the CTL partners decided to take stock and use a Theory of Change approach to re-examine the partnership and its ambitions for collaborative working.

As part of my ongoing relationship with Dr Vicki Ooi and Lynn Yau of AFTEC, I introduced Vicki and her colleagues to the team at the Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch, thanks to my former student the playwright, theatre maker and teacher Dominic Hedges who is on the board there. They hope to create 3 internships for 2024-5 in wardrobe, set and prop-making to enable Hong Kong theatre professionals to acquire more hands-on experience in a producing house with full making facilities.