Network Curation / The Fence

Network Creation / Curation

The Fence Network Work With The Fence The Fence Projects

The Fence Network

The Fence is an international network for working playwrights, dramaturgs and theatre makers, across Europe and beyond. Established in October 2003, the network in 2022 comprises 250+ members from 50+ countries. Created in the UK, as of 2018 The Fence is based in Stockholm, Sweden .

The Fence was founded on the core principles of:

the importance of the playwright to wider culture and society.
that in practice, diversity and mobility are the same thing.
and that through engagement with others our own work develops.

The Fence runs network meetings on average twice yearly. Fence network meetings typically feature 15-50 participants, and last between 5 and 8 days. We meet at Festivals, on retreat and to work with students. We meet playwrights, theatre makers and cultural operators from each host country, learn about their systems & structures and opportunities & challenges for indigenous playwrights - as well as foreign ones. We meet each other and pursue peer-led professional development activity which focuses on how to operate as a playwright in a changing landscape. We put work on – in a scratch night form - work written, directed and acted by participants as a practical laboratory generating material, engagement, excitement, partnership and exchange. We make connections beyond the network; both to grow the number of countries represented, but also to engage with a broader focus than just playwrighting. We also come together to generate collaborative projects. You can listen to me talk about the Fence network and one of its projects

*Fence 15 Rabat - Kazem Shahryari with students*
Work With The Fence

Spanning 18 years, with 28 network meetings to date, The Fence provides a multi-lateral approach, drawing on a wide range of models and experience. We offer:

Workshops
Consultancy
Surgeries
Master classes
Diverse models of practice

To see whom we have been working with http://www.the-fence.net/partners.aspx

“The fence holds a unique position in the field as a collective of theatre makers who are consciously invested in reaching beyond their own cultures, communities and languages.

The fence is consistently an exceptional partner. Its leaders are communicative, reliable and, above all, an incredible source of knowledge and new, thought-provoking perspectives for The Lark’s community”.

John Clinton Eisner, Director Emeritus, The Lark, New York, USA

“The network aims to open itself up still more widely to embrace difference, and to enable dialogue and enhance creativity. I really like the motto on the Fence's website, "misunderstanding each other since 2003": this neatly sums up both the difficulty and the necessity of extending artist mobility and making creative conversations possible…

…the track record of the Fence to date demonstrates clearly the strength in their argument that it must be artists themselves, rather than institutions, who should be behind a movement to embrace and extend cultural diversity within the theatre industry….”

Arts and Humanities Research Council assessor, London, UK

*Boom playwrights / theatre makers in Rotterdam L-R Chinonyerem Odimba, Enver Husicic, Neske Beks, Uma Rada-Najah, Jude Christian, Maaike Bergstra, Gable Roelofsen*
The Fence: Projects

Fence members come together to generate projects. They decide what they want to do and with whom. Fence projects can come from anyone and anywhere across the network. Some have been collaborative writing projects; Fence members have translated each other's work for subsequent commercial production or festival performance; some projects have been pilot or full-scale productions. The Fence is also approached to work as a collaborative partner.

All our Tomorrows

The Fence has, since 2017, been developing a strand of work entitled All Our Tomorrows. In this, the playwright is recast as a public figure in which theatrical production is but one manifestation of the significance of the artist in public discourse. We began with Ireland has struck Oil in partnership with King’s College, with Gabriel Gbadamosi as the lead playwright, in London.
Listen to a podcast here (go to 2017)
This is being followed-up by Greece is Gone with playwright Andreas Flourakis in partnership with Trinity College in Dublin, and our recent presentation of Andrei KureIchik’s Insulted, Belarus(sia) is a further iteration of this strand.
My Heart is in the East

My Heart is in the East (MHITE) project centres around a play by Jessica Litwak that deals with Muslim-Jewish relations across centuries. MHITE shines a light on a cultural heritage neglected by most Western narratives: La Convivencia, when Moslems and Jews were able to co-exist fruitfully for centuries. Not through rose-tinted spectacles, but by the working out of differences in religion, gender, social status through the transformative power of language and the imagination. MHITE seeks to explore a shared identity around what binds us rather than divides us – both 1000 years ago and today. MHITE is a collaboration between The Fence, The HEAT Collective and Az Theatre, involving Fence members Jessica Litwak (New York), Fred Fortas (Paris), Jonathan Chadwick and Jonathan Meth (London) and has been developed at La Mama in New York and at Bazar Café in La Charité sur Loire, France, with a staged reading with live music at the Clapham Omnibus in London.
International Dramaturgy Lab

Brainchild of Fence member and dramaturg Hanna Slattne, The International Dramaturgy Lab (IDL) is an exciting experimental initiative developed in collaboration between an international array of dramaturgical organizations and networks, including The Dramaturgs’ Network UK; Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) USA, Canada, and Mexico; The Fence; STOD Finland; and the Danish Dramaturg Network. The aim is to connect dramaturgs, directors, playwrights, theatre makers, and thinkers around the topic: What does it mean to work dramaturgically across borders? 85 people drawn (23 Fence members) from the above organisations divided along areas of intersecting interest into around 15 Groups of about five people each, working together. This project made a series of presentations at the LMDA conference in Mexico City in June 2021.
CRE-ACTORS

The Fence network is delighted to be collaborating with Border Crossings (Sligo / London), Théâtre du Soleil (Paris), Teatro dell’Argine (Bologna) on CRE-ACTORS: Training intercultural theatre-makers for a diverse Europe, with support from EU Erasmus+.
Running 2021-22, the project will facilitate the exchange of best Vocational Educational Training practice between key organisations working in collectively created theatre that engages with social and cultural diversity, internationalism and minority communities.
Boom!

The Fence, together with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the United Kingdom and Dutch Performing Arts, have been collaborating on Boom! to explore the shared colonial heritage of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, while looking to the future.
The Boom! Team - 7 writers working on 6 projects
Maaike Bergstra (NL)
Neske Beks (NL)
Jude Christian (UK)
Enver Husicic (NL)
Uma Nada-Rajah (UK)
Chinoyerem Odimba (UK)
Gable Roelofsen (NL)
On-line labs were held during 2021.
Boom! Is curated by Jonathan Meth as Producer-Dramaturg, on behalf of The Fence network.
Plays for Young People

Plays for Young People 3 with AFTEC in Hong Kong in Autumn 2021, saw the third edition of Plays for Young People (2018,2016) which brings together emerging translators in Hong Kong to engage first-hand with international playwrights drawn from The Fence. As a bilingual Life Learning Theatre with a special focus on youth development, AFTEC has created this programme to draw together those with a shared passion for theatre and the understanding of the need for quality plays written specifically to be performed by young people. AFTEC strongly believes in widening the vision of young people to beyond Hong Kong’s borders and to comprehend and recognise other cultures, their similarities and diversities.