26-30 march 2014

ROTTERDAMS WIJKTHEATER PRESENTS
26-30 MARCH 2014
WWW.ICAFROTTERDAM.COM
THE WORLD’S
LARGEST COMMUNITY ARTS
FESTIVAL
MAIN LOCATION: THEATER ZUIDPLEIN
ROTTERDAMS
WIJKTHEATER
SPACE AND COMMUNITY ARTS
Before you lies the programme for the
sixth edition of the International Community Arts Festival (ICAF). The main
theme for this year’s festival is ‘space
and community arts’, in the broadest
sense of the term:
-
-
in the physical or geographical
sense: site-specific performance,
community arts in public space,
participatory art as a counterweight to violent, commercial or
religious images that dominate
cityscapes;
in the representational sense: art
with, for and by under-represented
groups who wish to express who
they are on their own terms and in
their own voice, body language and
cultural taste, or who let others do
it for them;
-
in the sense of ‘what is a legitimate
place for community arts in society
and in the cultural field?’ Associated with this question is our
conviction that powerful, beautiful, moving, unsettling community arts products should not be
restricted to platforms in peripheral neighborhoods, but should
also reach regular arts consumers
so that peripheral perspectives and
voices also receive a platform in the
center;
-
in the mental or spiritual sense of
community arts opening up creative spaces in the mind, stimulating the imagination, bringing
collaborators in contact with new
ideas and perspectives, and showing or creating alternatives to current realities.
We have done our best to bring together
inspiring practitioners and create
a stage, also beyond the Zuidplein
Theatre, for their work, which literally
comes from all corners of the earth.
It will be your task, dear visitor, to ac-
tively engage – physically, emotionally,
creatively, intellectually – with all these
amazing people and the events we have
programmed. Because only you and
the energy you are prepared to invest
in whatever you encounter at ICAF can
make this festival a success.
THE RECIPE IS SIMPLE: OPEN YOUR
MIND AND ENJOY!
Eugene van Erven,
Artistic director ICAF 2014
PRE-FESTIVAL,
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCIES
our RWT colleagues Stefan van Hees
and Jasmina Ibrahimovic around sitespecific work. In the course of 2013
there were even on-site visits both in
Rotterdam and in Dublin, but due to
unforseen circumstances this exchange
could not continue. Still, inspired by
the work of Irish theatre maker Louise
Lowe, who is well known for her intimate site-specific work, Stefan and
Jasmina have been exploring the
physical and human dimensions of
a shop and its immediate vicinity in
Dordtselaan, Rotterdam. Lodging for
this Rotterdam-Irish collaboration has
been provided by Atelier Tarwewijk.
FEBRUARY - MARCH, ROTTERDAM, ARHEM & BREDA
Artist-in-Residencies: visual art, dance
and site-specific performance
Artist-in-Residencies commence several
weeks before the festival proper. This
time, two of the residencies will take
place at quite a distance from Rotterdam. In collaboration with CAL-XL and
Kunstbedrijf Arnhem we have connected visual artist Krista Burger from Arnhem with multimedia artist L’udmila
Horňáková in the outskirts of Kosice,
Slovakia. They will be experimenting
with interventions in public space with
Krista focusing on physical dimension and L’udmila on social aspects. In
addition to the artistic exchange, this
project is also a collaboration between
two unusual neighbourhood-based
programmes: Locatie and Motel Spatie
in Presikhaaf, Arnhem [‘motel ruimte’]
en SPOTs in Kosice (ECoC 2013). Both
organizations are providing lodging to
the artists as well. In a similar fashion,
we have linked Dansnest from Breda
to choreographer Filip van Huffel of
Retina Dance Company (based in
Nottingham, England and AntwerpBerchem, Belgium). Both organizations
like to work in unusual places with
untrained dancers. The third ICAF
residency was supposed to involve
Irish artists working together with
Caravan of Dreams: the EMPAF tour
Also in the week prior to the festival
proper, a mobile sound studio driven
and operated by a team from Junction
Arts (Chesterfield, England), will be
traveling through the Netherlands.
The van contains an exhibition of work
by various community arts organizations associated with the East Midlands
Participatory Arts Forum (EMPAF), one
of the oldest networks in the UK. Led
by Paul Steele, a small team will also
create video impressions of different
Dutch community arts projects in Brabant, Arnhem, Drenthe, Leeuwarden
and in the West of the country, which
they will visit on this pre-ICAF journey.
Their trip will be co-organized with
CAL-XL and during ICAF the EMPAF
Caravan of Dreams will be installed in
the RWT studio so festival visitors can
see the exhibit, hear the results of what
Junction Arts encountered on their trip
through the Dutch community arts
world, and interact with representatives of EMPAF to discuss possibilities
for future collaboration.
2
GENERAL INFORMATION
Each festival day starts at 10 am for the
people wishing to partake in Kerrie
Scheafer’s seminar exploring space
and community arts in all imaginable
dimensions. For everybody else the
day begins at 11.00 am with different
workshops that either require from
you a listening ear, a viewing eye,
verbal comments or active physical
and creative involvement. The idea is
that, under the guidance of experienced community artists from around
the world, you get to take a look in the
kitchen of international arts organisations, which each in their own unique
way try to create space through Community Arts. Each day around noon we
offer you a buffet lunch.
Our afternoon programme, just like
our evening shows, is varied and
international. Afterwards, around 5.30
pm we invite you for dinner, coffee and
a chat with foreign colleagues. Below
you will find detailed information
about each separate event. It includes
fascinating artists and their projects
from a range of disciplines and locations; spanning the globe they come
to Rotterdam from Porto, Barcelona,
Australia and Congo, but also from
South Africa, Cambodia, the Philippines, Canada and Colombia.
colleagues: the small auditorium of
Zuidplein theatre will be the place to
be in the morning. For those who are
perhaps less interested in academic
discourse and more inclined towards
exchanging impressions, thoughts,
impulsive reactions, in English or in
other languages including the nonverbal, we have a whole range of other
conversational formats in store for
you. For example, at lunchtime, you
can enjoy home-cooked food mixed
with local and your own personal stories at the PeerGrouP’s round table,
which we have set up on a social care
farm on the outskirts of Rotterdam.
And during dinner you can sign up to
share a meal with a community arts
practitioner of your choice. For this
purpose, each evening we are setting
up different captain’s tables. Finally,
throughout the day many of our
activities have plenty of formal and
informal dialogical elements built in.
PLAYGROUNDS
In various locations in and around
Zuidplein, we have placed ludic installations that inspire play and talk.
It could be the glow of a woodfire in
an outdoor brazier or coming home
to a warm living room. Let yourself
be surprised...
SPACE FOR CONVERSATIONS ABOUT
COMMUNITY ARTS
PERFORMANCES
Just like in 2011, we have reserved
the mornings between 10 and 12.00
am for those who are interested in
reflecting on your ICAF experiences
under guidance of a seasoned scholar.
This time Dr. Kerrie Schaefer of
Exeter University has kindly agreed
to take on the task of facilitating our
morning seminars. For those of you
interested in seriously testing your
ideas, unpacking relevant theoretical
concepts, or engaging in debates with
All tickets for the performances are
included in the all-in festival packages. For people who do not participate
in the daytime programme, separate
tickets are also available for the
evening shows starting in the main
auditorium at 8.30 pm (as well as for
the Sunday matinee). You can book
those tickets directly at the Zuidplein
Theatre box office: Zuidplein 60,
phone +31-10-203 02 03 of via
WWW.THEATERZUIDPLEIN.NL.
3
LATE-NIGHT STAGE
We finish every day with a festive
late night stage. With a drink and a
snack you can enjoy live music and
dance performed by local or foreign
groups, or you can participate in
intercontinental karaoke. A number
of the organizations who are presenting or performing at the festival have
talented musicians – or deejays – in
their midst who don’t want to miss
another chance to get on stage. Come
dance the night away!
REGISTRATION
From Friday 7 February 2014, you
will be able to register for the festival through our website. You can
indicate there which workshops and
performances you wish to attend.
Please note, however, that since space
is limited for some events we recommend that you indicate a first and
second preference.
You can also register for the entire
festival. This will give you access to
the workshops (but even so you still
need to indicate your preferences!),
performances, lunches and suppers,
as well as information to help you
prepare for the festival – and once
the festival has ended, you will also
be sent a festival report in the form
of a book and film package. Of course
it is also possible to register for either
one or two days.
PROGRAMME
WEDNESDAY 26 MARCH
THURSDAY 27 MARCH
FRIDAY 28 MARCH
seminar
Kerrie Schaefer
seminar
Kerrie Schaefer
8u–9AM building brick bread
oven with Peter Schumann
(volunteers welcome!)
