Day 3 Tunis Blog
Sitting on the rooftop to draw out main themes which link our research in Tunis and St.Denis, linking each theme to specific encounters, images, objects and sounds We visit Ben at El Warcha (the workshop) and see what he's been constructing. Different wooden benches for schools and geometric forms that function both as sculptures and practical light-fittings. Ben heads out with us in tow and leads us through various potential performance spaces. These include a squatted building with huge courtyard, small alleyways with hanging trees, and an expansive and empty covered market which proposes many staging possibilities. Once the shops close down the covered galleries of the Medina become long, darkened corridors. We meet a man called R**** Charbon who tells us to quote his name if ever we get into trouble. F**** (aka. the Stringer Bell of the Medina) gives us a tour of some of the more "shady" areas. He lives here and everyone seems to know him. He walks with shoulders back and a wide open stance that makes him seem almost bow-legged. He is very affable with us, but seems to be playing-up to the image of "fearless outlaw" in order to impress us. Barking at women, throwing bricks at dogs, taking a young boy by the collar, threatening to beat up a guy, taking us into an abandoned, blown-out building, showing us sheep bred for fighting (one is called Kim Jong Un, with Trump not far away), stopping kids from playing football mid-game, telling a crying baby to shut up. He takes us to a place where his friends hide when the police comes to find them. L***** tells us he also once headbutted a policeman. To finish, he teaches us techniques for pickpocketing. How to deflect attention, cut open bags with a razor, and work as a duo to distract drivers and steal their phones. Day 4 Tunis Blog At breakfast I am force-fed eggs and indulge in some ongoing Italian gangster chat with the Libyan writers. They are very generous and funny people! Nour arrives! We catch-up with him, finding out how his life is as a new father. He lives in Rome now with his partner. Nour and I go shopping for the group at the covered market. Huge stacks of fruit, veg and fresh herbs. Not so much barter but lots of old weights and measures. We spend some time in the morning developing ideas for events, characters and a specific dramaturgy which we could apply to one of the sites we visited yesterday (the closed shopping gallery leading to the covered market). All of us agree that this is the most interesting and flexible route for our site-specific promenade piece. We also agree that we'd like to try presenting a mix of ensemble work, sound/light/sculpture installation, and more intimate performance pieces. It is quite possible that for some of the route audience members will be split into groups of 3 and sent into the corridors of the covered market in waves. We are joined once more by Bastien, who will be helping us with sound installations. He's speaking about hiding small speakers in nooks, which can then be remote-triggered to play sounds. Lots of potential for surprises and atmospheres. We walk back and forth along the route we have chosen, defining a clear starting point, as well as potential performance spots along the way. These are generally spaces where the architecture lends itself to some kind of staging (a sudden turn, a raised platform, a long, dark alleyway, a shaft of light etc.). There are also a few possibilities for diverging routes. Forks in the road provoke us to consider moments where teams may be split up to receive different experiences. I plan to return to the market in the daytime to record sounds. The day ends with a discussion about our intentions behind the piece, and how we can arrange the different elements of our piece in such a way that it becomes a unified journey. Jour 3 :
On commence la journée par faire les 5 tibétains pour se réveiller (un peu comme des exercices de yoga) puis on continue le travail d'écriture sur nos répliques extraites hier et sur des entretiens qu'on réécoute. Ensuite on poursuit les mises en commun des thèmes et les réflexions autour de la pièce. On passe beaucoup de temps à parler et à écrire mais c'est nécessaire pour vraiment rien oublier des résidences passés et pour aller en profondeur. En fin d'aprem on va refaire du repérage dans des lieux différents de la Medina, des lieux plus exigus, plus sombres, et on tombe sur des frippes superbes ou tout est vide la nuit. Aux alentours ya aussi plein de passages superbes, avec des allées qui nous permettraient de faire des parcours spécifiques en fonction de chaque groupe. On