10.00
11.00
12.00
01.00
Start street parade
IJsselmonde
Route 5 - 8
Workshops
Route 7 & 8
Workshops
lunch
Route 1 en 2
Workshops
performance
Solo for Lu
Archa Theatre
performance
Solo for Lu
Archa Theatre
Route 9 & 10
Lunch performance
Route 3 - 6
Long workshops
03.30
Start street parade downtown
04.00
Route 3: Music: Luc Mishalle
Route 4: PETA – Part 1
Route 5: Teatr Grodzki +
Peter Schumann
Route 6: InsightShare
Brunch performance
Brunch performance
lunch
Route 1 - 4
Long workshops
Route 1: PETA – Part 2
Route 2: Merlijn Twaalfhoven
followed by:
La Vie Sur Terre en Bread &
Puppet
Route 3: Cornerstone &
Zid Theatre
Route 4: Music Michael
Romanyshyn
workshops
performance
Ticky Picky Boom Boom
acta Community Theatre
performance
Women Connected
Rotterdams Wijktheater
or
Global Savages
Debajehmujig
Route 9 & 10
Workshops
Lunch performance
performance
Huiskamer opera’s
Care and Culture
Baking bread
with Peter Schumann
05.00
Arrival street parades at
Zuidplein
05.30
07.00
08.00
08.30
09.30
dinner
Workshop with Peter
Schumann (sold out)
Opening ICAF 2014
Women Connected
Rotterdams Wijktheater
The Far Side UpState Theatre
Brothers, Friend & Go Hasigu!
Umsindo, Stut
Opening Performance
Legend of the True Cross
Bread & Puppet
A House for Bernarda Alba
Atalaya TNT
Life: Based on a True Story
Tiny Toones
Late Night Stage
Late Night Stage
Live Concert
Orchestre Partout
Rencontre au pluriel
K-Mu
4
SATURDAY 29 MARCH
SUNDAY 30 MARCH
10.00
seminar
Kerrie Schaefer
11.00
12.00
Route 6 & 7
Lunch performance
Final conversation
Kerrie Schaefer, Matt
Jennings & others
Workshops
performance
Global Savages
Debajehmujig
lunch
Route 1 - 5
Long workshops
02.30
Route 8 & 9
Workshops
Route 1: Debajehmujig &
Básquet Beat
Route 2: Big hART
Route 3: Drie Artist-inresidencies
Route 4: Esther Slegh
Route 5: Ehud en Anat Shamai
Brunch performance
performance
Huiskamer Opera’s
Care & Culture
Afternoon Show
Obia
Untold
05.00
Farewell drink
05.30
dinner
Drei, Twie, Ein... Veuls dich
al get?
Mariaberg Theatre
07.00
Frontera
TransFORMAS
08.30
From the Rooftops of the World
Zid Theater met Cornerstone
09.30
Late Night Stage
5
WED 26 MARCH
01.30 PM
STREET PARADE
Barrio Comparsa | Start location: Islemunda
Catalina García, an artist from Barrio
Comparsa in Medellín, Colombia, will
facilitate a workshop with residents
of IJsselmonde and other interested
parties, including music and dance
students from the Codarts college
of the arts. Together they will create
elements for a festive, colourful latino
style street parade that will move
from IJsselmonde to the city center
and from there back to Zuidplein for
05.00 PM
OPENING - BAKING BREAD
Peter Schumann of the Bread & Puppet Theatre
Location: outdoors, in front of Zuidplein Theatre
In 1963, dancer and sculptor Peter
Schumann founded the Bread & Puppet theatre. Since then, the company
has gone on to become one of the
most influential performance groups
in the world with a very recognizable
style and a generous, communityminded spirit. For over four decades
the opening of the festival. Catalina
has recently returned to Colombia
after working for many years in
Guatemala with Caja Lúdica, a group
which also frequently intervenes in
public space with colourful parades
of their own. In 2012 and 2013, Catalina collaborated with Anouk de Bruijn
on an international co-production
entitled ‘Hidden War’ [guerras escondidas/verborgen oorlog]. Anouk and other
members of the Hidden War cast
(including some special guests flown
in from Guatemala) will also join in
this special edition of the ‘barrio
comparsa’. Catalina’s father, Luis
Fernando ‘el gordo’ García, founded
Barrio Comparsa back in 1990 to
reclaim Medellín’s neighbourhoods
from drug gangs through the arts.
now, Bread & Puppet has connected
itself to the natural environment and
the local residents of a rural community in northern Vermont, where
it stages very popular annual festivals in which thousands of people
actively participate. Peter Schumann
is the driving force behind all Bread
& Puppet’s activities. From the earliest beginnings he has always baked
his own sour dough bread, offering it
to audiences worldwide as a symbol
of the essential importance of art in
our human existence. Especially for
the opening of ICAF-6, on the 26th
of March Peter and a group of local
volunteers are constructing an ad
hoc bread oven made of used bricks
on the outdoor terrace of Zuidplein
Theatre. Later that afternoon, he
will light the oven and will bake and
break bread right at the time when
the ICAF Barrio Comparsa reaches
Zuidplein. This will signal the official
opening of our festival.
A few other wonderful groups from
Rotterdam will also partake in this
festive street parade: dance teachersto-be from Codarts, pupils of the
Palmentuin school and the talented
children of Circus MiX!
6
WED 26 MARCH
05.30 – 07.30 PM
WORKSHOP WITH
PETER SCHUMANN
Location: Zuidplein Theatre – SOLD OUT
During this interactive workshop
Peter will create a short participatory
performance piece with a number of
volunteers. The results of this unique
collaboration with one of the world’s
truly great artists will be incorporated as the epilogue to the Bread &
Puppet production Legend of the True
Cross.
ning of humanity. Schumann visually
based the show on frescoes painted
by the Italian Renaissance artist Piero
della Francesca, who also appears as
a character. The central story is about
twigs that grow into a tree, which
later provides the wood for the cross
on which Jesus is executed. But the
story doesn’t stop there: forces of evil
and good (or those that pretend to be)
continue to fight over the ownership
of this sacred wood. One reviewer in
Vermont, where the play premiered
last August, even recognized references to Assange and Snowden in it.
08.30 PM
LEGEND OF THE TRUE CROSS
Bread & Puppet Theatre (Vermont, VS)
Opening performance I Zuidplein Theatre
In the main auditorium of Theatre
Zuidplein, the festival will be opened
with a performance by the legendary
Bread & Puppet theatre, the grandmother of modern community arts.
For fifty years now, this company
has been part of a rural community
in northern Vermont (USA), creating annual festivals that attract (and
involve) thousands of people. At ICAF,
Bread & Puppet will present the cryptically titled Piero Della Francesca’s
Legend of the True Cross (Exultation
Manufacture with Crucifixion of Oppositionist). It is a mesmerizing, symbolic
production with giant puppets and
stunning live music about the fragile
relation between man and nature.
Peter Schumann created this hourlong show last year to celebrate Bread
& Puppet’s 50th anniversary. At first
sight, the performance seems full
of Christian imagery, whereas the
company has always been wary of
institutionalized religion. The images
and characters, however, are used
here not to convert or worship, but to
tell a contemporary ecological story
with roots going back to the begin-
09.30 PM
LATE NIGHT STAGE
7
THU 27 MARCH
10.00 AM
SEMINAR ‘SPACE AND
COMMUNITY ARTS’
Kerrie Schaefer (England) I Zuidplein Theatre
In this daily seminar, Dr. Kerrie
Schaefer will discuss work that was
on the programme the previous day
together with the artists responsible
for it. Each day, she will also explore
more theoretical aspects of community art and space. One of the issues
she will consider, for example, is how
community could be understood as a
creative space and community arts as
dynamic social and artistic processes
in which possibilities for people to
be, work, live, and create together are
actively imagined and constructed.
At the same time, the very existence
of a space of creative process and
production invites question about
power and the dominant order of
knowledge, meaning and value. On
the one hand, community art can
11.00 AM
SHORT WORKSHOPS
ICAF PLAYGROUND | ZUIDPLEIN THEATRE
ROUTE 7
I AM HERE &
I AM HERE IN PEACE
Todo Community Film Productions | (Netherlands)
Film screening + discussion
Location: LCC Larenkamp
ROUTES
7, 8
ROUTES
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
question or redefine fixed, stable and
secure knowledges through creative,
participatory and democratic processes. (There is a clear connection
here between the growing grass-roots
interest in community art in countries like Spain and Portugal and
the economic crisis that particularly
affects young people.) On the other
hand, one could also question the
relative autonomy of this ‘creative
space’. Isn’t this creative space already shot through with commercial,
corporate, governmental and other
interests and investments? Should we
speak, instead, of a creative space of
mixed interests and messy alliances?
How do community artists and participants (self-)define and create space
for process without being subsumed
by the logics of these other interests?
And shouldn’t we also wonder whether participants might not tire of endless process? Why is it important that
the products of process go ‘public’ –
for a moment of open interpretation
such as at this festival – rather than
back into process and praxis? All
these questions, and more, will be addressed in this seminar, with guests
from around the globe providing
refreshing and sometimes surprising
perspectives on the space and the
place of community art.
Young immigrants, who have received little schooling in their home
countries, describe their new life in
the Netherlands. Their stories are
told in two documentary films, made
by the students themselves. The
students from the Utrecht region,
aged between 15 and 20, come from
all over the world. They have fled
countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq
and Somalia, or emigrated from their
homes in, for example, Chile, Morocco or Turkey, to be reunited with
their family. The students are introduced to the Dutch language, while
often barely able to read or write
in their own mother tongue. They
attend the International Transitionclass in Utrecht, to prepare them to
enter regular education. This group
project brings them out of their
isolation, gives them self-confidence
and teaches its audience about how
the students experience adjusting
to life in the Netherlands. Through
filming each other and expressing
themselves on screen, they learn how
to work in a team, communicate,
respond to feedback, self-reflect and
articulate their personal story.
Kerrie Schaefer completed a PhD on
the work of the Australian performance ensemble, The Sydney Front,
in the Centre for Performance Studies, Sydney University (2000). From
1999 to 2006 she was Lecturer in
Drama at the University of Newcastle,
NSW. In 2007 she relocated to Exeter
University, UK, where she is one of
the coordinators of the BA and MA
programme in Applied Theatre. She
is currently working on Community
Performance and Creative Adaptation, scheduled for publication by
Palgrave MacMillan in 2015.
Two classes (comprising 30 students)
from the school received tuition in
film-making and interview skills and
each made a documentary about
themselves. They filmed at school,
at home and on the streets, with the
theme: building a new life in the
Netherlands. They interviewed each
other and had full editorial control
of the films. The films show, with humour and emotion, how the students
8
THU 27 MARCH
see themselves and each other.
Dutch film-makers Femke Stroomer
and Sanne Sprenger developed and
directed this participative video
project. They will be attending ICAF,
together with some of the students,
to explain the project’s evolution and
results. Additional information over
the project is available at
http://stichtingtodo.wordpress.com.
Stichting Todo is a foundation
that develops participatory video
and photo projects. It supports and
produces community art specifically
within the audio-visual media.
ROUTE 8
WITHOUT WORDS /
SIN PALABRAS
Marco Ferreira (Portugal) | Location: LCC Larenkamp
Marco Ferreira is one of Portugal’s
most promising theatre makers and
actors with a genuine interest in collaborating with theatrically inexpe-
rienced community performers. He
received his initial training at the
Evora Acting School before embarking on projects with Portuguese and
foreign directors, including Eugenio
Barba’s Odin Teatret. Starting in
2000 he began to collaborate with rural communities in association with
Baal17, an experimental performance
company. Since then he has become
more and more interested in participatory drama, training in Finland
and currently in the Community
Theatre M.A. program of the Lisbon
Theatre and Film School.
Over the years, Marco discovered that
during artistic processes those with
the loudest mouths tend to dominate. So he created a new, visual,
non-verbal theatrical language that
favours those who are at a loss for
spoken words. In this workshop,
which includes a sample of a short
performance he presented at Portugal’s very own community theatre
festival Mexe-II in Porto last November, he will teach you some tech-
11.00 AM AND 01.00 PM
LUNCH/BRUNCHVOORSTELLING
THE ROUND TABLE
The PeerGrouP (The Netherlands) |Location: de
Buytenhof, a farm for special care in Rhoon
In collaboration with the PeerGrouP,
a site-specific performance company
based in rural Drenthe, we will create
a special edition of the Round Table.
Designed by Henry Alles, the table
is an art object, a mobile restaurant
plus kitchen, and a stage for local
stories related to the dishes that are
cooked and served on the spot. Especially for ICAF, Henry has set up his
9
ROUTES
7, 8, 9, 10
niques and methods by which you
can learn to create a poetic, visually
attractive and meaningful performance without speaking.
In this workshop, Marco invites you
to explore the artistic singularity of silence. Silence is the key to genuine expression of body and soul, to building
collective non-verbal narratives, to organizing and representing individual
“voices”, and to expanding the creative
space for community participation. Silence can be a very powerful metaphor
for modern society, providing us with
new perceptions of what surrounds us.
Silence can also be a social phenomenon, the absence of sound, a path that
connects to our memories, a privileged
non-verbal form of communication,
and a learning process to create new
ethical values together.
This workshop is about the power of
being in the here and now and about
creating a common, poetic, ritualized
space using our true, genuine “voice”.
THU 27 MARCH
Round Table on the premises of social
care farm de Buytenhof, in the rural
village of Rhoon. A maximum of 49
guests are seated at a round table
with a 30 foot diameter. The cook and
the actors are set up in the middle
and take you along on a gastronomic
journey that includes produce from
around the corner and stories from
all over the world, including yours.
01.00 PM
from contrasting environments:
the urban, built up backdrop of the
Gorbals neighbourhood in Glasgow
and the rural nature of Manitoulin’s
landscape. Despite their differences
in geography, culture and practice,
they have found ‘common ground’.
SHORT WORKSHOPS
ROUTES
1, 2
ROUTE 1
PLAYING TOGETHER AT
THE COMMONWEALTH
GAMES
Debajehmujig (Canada) & Glasgow Citizens
Theatre (Scotland) | LCC Larenkamp
Eating together is special. Seated
at a table we are ourselves, with all
our peculiar manners and tastes. At
a table you can talk about almost
anything. Also about how on earth
Working on a genuinely collaborative
international project poses a number
of challenges. As the two partners
deal with the practical, they continue
to strive towards a shared vision that
encompasses the joint creativity and
principles of the companies, whilst
assuring a quality experience for the
130 community participants and the
potential global audience who will be
in the city during the largest sporting and cultural event in Glasgow’s
history.
What do a tribe who’ve been travelling for 18,000 years discover when
they meet Glaswegians ‘On Common
Ground’?
The destination, the creation of the
story, has space at its heart, just like
this festival.
Debajehmujig Storytellers from
Manitoulin Island in Canada and
The Citizens Theatre from Glasgow
Scotland first met at ICAF 2011 and
enthusiastically began to brainstorm
around the possibility of joining
forces to create a large scale, outdoor
theatrical event for Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games 2014. Both organizations are approaching this project
Returning to ICAF 2014, both companies introduce their project ‘On
Common Ground.’ This workshop is
both practical and informative and is
intended to provide community arts
practitioners with some experiential
insight into this unique collaborative enterprise between First Nations
artists and a Scottish community
theatre company.
things have become as they are,
with ourselves, our food, our natural
surrounding. Together with you, the
Round Table adds new material to
the ongoing story it has been gathering over the past six years. It is a tale
that nourishes the head, the heart,
and the stomach.
ROUTE 2
LIFE-CHANGING
CAMBODIAN HIP-HOP
Tiny Toons (Cambodia) | Location: LCC Larenkamp
In 2005, Tuy Sobil opened his house
to a group of young children who
were living and working on the
streets near him. Tuy himself had
just returned to Phnom Penh after
spending much of his life in refugee
camps in Thailand and later in ganginfested parts of Los Angeles. After receiving a criminal sentence in the US,
he was deported back to Cambodia
in 2004. Soon rumors started among
local youth that he had been a successful break dancer in America and
as a result more and more kids began
to knock on his door for lessons. His
house thus became an informal community center and today is the heart
of a veritable hip-hop movement that
involves hundreds of children and
youth. In this workshop they will tell
their story, show how they work in
the volatile context of the backstreets
of Phnom Penh, and demonstrate
parts of their methodology.
10
ROUTES
3, 4, 5, 6
THU 27 MARCH
01.00 PM
ROUTE 4
ROUTE 5
LONG WORKSHOPS
TRAINING PEOPLE’S
THEATRE THE PHILIPPINE
WAY, PART 1
SAYING IT WITH PUPPETS
P.E.T.A. (Philippines) | Location: Studio RWT
ROUTE 3
A COLOURFUL MUSIC FEST
Luc Mishalle (Belgium) | Location: Islemunda
This is a three-hour long production-oriented music workshop for
musicians of all backgrounds and
all levels of competence, who are
prepared to bring along a percussion
or melody instrument. Together with
you, Luc will first lay down a basis
of Moroccan flavoured rhythmical
patterns (shaa bi, ra ï, gnawa) before
weaving in melodic patterns in order
to create a colourful festive kind of
music. The participants themselves
will determine the length and the
sound nuances of the pieces. There
will be plenty of room for improvisation and we will pay special attention
to the dynamics of ‘call and response’
and the combination binary-ternary
(in musical time keeping). Knowing
how to read notes is not essential.
Much of what we do will be learned
by literally playing it by ear.
Luc Mishalle is artistic director of
MET-X, a house for music makers
based in Brussels. For many years
now, he has been a well-known figure
in both the professional music scene
and on city streets and squares. He
works in a theatre context as well as
in contemporary and improvisational
music. His frequent collaboration
with Moroccan percussionists has
resulted in the formation of music
ensembles Marakbar, Al-Harmonia,
Remork, and Marockin’ Brass.