imagine diviser le public en petit groupe et leur faire expérimenter un parcours comme un jeu de rôle puis les rassembler à des moments. En plus c'est super intéressant de travailler sur un lieu comme ça car la journée c'est tellement vivant que de le voir vide la nuit ça donne un beau contraste. Le fait qu'il y ai pas de lumières nous donne aussi la possibilité de jouer beaucoup avec ça, avec les voix, les ombres... Le soir on rencontre F. et il nous fait sa ballade de la Medina, on lui laisse un peu carte blanche, il nous emmène dans les lieux qu'il connait, un peu plus reculé, un peu plus délabré, des lieux qui pourrait faire « peur » mais qui pour lui sont dans son quotidien. On rentre dans une maison avec une façade effondré ou n'importe qui pourrait tomber du 3è étage, un lieu de regroupement pour ceux qui veulent boire le samedi soir, un lieu ou ils se cachent de la police quand elle arrive. Il nous raconte un peu leur histoire avec la police, c'est vraiment le jeu du chat et de la souris, sauf que dès fois la souris gagne aussi ! C'est un tout autre type de guide comparé à tout ceux qu'on a eu jusqu'à présent, il est sûr de lui, il pousse tout le monde sur son chemin, il impose un peu sa loi comme le ferait un lion dans la savane. Jour 4 : On se retrouve dans la salle de répet, chacun doit trouver une idée « d'expérience » ou de « parcours » à faire faire au public, puis on en parle ensemble. Beaucoup de choses se rejoignent dans ce qu'on a préparer, on mixte tout ça et on commence à créer le parcours des spectateurs, en y mettant des personnages, des étapes à franchir, différents choix, des scènes de groupes... L'aprem on retourne dans les frippes repéré un peu le lieu de jour et voir à quelle heure exactement ça ferme afin de savoir quand on va pouvoir jouer et pour rencontrer un peu les marchands. On minute les trajets qu'on essaye, on se dit déjà un peu les endroits intéressant ou quelque chose pourrait se passer. A la fin on a une idée plus claire de ce qu'on veut faire et du parcours. Beaucoup de choses à tester demain ! Tunis Day 2 (04/01/2018)
Morning: meeting with the directorial board of L'Art Rue to discuss the projects, our artistic vision, our aims for the residency etc. They seem excited about the project (so are we!) and we need to remind ourselves that we are only here for 10 days and should stay realistic with our aims. We confirm that our desire for this working period is to create a sort of site-specific, ambulatory piece within the side-streets of the Medina itself. Audience participation and interaction will be essential for this performance, and we hope to continue in a similar vein to the first residency sharing we had at the Rosa Luxemburg centre. Once the board of directors head off, Senza concentrate on going through all past blog posts and notes from the previous two residencies to isolate key quotes, descriptions, characters etc. These fragments of text are then compiled into a master document of material to work from. Lili arrives in the afternoon and we create mind-maps to link our main themes (terrorism, cleaning, survival, clandestine voyage, myths etc.) to specific people's stories, plus images, sounds etc. This is a big task and we haven't yet completed it. It should help us in the long run to get a handle on our material and find links between the two environments we have researched. Evening: Exploration of the Medina to find a suitable performance space for our end of residency showing. W*** acts as the tour-guide. He seems to know the Medina like the back of his hand and can always be counted on to furnish his chat with sociopolitical and historical embellishments, giving specific reasons for the naming of streets, the colour of doorways etc. We head out at 17.30, and it is amazing to see the Medina "closing down" as night falls. The sky above turns dark blue, with pink clouds lit by the final rays of a dying sun. The streets below appear even darker than the sky above. We pass shopkeepers lowering their corrugated shutters, and old men feeding scraps to stray cats. Our focus has been on the alleyways around and between the Hammam d'Or and the Sabat (tunnel) where - according to local folkelore - a young woman disappeared on her wedding day. Although the story of the Hammam itself is very rich, there is too much thoroughfare in the streets surrounding it, and a more intimate staging space is not available. The Sabat and surrounding area is much more promising. Immediately several ideas for staging come to mind! A few big questions raise their heads: - How many people can we realistically have as an audience