11
The Philippines Educational Theater
Association (PETA, founded in 1967)
is one of the oldest and most respected community arts-organizations in
Asia. One of their specialities is training ‘facilitators’ so they can work
with the inhabitants of rural villages
and metropolitan slums and pass on
their skills in such a way that the arts
activities continue after their initial
intervention. Bong Billones, the head
of PETA’s School for People’s Theater,
and Melvin Lee, associate artistic
director of PETA, will show you in a
hands-on process how this company
trains its trainers through their creative pedagogy methodology. Together
with you they will explore how their
approach might be adapted to your
own context. Note: this is a two-day
process.
Teatr Grodzki (Poland)
followed by:
A CONVERSATION WITH
PETER SCHUMANN
Bread & Puppet (USA)
Interactive workshop, performance + informal
conversation |Location: RWT Tolhuisstraat
a. Teatr Grodzki was founded in
the southern Polish city of BielskoBiala, which is close to the Czech and
Slovakian border. It is a collective of
artists, teachers, and cultural entrepreneurs which tries to positively
influence the lives of vulnerable people through participatory arts. They
connect economical activities and,
when necessary, therapy to their arts
activities. They make puppet theatre,
films, photographs, and they design
clothes. The company also operates
a print shop and, in the mountains
outside Bielsko-Biala, a hotel which is
run by people with disabilities.
In this workshop, Maria Schejbal,
one of the original members of
Grodzki, will teach you some simple
puppet-making techniques before inviting you to participate in a special
performance of a puppet play about
the trials and tribulations of a young
man she has worked with over the
years. It is entitled Magic Mountain or
a few facts from M`s life. Way back in
the ‘80s, when Poland was still under
Communist rule, Maria managed to
get permission to travel to the USA
to work with the Bread & Puppet
Theatre. This experience continues
to inspire her to this very day. When
she heard that Peter Schumann was
coming to Rotterdam, she immediately started to raise funds in Poland.
Thanks to her efforts, she is able bring
along Teatr Grodzki Junior, a puppetry group composed of people with
various ability levels. Peter Schumann
will also attend this workshop.
THU 27 MARCH
b. In the second part of this afternoon, Peter Schumann, the cofounder of Bread & Puppet, will talk
informally about the fifty years he
has been working with this extraordinary company. From the streets
of Manhattan, Bread & Puppet has
travelled through Europe and all over
Latin America and North America,
inspiring people wherever they have
gone. This is a unique opportunity
to converse with Peter – up close
and personal – about his work, his
dreams, and the role of art in the
world today.
01.00 PM
ROUTE 10
SHORT WORKSHOPS
PARTICIPATORY THEATRE
IN IRAN
InterAct (Iran/The Netherlands) | Location: Islemunda
COLLABORATING SEVILLIAN
NEIGHBOURS: HOW THE
BERNARDA ALBA
PRODUCTION WAS BORN
In December 2013 a unique theatrical
event took place in Tehran. Its title
was The Odour and the location was a
former bath house. There, spectators
took part in an interactive performance about life under a totalitarian regime, about the need to be in
control of your own life, and about
the hope for change and freedom. The
event was closed: all the actors invited
two people they knew. A professional
film crew documented the show and
the resulting documentary will be
screened for the first time outside
Iran in this ICAF workshop. The Odour
is also on the shortlist for an Iranian
theatre festival later this spring.
Atalaya-TNT is a professional theatre
company and laboratory based in
Seville, Spain. The company has developed an international reputation
for its innovative productions. A few
years ago, Atalaya decided to open its
doors to its neighbours in the nearby
area of El Vacie. In this workshop,
members of the company reconstruct
the extraordinary relationship they
have built up with a group of Roma
women since then. As part of this
workshop they will screen parts of a
professional documentary that was
made for Spanish national television
about this unique collaboration.
In this workshop, director Nasrin
Ghasemzadeh (formerly a well-know
screen actress) and writer and producer Farhad Foroutanian will share
their experiences in trying to get
participatory theatre off the ground
in Iran. Over the past few years, they
have been introducing their homemade interactive theatre approach to
students, actors and other interested
people through a series of workshops. The people they trained have
since facilitated their own interactive theatre in hospitals and on oil
rigs. Recently, they formed their own
theatre company, with which they
performed The Odour.
ROUTES
9, 10
ROUTE 9
ROUTE 6
PARTICIPATORY VIDEO
InsightShare (United Kingdom)
Methodology Workshop | Location: Islemunda
Atalaya – TNT (Spain) | Location: Islemunda
InsightShare is an undisputed
pioneer in the field of participatory video. From their homebase in
Oxford, staff members travel around
the world with video equipment to
enable community groups to produce images with which to reflect
on their own lives. In an ambitious
project called Conversations with
the earth Insight Share worked with
indigenous people on a series of grass
roots films about climate change that
were also screened at renowned heritage institutions like the Smithsonian
in Washington, D.C. Over the years,
Insight Share has developed a very
transparent, transferable methodology to which the quality of process
and self-reliance are central. At ICAF,
some of the most experienced Insight
Share staff members, including the
company’s founders, offer you insight
into the scope of their work and a
hands-on opportunity to experience
their methodology.
Nasrin Ghasemzadeh and Farhad
Foroutanian use the power of theatre to invite the audience on stage.
The audience thus not only experience the emotions and stories of the
actors; they can also act themselves
and engage in a dialogue with the
actors and each other. With their
company InterAct Nasrin and Farhad
12
THU 27 MARCH
previously participated in the interactive theatre project Without Invitation
about refugees (which was part of the
Rotterdam Cultural Capital of Europe
programme in 2001). They also created theatre shows around safety in
schools and about saying farewell to
a neighbourhood (in the context of
urban renewal) and they collaborated
with well-known theatre makers like
Dries Verhoeven (No Man’s Land) and
Alan Yadegarian (Persians).
tions in the Czech Republic. They
have worked with Vaclav Havel, were
instrumental in bringing inspiring
artists from the West to their country (including Bread & Puppet and
Dogtroep), and more recently have
discovered the power of community
arts. Their home base is a popular
theatre venue in downtown Prague,
but they also work site-specifically
in provincial towns and camps for
asylum seekers.
03:30 PM
SOLO FOR LU
Archa Theatre (Czech Republic) I Performance
Location: LCC LArenkamp
ROUTES
1, 2, 7, 8
Is my name Ching, Chang or Chong?
How mysterious is the Orient? Will
the Chinese rule over us?
A performance by Jing Lu and Jana
Svobodová based on the real life story
of the Chinese actress, singer and
dancer. The show is an intimate tale
about migration from China to the
Czech Republic, full of tragedy, adversity and ambition. It also confronts us
with global questions of today’s world
and western society’s ambivalent
relationship to China, which ranges
from admiration of eastern culture to
fear of China’s economic hegemony.
Jing Lu is an excellent musician and
singer, so music plays a major role in
the performance. The performance
features Czech and many Chinese
dialects (and, you’ll be happy to know,
English subtitles).
Archa Theatre is one of the leading
contemporary theatre organiza13
THU 27 MARCH
ROUTES
9,10
03:30 PM
TICKY PICKY BOOM BOOM
acta Community Theatre (United Kingdom)
Performance | Location: Islemunda
acta Community Theatre and the
Malcolm X Elders Theatre Company
present Ticky Picky Boom Boom
Based on folk stories from their Caribbean childhood, the Elders devised
this show to tour to Bristol schools,
making links across generations and
cultures with a lively, fun show which
has delighted audiences of all ages.
Grundtvig
uitgevoerd door
europees platform
internationaliseren in onderwijs
ALL
ROUTES
07:00 PM
WOMEN CONNECTED
Rotterdams Wijktheater (Nederland) I Performance
Location: Zuidplein Theatre
In this double bill, we introduce
Women Connected, the new long-term
women’s project directed by RWT
associate Kaat Zoontjens. In part one,
Known Strangers, we meet four women
who live in the same street. Everyone
has an opinion about the other. One
day, a newcomer enters their lives.
Who the hell is she? Gradually, the
stranger and the four women get to
know one another. As a result, reality
turns out to be quite different from
what everyone expected.
Part two, Sahra, is a solo performed
by Sahra Muse, a Somali mother of
three. When Sahra’s own mother
asks her to return with her to her native country she is forced to come to
terms with some difficult questions
like ‘where do I and my children
really belong?’ Full of passion and
humor, Sahra searches for answers
and talks about her life in Somalia
and the Netherlands. ‘Sahra’ is the
first of hopefully many solo portraits
that Kaat Zoontjens intends to create
in the years to come under the name
of Women Connected, preferably in collaboration with partners from other
countries. So consider yourselves
invited to approach Kaat after the
show...
14
THU 27 MARCH
ALL
ROUTES
07:00 PM
THE FAR SIDE
UpState Theatre (Ireland) I Film + performance
Location: Islemunda
The Far Side premiered in the Drogheda
Arts Festival 2013 with a sell-out
show in the Droichead Arts Centre
and a subsequent tour to the Light
House Cinema for an eight night run
at Dublin Fringe Festival 2013. Critically acclaimed (★★★★★ Irish Times),
this show is an intimate look at an
Irish town through the memories of
seven local people. The performance
captures a diverse perspective delivered with typical Irish humour, but is
not without its poignant moments of
genuine personal reflection. Contemporary art-making blends with local,
personal and popular heritage in a
unique and unsentimental cocktail
for the here and now. Under the
08:30 PM
HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA
Atalaya TNT (Spain) I Show I Location: Zuidplein
Theatre
A spectacular show from Spain with
Roma women from Seville
One of the biggest hits in the Spanish theatre of the past few years was
a production of García Lorca’s House
of Bernarda Alba performed by eight
Roma woman from the troubled El
Vacie neigbhorhood in Seville. The
play was performed for sell-out audi15
guidance of artist Feidlim Cannon
(Brokentalkers), seven performers develop a contemporary, living history
exploring the social dimensions of an
Irish town through personal recollections of growing up and living there.
While Upstate Theatre Project and
The Far Side explore the universal
truths and preoccupations of our
citizens, the result of this process
gives audiences something they too
can contextualise. After all, every
town has its far side. Melding the
performance of professional and
citizen artists, fusing film and live
performance, The Far Side is contemporary both in form and content.
The production not only successfully
blurs the lines between genres but
also melds the local and universal
through the prism of favourite TV
shows, cinema and song, celebrating
a peoples’ history of themselves, and
a town divided by a river.
Director Feidlim Cannon, who will
host this evening, explains: “On
the stage there are screens. On the
screens are the magnificent seven.
ences all over the country and the
press praised it for the extraordinary
power of the women, who adapted
the script to their own living conditions. They were supported by professionals from the renowned theatre
company Atalaya-TNT, which has its
headquarters right next to El Vacie. A
few years ago this ensemble decided
to make its activities more accessible to its immediate neighbors.
The unique collaboration that led to
tonight’s production was the immediate result of this outreach.
They are Elma, Ged, Gerry, James,
John, Roisin and Vivienne. The ‘seven’
are the authors and performers of
this show. The Far Side is the result of
the Thursday evening club. A club for
the recovery of stories. A club where
you look at your history as a series of
written and unwritten narratives. A
club where everyday life experiences
are discussed to create a seedbed
of memories. From your first kiss
to where you go when you die. The
piece that you will watch is a record
of memory. Tonight the ‘seven’ will
share their stories with you”.
Upstate Theatre Project was founded
in 1997 and has pursued a collaborative, participatory practice since its
inception. Upstate is a communityengaged performing arts organisation adhering to collective and
collaborative approaches in keeping
with principles of cultural democracy. Through their work, Upstate
advocates for social change and challenges audience’s pre-conceptions of
who can shape the world around us.
The play, which Lorca wrote right
before his violent death in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, is about a rural
house in Andalusia. Three generations of women, headed by the rather
dominant Bernarda Alba, try to live
together in this place with ups and
downs and plenty of tension. The
performance effectively explores all
kinds of pressure, passion, and gender relations from the perspective of
Roma women.
The production continues to be a
life changing experience for these
THU 27 MARCH
amazing women. Without any formal
schooling, it enabled them to leave
their homes and chores for the first
time in their lives – and their children in the care of their husbands
– to travel around Spain and now, by
plane, to Rotterdam.
Atalaya-TNT is a leading theatre
company and experimental labora-
tory in Spain with an aim to create
poetic performance projects with
and for people regardless of cultural
background, social status or age.
The dual company (Atalaya is the
production company and TNT is the
lab; its acronym stands for ‘Territory
of New Times’) has an international
orientation and received the Spanish
National Theatre Award in 2008.
ALL
ROUTES
09.30 PM
LATE NIGHT STAGE
16
ROUTES
1, 2, 3, 4
ROUTES
5, 6, 9, 10
10.00 AM
11.00 AM
SEMINAR ‘SPACE FOR
COMMUNITY ARTS’
SHORT WORKSHOPS
FRI 28 MARCH
ICAF PLAYGROUND | ZUIDPLEIN THEATRE
PART TWO by Feidlim Cannon of
Brokentalkers: Collaborative Methods in search of a form.
Kerrie Schaefer (England) I Zuidplein Theatre
In this daily seminar, Dr. Kerrie
Schaefer (Exeter University), will
discuss work that was on the programme the previous day together
with artists who were involved. Each
day, she will also explore more theoretical aspects of community art and
space. Today, she opens the door to a
recent project from Northern Ireland,
Crows on the Wire, a community theatre project with, for and about police
officers, and for all those affected by
the history and themes of this work.
Crows on the Wire addresses the transition of what was formerly called
the Royal Ulster Constibulary (RUC)
to what became known as Police
Services Northern Ireland (PSNI) after
the Good Friday Peace Agreement
that nominally ended the violent
civil conflict known as ‘The Troubles’. The play, written by Jonathon
Burgess, is informed by authentic
stories of individual police officers
and deals with their frustration during this transformation that deeply
affected their sense of identity. In
November 2013, this production was
widely performed across Northern
Ireland and included highly animated post-performance discussions.
The project will be presented by Dr.
Matt Jennings (University of Ulster)
who served as a dramaturg for the
playwright and studied the process
from an academic perspective, and
Dr. Mhairi Sutherland, a visual artist, curator and educator. She was the
community-engagement co-ordinator
for ‘Crows on the Wire’ on behalf of
the Verbal Arts Center, the initiator
and producer of the project.
17
ROUTE 5
PERFORMING HISTORIES /
COLLABORATIVE METHODS
IN SEARCH OF A FORM
Upstate Theatre, Ireland I Illustrated Presentation
Location: LCC Larenkamp
PART ONE with Declan Mallon,
Director of Upstate Theatre Project:
Performing Histories
Upstate Theatre Project is a performing arts organization based in
Drogheda, Ireland. It seeks, through
collaborative methodologies, to create original performance-based presentations. This is achieved through
a devising process with participants
from the community, be that a ‘community of place or of interest’. Hence,
Upstate’s workshop programme is
designed as a place where people can
collectively work in collaboration
with artists to realise performances
based on themes, ideas, and issues of
mutual interest. This section of the
workshop will put The Far Side (the
film that was on the programme last
night) in the context of the Shared
Heritage Programme. This initiative
sought to create a trilogy of projects
using the Drogheda oral history
archive. The testimonies were used as
a springboard for community members to respond, under the guidance
of an artist, to the archival materials
and search for contemporary means
of re-presenting the unofficial history
back to the community. Effectively,
they created a history of themselves.
Brokentalkers (Winners of a Total
Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation & Playing with Form at
the Edinburgh Fringe 2013) have built
a reputation as one of Ireland’s most
innovative and original theatre companies, making formally ambitious
work that defies categorisation. They
have been acclaimed internationally for their pioneering approach to
theatre. They are an Irish Company
with an international outlook, committed to touring work internationally and developing relationships
with international partners. Feidlim
Cannon will discuss the shaping of
the form for The Far Side, referencing
his work with Brokentalkers and their
interrogation of performance styles
and presentation form in search of an
inclusive format for both professional
and non-professional performers.
ROUTE 6
LEGISLATIVE THEATRE
ImaginAction (Colombia / USA) & Formaat (NL)
Interactive workshop | Location: LCC Larenkamp
From March 7 through 13, internationally renowned Theatre of the
Oppressed practitioners Hector
Aristizábal and Luc Opdebeeck have
been experimenting with Boal’s Legislative theatre techniques at the van
Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. Their
intervention was part of the arte útil
[useful art] manifestation at the Van
Abbe. There, they created a so-called
‘anti-model’ with senior citizens
from Eindhoven and local politicians
to explore legislative aspects of political issues related to ageing. They
will perform this anti-model for you
at ICAF. You will be invited to react
FRI 28 MARCH
verbally or physically get in on the
action. Hector and Luc will also share
some of their methods and explain
the ins and outs of Legislative Theatre,
which from Brazil to Afghanistan
has proven to be an effective tool for
enhancing people’s involvement in
generating new legislation from the
bottom up.
ROUTE 9
CARAVAN OF DREAMS
EMPAF (UK) I Installation and Discussion
Location: Islemunda
In the week prior to the festival
proper, a mobile studio driven and
operated by a team from Junction
Arts (Chesterfield, England), has been
traveling through the Netherlands.
The van contained an exhibition
of work by various community arts
organizations associated with the
East Midlands Participatory Arts
Forum (EMPAF), one of the oldest
community arts networks in the
UK. Along the way, Paul Steele and
a small crew created video impressions of different Dutch community
arts projects in Brabant, Arnhem,
Drenthe, Leeuwarden and in the
West of the country. Their trip was
co-organized with CAL-XL and during
ICAF the EMPAF Caravan of Dreams
will be installed in the RWT studio.