for this kind of performance? Considering it won't be in a controlled environment, plus the fact that we want to prioritise visibility and intimacy, we come to the conclusion that a smaller group of spectators would be best. Perhaps we could send people through in waves? - How can we ensure that the in-between time of moving from one location to another is also performative? How can we avoid the stop-start nature of much promenade theatre? - What spaces work best? Ideally somewhere quiet, with a mix of larger, open space and winding, darkened alleys and tunnels. What kind of architecture and lighting is evocative and could be used best to our ends? We also need to have the local residents in mind. We need to give them forewarning of the piece, ask permission to use certain spaces, should we welcome them to the final performance and potentially into the process itself? It seems like the right thing to do, although the last point is difficult with so little time to be developing our approach. - How conventionally "theatrical" will the final performance be? Our focus seems to be moving towards something that is more about sharing an experience with the audience and leaving room for individual members of the public to bring their own stories to these places. How best to do this? 5 January 2018
Starting the day with “les 7 Tibétains” warm up in the Tunis sunshine. Bastien will join us today for the lighting and sound design. Yesterday we worked on organising our research material from both the Tunis and the Saint Denis residencies into broader themes – potential “chapters” for the performance. Our goal is to make stories rich in detail and local significance speak to audiences that are not necessarily familiar with the context of these stories. We want to blend stories from Saint Denis and from the Tunis medina, make them speak to each other and to the theme of fear more generally. In the future when we will do residencies in other neighbourhoods we will incorporate new stories into the performance: it will grow with our travels. Dragons will therefore have a basic structure made up of stories from past residencies that we will have already worked on theatrically, and new stories that we will gather and incorporate on the spot, adapting the show to a space (either indoors or outdoors) in the neighbourhood we will be working in. In order to try and create links between stories from our past residencies, we each made mind maps of themes we were interested in and listed the stories connected to those themes. Each one of us also had to find an object, an image and a sound related to each theme. In comparing each other’s mind maps we found that our main common themes were: fear linked to a big/historical event (terrorism, revolution, a big event that marked the life of inhabitants of a particular neighbourhood); the strategies employed by individuals and groups to rise up to fear/to shield themselves from fear; those moments when the stakes are so high that fear becomes a non-issue, les “enjeux” that trump fear (risky migration journeys, livelihoods marked by insecurity and constant encounters with the police, fear that never leaves, fear that is carried around on an every day basis and so becomes a basic state of affairs); the night. In late afternoon, at the “crepuscule”, that hour when the medina transforms from being a busy place of passage and commerce into a quiet semi-deserted shadowy space, we went on a walk to find interesting spaces for performance. Wajdi took us to the “sabbat al 3arusa” (tunnel of the bride) and to the “hammam dhab” (hammam d’or), places linked to scary legends of jinn. The walk between the two was too long to make it interesting for a performance – we do not want any dead time between one performance space and another (le temps de marche entre les espaces est aussi en jeu). The sabbat al 3arusa space was particularly interesting – the tunnel had been walled up by the neighbours for a time because it was used by young people to drink and take drugs, since it was an unlit tunnel at the edges of the medina. When we had gone there during our last residency we had listen to Wajdi tell us about the story of the young bride stolen by the king of the jinn huddled at a walled up exit of the tunnel. The municipality has recently installed a lamp in the tunnel and have opened it again. The neighbours remain wary though – as we were exploring the space one of the neighbours came to ask us what we were doing, and told us that they have had a lot of robberies since the revolution, he keeps a bat by his front door and never goes out at night because of fear of being attacked. When the tunnel was reopened a couple of weeks ago local youth groups painted simple images on the walls in bright colours – silhouettes of faces and bodies, hearts, upbeat images – in an attempt to overcome the stigma of the tunnel and make it a more welcoming space. The goal for today is to decide where we would like to perform on Friday the 12th. Jour 1 :