Festival visitors can see the EMPAF
exhibit, sea and hear the results of
what Junction Arts encountered on
their trip through the Dutch community arts world, and interact with
representatives of EMPAF to discuss
possibilities for future collaboration.
The partners of this dynamic network are determined to bring their
Caravan of Dreams back to the East
Midlands filled with concrete ideas
and commitments from European
partners for innovative and inspir-
ing international community arts
collaborations in the years to come.
Jump on board...
ROUTE 10
WOMEN CONNECTED
Rotterdams Wijktheater (The Netherlands)
Location: Islemunda
In this interactive workshop, RWT
director (and film maker) Kaat
Zoontjens introduces her plans for a
worldwide relay of theatre portraits
and films under the umbrella of a project she has entitled Women Connected.
Today, she wants to make a start with
this ambitious enterprise, teaching you
first how to make mini portraits using
smart phones and then explore how
these moving images and stories could
lead to a self-sustaining, new mix of
self-generated community theatre and
film on the internet.
11.00 AM EN 01.00 PM
BRUNCH PERFORMANCE
THE ROUND TABLE
The PeerGrouP (The Netherlands)
Location: The Buytenhof, a care farm in Rhoon
In collaboration with the PeerGrouP,
a site-specific performance company
based in rural Drenthe, we will create
a special edition of the Round Table.
Designed by Henry Alles, the table
is an art object, a mobile restaurant
plus kitchen, and a stage for local
stories related to the dishes that
are cooked and served on the spot.
Especially for ICAF, Henry has set up
ROUTES
5, 6, 7, 8
18
FRI 28 MARCH
his Round Table on the premises of
social care farm de Buytenhof, in the
rural village of Rhoon. A maximum of
49 guests are seated at a round table
with a 30 foot diameter. The cook and
the actors are set up in the middle
and take you along on a gastronomic
journey that includes produce from
around the corner and stories from
all over the world, including yours.
01.00 PM
and Melvin Lee, the associate artistic
director of PETA, will show you in a
hands-on process how this company
trains its trainers their creative pedagogy methodology. Together with you
they will explore how their approach
might be adapted to your own context. Note: this is a two-day process.
LONG WORKSHOPS
Various locations
ROUTES
1, 2, 3, 4
Eating together is special. Seated at a
table we are ourselves, with all our
peculiar manners and tastes. At
a table you can talk about almost
anything. Also about how on earth
ROUTE 2
MERLIJN TWAALFHOVEN
followed by:
CHORAL SINGING AND THE
SACRED HARP
ROUTE 1
TRAINING PEOPLE’S
THEATRE THE PHILIPPINE
WAY, PART 2
(Philippines) I Methodology Workshop
Location: Studio RWT
The Philippines Educational Theater
Association (PETA, founded in 1967)
is one of the oldest and most respected community arts-organizations
in Asia. One of their specialities is
training ‘facilitators’ so they can work
with the inhabitants of rural villages
and metropolitan slums and pass on
their skills in such a way that the arts
activities continue after their initial
intervention. Bong Billones, the head
of PETA’s School for People’s Theater,
19
La Vie Sur Terre (NL) and Bread & Puppet (US) I
Film Screening + Improvised Singing
Location: Islemunda
a. Premiere: Station East – breaking the
invisible wall (a film by Adam Sèbire,
Australia)
The neighbours of the Roma ghetto
in Prešov, Slovakia, want to build a
wall to prevent Roma children from
stealing fruit and vegetables from
their gardens. Composer Merlijn
Twaalfhoven believes there are other
ways to soften the hardened relations between the two groups. With
a team of musicians and organizers
from Germany, Holland, Poland, and
Slovakia he designed a music festival in which Roma and non-Romas
performed together. In doing so they
touched the tip of an iceberg made of
things have become as they are,
with ourselves, our food, our natural
surrounding. Together with you, the
Round Table adds new material to the
ongoing story it has been gathering
over the past six years. It is a tale that
nourishes the head, the heart, and
the stomach.
cultural differences and deep-seated
mistrust.
Merlijn Twaalfhoven, one of Holland’s better-known community
music composers, will be present to
comment on the film and this recent
project. Over the years, he has undertaken similar initiatives to bring
divided population groups together
in such places as Cyprus and IsraelPalestina. At ICAF-5 he performed his
spectacular interactive choral piece
The Air We Breathe.
b. Together with her husband Peter,
Elka Schumann has been a crucial
part of Bread & Puppet’s fifty-year
history and their farm, museum and
theater based just outside Glover,
Vermont. Especially for ICAF, Elka is
offering an interactive choral singing
workshop on Sacred Harp music. She
first came across it as part of Bread &
Puppet’s connection to the local communities in Vermont, where she discovered a Sacred Harp choral group.
Although most of the Sacred Harp
songs are religious, Bread & Puppet
is not religious at all. They simply
fell in love with the archaic language
and the beautiful harmonies. We are
pretty sure that you will too.
FRI 28 MARCH
ROUTE 3:
CORNERSTONE (Los Angeles, USA)
& ZID THEATRE (The Netherlands)
Location: LCC Larenkamp
Cornerstone Theatre (Los Angeles) is
widely regarded as one of the most
important community-based theatre
companies in the English-speaking
world. Founded in 1986, during the
first six years of its existence the
company specialized in rural residencies around the U.S., deconstructing and rebuilding classical drama
texts together with local residents.
In 1992, the company relocated to
Los Angeles and began to relinquish
its exclusive focus on the classics in
favour of a new dramaturgy based on
personal experiences of the participants, who come from all walks of
life. In this workshop, playwright and
Cornerstone co-founder Peter Howard,
together with designer Nephelie
Andonyadis and director Juliette
Carrillo, will take us through the
company’s fascinating and globally
inspiring history. They will interactively explore some of the artistic and
social methods that have made this
company so successful.
In the second half of this workshop,
the Cornerstone artists will be joined
by Karolina Spaic of Zid Theatre in
Amsterdam to demonstrate how the
two companies have been working
together over the past two weeks
on Zid’s latest production: From the
Rooftops of the World (scheduled for
Saturday evening). Like Cornerstone,
Zid is interested in reconstructing
the classics for community purposes,
but it comes from a very different
background. Strongly influenced by
Eugenio Barba’s International School
for Theatre Anthropology, the company first toured around the world
before settling in one of Amsterdam’s
more troubled neighbourhoods,
Kolenkit. There they have been developing a strong name for themselves
as a successful community-based
theatre company.
01.00 PM
SHORT WORKSHOPS
ROUTES
7, 8
ROUTE 4
COMMUNAL COMPOSITION
FROM A SECRET PLACE:
ACCESSING HIDDEN
MUSICAL BRAIN POWER
Michael Romanyshyn (USA) | Location:Islemunda
This workshop is designed for musicians, performers and anyone who
has an interest in a challenging musical collaboration. We will work using
the form of a symphony with four
movements and produce a short symphonic work in three hours with the
title: The City of Empty Rooms. The score
will develop collaboratively during
the workshop. Your level of musical
education or skill is not important.
The crucial thing is your willingness
to listen, share and play. The only
condition of the workshop is that you
bring your own musical instrument
of any type. Contributions of poetry
by refugees in any language are encouraged.
Michael Romanyshyn is a theater
artist, musician and composer. He
was with the Bread and Puppet
Theater for 17 years before founding
and directing theater spaces in New
York City and in rural Maine. He has
worked with groups of trained and
untrained musicians and artists on
theatrical and musical projects all
over the world, developing collaborative methods of composition and
theatrical production. He is the Musical Director of Archa Theatre’s Allstar
Refjudzi Band.
ROUTE 7
CREATIVE
COLLABORATIONS
IN EUROPE
EU community arts collaborations (various
countries) I Panel | Location: RWT Tolhuisstraat
Over the past few years, community
arts organizations have begun to discover the road to Brussels. ICAF and
RWT, for example, became involved
in an EU-Culture partnership called
COAST, together with initiator Acta
from Bristol, Expedition Metropolis
from Berlin, and Teatr Grodzki from
Bielsko-Biala. This collaboration, in
turn, led to a new successful EU-bid,
this time under the Grundtvig program. Similarly, 5th Quarter from
Haarlem and Archa Theatre from
Prague have been involved in their
own EU enterprise called Karaoke,
together with partners from Hungary
and Slovakia. In this round table conversation, different partners will talk
about their experiences and offer advice to prospective applicants. Is the
EU the way to go now that national
and local arts and culture budgets
are increasingly under pressure?
Klaartje Bult, of the Creative Europe
desk at Dutch Culture, the governmental agency that supports EU arts
and culture applications, will facilitate this session. Her office supports
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the international cultural policies
of the Netherlands, which currently
prioritize collaboration with Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, France and
the United Kingdom. She will receive
special guests from Britain, Holland
and the Czech republic to talk about
their experiencess in Europe.
Grundtvig
uitgevoerd door
europees platform
03:00 PM
03:30 PM
C&C CHAMBER MINIATURES
AKROPOLIS
A VIEW WITH A ROOM
Care and Culture (The Netherlands) I Performance
Location: Akropolis Humanitas
Culture links care for the elderly to
its immediate environment by making refreshing, surprising, moving
programmes that connect.
internationaliseren in onderwijs
ROUTE 8
COMMUNITY THEATRE
IN PORTUGAL
A’Pele (Portugal) | Location: RWT Tolhuisstraat
A’Pele [Portuguese for ‘skin’] is one of
Portugal’s leading community theatre companies. Judging by MEXE, a
biennial national festival that A’Pele
also organizes, Portugal has developed a distinct community theatre
style of its own: large-scale, outdoor,
neighbourhood-based productions
with colourful mass scenes involving anywhere between 50 and 100
residents. Hugo Cruz, the artistic
director of A’Pele and MEXE, will
demonstrate his particular hands-on
approach to community theatre à la
Portuguesa. Through exercises, informal chats, and short clips from productions he has been involved in he
will provide you with a fascinating
insight into contemporary community arts in his hometown Porto and
Portugal at large.
Hugo Cruz trained as a psychologist
and theatre maker in Portugal and
Spain. He is one of Portugal’s most experienced community theatre practitioners, working in prisons, factories,
neighbourhoods and other settings.
In addition to his work for A’Pele, he
also publishes and teaches at the University of Porto and in the post-graduate community theatre programme of
the Porto Theatre Academy.
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FRI 28 MARCH
In Chamber Miniatures Akropolis
Care&Culture captures the daily
life of residents in retirement home
Akropolis through six small-scale performances – the chamber miniatures.
In these scenes art plays an important connecting role. The residents
of Akropolis stand in the spotlight,
together with children, neighbours,
family, volunteers, arts professionals
and non-professionals and art students from near and further afield.
These chamber miniatures are alternated with larger, more energetic collective moments. The sum total is an
exciting happening alternated with
more serene and fragile moments
while the audience moves through
the Akropolis retirement home.
The spectator is a visitor as well as a
participant. This is Community Arts
right in the middle of elderly care.
This series of presentations is part of
the larger Care&Culture programme.
Partners of the project are ICAF, The
Rotterdams Wijktheater, Foundation
Humanitas, Utrecht University, the
Amsterdam School for the arts and
Musicians 3.0. For more information,
surf to: www.careculture.nl
Rotterdams Wijktheater (The Netherlands)
Performance | Location: Dordtselaan 19
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5, 6
‘Seen from the perspective of the moon all
of us are equally tall.’ – Multatuli
A former shop at Dordtselaan 19
is the starting point of site-specific
performance A View With a Room. The
only object in this space is an elevated tiered construction of seats, from
which spectators have a view of the
street through the shop window. As if
in a live movie they see people walk
by. Some are in a hurry, others are
more relaxed. Some of the individuals we get to know better. The theatre
makers interviewed residents from
this neighborhood, Tarwewijk (literally ‘wheat area’), in an inspiring
apartment on the tenth floor of this
same building. From 50 meters high
in the sky they looked down upon
their place, their city, and their lives.
This project is one of three ICAF
residencies, in which Dutch artists
work with inspiring partners from
abroad or with a non-artistic sector.
In View With a Room the partner is
Eric Dullaert. With his enterprise
Cultural Think Work he wants to
make the value of the south side of
Rotterdam visible.
FRI 28 MARCH
03.30 PM
GLOBAL SAVAGES
Debajehmujig (Canada) I Performance
Location: Fenix Food Factory
Debajehmujig Storytellers, an Aboriginal arts collective based at the
Wikwemikong unceded Indian reserve
on Manitoulin Island, Canada, has
been roaming through the streets of
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Rotterdam in the week prior to the festival. Even earlier than that they established contact with local community
activists and volunteers in Rotterdam,
who during this pre-festival roaming
residency served as their guide. Wearing traditional tribal dresses, they
engaged with passers-by to gather local stories and storytellers, which they
incorporate in daily updated versions
of their ‘Global Savages’ performance.
In this way, an already 18,000-year-old
story receives new input from one of
the world’s largest port cities. You will
be brought to a site of Debajehmujig’s choosing, somewhere in the city,
where around a warm fire you will
hear old stories mixed with contemporary local tales.
07.00 PM
RENCONTRE AU PLURIEL
[MEETING IN THE PLURAL]
K-Mu (Kinshasa) | Performance
Location: Islemunda
In 2010, K-Mu from Kinshasa was
runner-up in the Freedom to Create
Award with their music theatre
production Basal’ya Bazoba about the
violent persecution of child witches.
They performed the show on the back
of a truck in most of the neighborhoods of Kinshasa, attracting over
100,000 spectators. The performance
particularly revealed the role of religion in maintaining prejudices that
lead to unsavory practices like witch
hunts. At ICAF-6, K-Mu founder Toto
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Kisaku will perform his own autobiographical solo Rencontre au pluriel
[‘meeting in the plural’] about his
childhood, his training as an actor,
his struggle to survive as an artist in
Kinshasa, and his complicated relation with Europe. He will be accompanied live on stage by composer and
guitarist Toussaint Kimbembi.
07.00 PM
BROTHERS, FRIEND &
GO HASIGU!
Umsindo (South Africa), Stut (The Netherlands) I
Performance I Location: Zuidplein Theatre
In November 2013, actors Hassan
Oumhamed and Güner Güven of Stut
theater opened the Isigcawu festival
in KwaMashu township, Durban,
South Africa. The double bill they
performed there, Friend/Mahmoud, is
partly inspired by their own youth
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FRI 28 MARCH
in the rough Utrecht-neighborhood
of Overvecht. In Durban, Hassan and
Güner also met two young artists
who call themselves Umsindo and
run their own cultural center where
they offer free art courses to township youth.The two, Siso and Goso
Shabalala, are twins and also power-
ful performers in their own right
and together they created Brothers, a
highly physical but also metaphorical performance about life in the
township and how it relates to South
Africa as a whole. ICAF-6 is happy
to provide a platform for both these
shows. In the week prior to ICAF,
Goso, Hassan, Siso and Güner (Go,
Ha, Si, Gu) have also been creating a
new short show under the direction
of Sharon Varekamp. Entitled Go
Hasigu!, it explores what connects
Holland, Turkey, Morocco and South
Africa and how community art can
form a bridge.
09:30 PM
LIVE CONCERT
Orchestre Partout (Netherlands) I Performance I
Location: Zuidplein Theatre
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08.30 PM
LIFE: BASED ON A TRUE
STORY
Tiny Toones (Cambodia) | Performance
Location: Zuidplein Theatre
In 2005, Tuy Sobil opened his house
to a group of young children who
were living and working on the
streets near him. Tuy himself had
just returned to Phnom Penh after
spending much of his life in refugee
camps in Thailand and later in ganginfested parts of Los Angeles. After a
criminal sentence in the US, he was
deported back to Cambodia in 2004.
Soon rumors started that he had
been a break dancer in America and
as a result more and more kids began
to knock on his door for lessons.
His house thus became an informal
community center and the heart of
a veritable hip-hop movement that
involves hundreds of children and
youth. Today, Tuy’s performance
23
group is also beginning to attract
international attention. With the
help of the Prince Claus Fund, which
structurally supports the organization, ICAF is proud to create space for
Tiny Toones’ spectacular European
debut.
Tiny Toones is a projectpartner of Prins Claus Fonds
On their newly released CD we can
read that Orchestre Partout is ‘not
just a band, it is a collective energy
and a big circle of friends. In a world
full of Babel, music is our universal
language’. Inspired by the Czech Allstar Refjudzji Band, Ted van Leeuwen
approached the asylum seekers camps
in Alkmaar and Utrecht to see if he
could also interest some of the people
there to create a ‘refugee orchestra’
of their own. The result was nothing short of miraculous, as you will
experience tonight at this exclusive
live concert by one of Holland’s most
exciting community music projects.
Jumping ju-ju beats, old Sufi poems,
an Indian harmonium, the raspy
sound of the Sudanese desert, they
can all be detected in Partout’s music.
The repertoire contains songs about
love, desire, yearning, pleasure and
nostalgia.
SAT 29 MARCH
ROUTES
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
10.00 AM
SEMINAR ‘SPACE FOR
COMMUNITY ARTS’
Kerrie Schaefer (England)
Location: Zuidplein Theatre
In this daily seminar, Dr. Kerrie
Schaefer, will discuss work that was
on the programme the previous day,
together with some of the artists who
were involved. Each day, she will also
explore more theoretical aspects of
community art and space.