Le matin nous avons discuté longuement de ce que l'on voulait créer comme pièce et comment. Mélanger les histoires de chaque résidence Travailler dans des espaces non-théâtraux Public : habitants de ces lieux Comment passer de l'effrayant au rassurant avec le même objet Quel quartier ont vise... Ensuite on a dû écrire chacun 3 histoires qu'on voudrait travailler et le thème qui s'en dégage Les miennes sont : L'histoire de D. (voyage clandestin) Le récit de S. sur le Bardo (Terrorisme) L'histoire de L. et du voile (Peur du regard des autres) Nous avons mis tout ça en commun et dégager des grands thèmes/chapitres On a finis par lister toutes les histoires/personnages que l'on a jusqu'à présent en précisant les thèmes qui se dégageaient de chacune d'elle et les liens avec d'autres ainsi que des idées de mise en scène ou de comment travailler cela au plateau. Jour 2 : Le matin nous avons fait un travail d'écriture, reprendre toutes nos notes sur St Denis et Tunis et en tirer toutes les phrases/répliques que l'on voudrait travailler. C'est là qu'on réalise qu'on a beaucoup de matériel et tellement de rencontres et d'histoires à partager ! L'aprem Val nous a fait faire un exercice d'écriture, noter chacun pour soi en un temps donné tout les thèmes/chapitres qui nous viennent à l'esprit puis y connecter toutes les histoires qui y sont liés. Pour chaque thème donner un objet, un son et une image. En mettant tout ça en commun ça nous donne déjà des idées de retranscription sur le plateau et beaucoup de liens se forment entre chaque chapitre. Le soir on part en exploration de la Medina avec Wajdi qui connait bien, on part vers 17h30 pour se rendre compte de la lumière et décider à quelle heure on fera le spectacle, on voudrait faire ça au crépuscule, pour vraiment passé de la fin de journée à la nuit et voir comment la Medina change d'ambiance. Notre lieu favori pour l'instant c'est le « tunnel de la marié », celui ou la légende raconte qu'un mariée serait passé en calèche dans ce tunnel et aurait disparu à l'intérieur. En plus ce tunnel a été fermé par les habitants avec des briques pendant longemtps et vient de ré ouvrir, ils l'avaient fermé car comme c'était trop sombre beaucoup de gens venaient s'y cacher et aux alentours beaucoup de vols avaient lieux, beaucoup d'ordures y étaient laissés. C'est donc un lieu assez chargé en histoire de peur et ça nous intéresse beaucoup, en plus il y a 3 chemins différents qui s'y rencontre donc beaucoup de possibilité de jeu et de surprise. Le seul problème est que c'est presque trop éclairé... On a trouvé aussi un parking un peu abandonné pas loin du tunnel et on pourrait facilement connecté les deux lieux. On retournera dans la Medina demain soir avec toute l'équipe afin de voir d'autres lieux et de se décider. Back to Tunis!
Day 1 (04/01/2018) We're being hosted by L'Art Rue in their incredible association building in the heart of the Medina. We enjoy our breakfasts beside the sunlit roof terrace overlooking the higgle-dy piggle-dy slopes, cubes and domes of the old city which surrounds us. Our flatmates include M******* (nickname: Moo the Cow) and M****** (nickname: Mickey Mouse), two Libyan writers in exile who had contributed to a banned publication in Tripoli and subsequently had to leave the country. The work today consists mainly of touching base, reviewing our past two residencies and the encounters we have made so far, and thinking ahead to how some of this work might be integrated, explored and transposed through dramatic forms onstage. Every afternoon we will be able to work with Lili, the Tunisian architect, poet and performance artist who has joined Senza for our previous residencies in Tunis and St.Denis. Then in the evening we celebrated my 29th birthday by heading to the Kram and having Jewish-Iraqi sandwiches, followed by oranges covered in salt, mint and olive oil! And all accompanied by a "Happy Birthday" chorus in 6 languages (it sounded terrible). :) Looking forward to taking our past research to the next stage in the rehearsal room downstairs. 2-12 January 2018
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Dragons project residencies in Glasgow, Tunis and St Denis
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