While Thursday’s session focused on
introductions (getting to know each
other) and interactively explored
various definitions of place/space and
community arts, and Friday’s session
picked up on the theme of mixed
interests and messy alliances in the
creative space via Verbal Arts Centre’s
work in Northern Ireland (UK), on
Saturday Dr. Emma Durden from
Twistinternational (Durban, SA)
will join Kerrie to curate a dialogue
with festival practitioners (from, for
example, Cambodia, South Africa,
the Congo and southern Europe) on
themes emerging from the seminars.
Without over-determining the dialogue in advance, a possible theme
might be the space of economics and
community arts. For instance, what
effect has the ‘Great Recession’, and
related national/global economic
policies (of ‘austerity’, etc.), had on
the practice of community arts? Do
community arts thrive under these
conditions, or not? How are community arts (or indeed ‘the arts’) valued,
or not, in times of austerity, scarcity
or plenty (after all the global picture
is rather uneven)? How do community arts create spaces in which to
imagine and enact alternatives to
globalization/neo-liberalism, or do
they not and is that ok?
All these questions, and probably
other quite different ones, will be addressed in this seminar, with guests
from around the globe providing
refreshing and sometimes surprising
perspectives on the space and the
place of community art.
11.00 AM
LUNCH PERFORMANCE
ICAF PLAYGROUND | ZUIDPLEIN THEATRE
THE ROUND TABLE
The PeerGrouP (The Netherlands)
Location: The Buytenhof, a care farm in Rhoon
In collaboration with the PeerGrouP,
a site-specific performance company
based in rural Drenthe, we will create
a special edition of the Round Table.
Designed by Henry Alles, the table
is an art object, a mobile restaurant
plus kitchen, and a stage for local
stories related to the dishes that
are cooked and served on the spot.
Especially for ICAF, Henry has set up
his Round Table on the premises of
social care farm de Buytenhof, in the
rural village of Rhoon. A maximum of
49 guests are seated at a round table
with a 30 foot diameter. The cook and
the actors are set up in the middle
and take you along on a gastronomic
journey that includes produce from
around the corner and stories from
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all over the world, including yours.
Eating together is special. Seated at a
table we are ourselves, with all our
peculiar manners and tastes. At
a table you can talk about almost
anything. Also about how on earth
things have become as they are,
with ourselves, our food, our natural
surrounding. Together with you, the
Round Table adds new material to the
ongoing story it has been gathering
over the past six years. It is a tale that
nourishes the head, the heart, and
the stomach.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5
01.00 PM
LONG WORKSHOPS
Various locations
ROUTE 1
DANCING BALLS
Básquet Beat (Spain) | Location: RWT Tolhuisstraat
Josep-Maria Aragay van Básquet Beat
(Barcelona) seduces basketball players
in public courts of marginal neighborhoods to explore music and dance
through choreography and percussive
rhythms. Josep discovered the potential of this approach while working
as a youth worker in the northern
suburbs of Barcelona. The method
he invented simply through trial and
error has become a potent instrument
for working with youth as well as
adults. It teaches them music and
dynamizes communities. Josep has
been traveling around the world over
the past few months to try out his approach in such places as South Africa,
South America and North America. In
Rotterdam, he now wants to find out
whether his method could perhaps
work here as well. ICAF delegates are
welcome to join, dribble a ball, beat
a drum, do a dance; or otherwise just
watch and listen.
ROUTE 2
BLUE ANGEL
Big hART (Australia) | Location: Maritime Hotel
Big hART develops its long-term arts
and community cultural development projects lead by a key position
they term creative producer. These figures are spiders helping to weave the
steadily growing ‘web’ of a project,
that incorporates many aspects all at
the same time – such as social policy
reform, community engagement, and
high quality art production. In lead
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SAT 29 MARCH
up to ICAF, Big hART’s creative team
led by creative producer Cecily Hardy
and Creative Director Scott Rankin
have invited international collaborators to join them in a unique creative
development process in Rotterdam,
as they embark on the creation of
Blue Angel – the latest Big hART
project that aims to connect world
port cities.
Following this development process,
ICAF is hosting a special ‘think tank’
session with Cecily Hardy and collaborators, where they invite you in, to
peak at the work they have gathered
and created in its raw state. They are
offering opportunity for attendees to
think creatively, and offer response
in this open session, as they work to
make the exciting possibilities for
this project become realities.
Blue Angel, ‘Stories of the Sea and
Our Slaves of Convenience’ is a
multi-layered project in development,
which includes the creation of a
performance work woven from actual
stories from the ships. These rich
tales of adventure, solidarity, struggle, loneliness, love, sex, and laughter, act as a prism to expose the dire
situation today for over one million
seafarers internationally; some of the
most exploited workers on the planet.
Every night, there is a city of workers afloat on our oceans, delivering
our consumer goods along a liquid
highway to our doors. Yet they are
mostly invisible to us, their dramatic
stories almost unknown. Blue Angel
wants to tell these stories. Truly international in spirit, it wants to create
this project through partnership with
three port cities around the globe, in
multiple languages, and with material created in each location. This
extended workshop is really an open
session with special guests from the
local Port Authority, old sailors, and
unions. This creative development
in Rotterdam signals the start of the
international vision for this project,
following on from intensive community engagement processes, research
& development in Australia.
ROUTE 3
THREE RESIDENCIES
REPORT
Location: Dordtstelaan 19, Shopping Mall Zuidplein, studio RWT
This year, ICAF organized three Artistin-Residencies. In collaboration with
CAL-XL and Kunstbedrijf Arnhem we
connected visual artist Krista Burger
from Arnhem with multimedia artist
L’udmila Horňáková from Kosice,
Slovakia. They experimented with
interventions in public space with
Krista focusing on physical dimension and L’udmila on social aspects.
Also with the help of CAL-XL we
linked Dansnest from Breda to choreographer Filip van Huffel of Retina
Dance Company (based in Nottingham, England and Antwerp-Berchem,
Belgium). Both these organizations
like to work in unusual places with
untrained dancers. The third ICAF
residency involved our very own Rotterdams Wijktheater. Our Rotterdam
colleagues Stefan van Hees and Jasmina Ibrahimovic collaborated first
with Irish theatre maker Louise Lowe
before continuing with Eric Dullaert
of ‘Cultural Think Work’ and Atelier
Tarwewijk.
This afternoon you will travel to a
special location in the southside of
Rotterdam where, on site, you will be
shown the tangible results of these
three residencies. Afterwards, the
three partners will frankly discuss
with you what the residencies did
and did not bring them.
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6, 7, 8, 9
SAT 29 MARCH
ROUTE 4
HACKING PUBLIC SPACE
Esther Slegh (The Netherlands) | Location: various
Rotterdam-based landscape designer
Esther Slegh (the driving force
behind an artistically designed
urban garden in Crooswijk and the
temporary museum of random art)
will investigate together with ICAF
delegates the practical and legal limits for ludic interventions in public
spaces of our city.
Most of us enter public space as soon
as we step through our front door.
On average, Dutch citizens spend
9 hours per week moving through
public space. Yet, the collective
ownership of public space does not
seem to give the individual citizen
much influence on the actual design
or use of public space. Commercial
parties, transportation companies
and particularly municipalities play
a much larger role. What external
or internal boundaries stop citizens
from taking ownership of public
space? And what is the bandwith of
these boundaries; how far, can we
push them personally? Through a set
of temporary interventions you will
discuss, visualize, stretch, and cross
boundaries. Together with Esther you
will make them visible and – who
knows? – even break them down and
replace them with something more
positive and personal. For the more
adventurous among you.
ROUTE 5
SOCK MOSAIC
Ehud en Anat Shamai (Israel) | Location: Islemunda
Ehud and Anat Shamai are two experienced visual artists from Israel, associated with the Plastic Art Center
in Hofit. They work on intercultural
dialogues through the arts, involving
Palestinians, Israelis but also other
communities in countries like Finland, Italy and New Zealand. In 2011,
as one of these interventions, they
established a Guiness record for the
world’s largest sock mosaic. In Rotterdam, they propose to do something
similar. All it takes is you, a large
number of walk-on participants from
the neighbourhood, and about 6,000
socks that have no pair (of which all
of you must have some lying around
in a drawer at home, so put them in
your suitcase and bring them!). Here
is your chance to get involved in an
amazing work of art, which is fun
and will surely lead to surprising
conversations across cultural and
political boundaries. And if nothing
else, it will help you get rid of your
useless, orphaned socks.
01.00 PM
SHORT WORKSHOPS
Various Locations
ROUTE 6
CREATING ART WITH
AMSTERDAM’S AFRICAN
AND CARIBBEAN
COMMUNITY
Untold & Bijlmerpark Theatre (The Netherlands)
Location: RWT Tolhuisstraat
The Bijlmer is located on Amsterdam’s southside. It is an area full of
energy and diversity. The Bijlmerpark
theatre is its cultural hub, programming exciting shows and supporting
local community arts and talent
development projects. The venue was
opened in 2008 after youth circus
Elleboog (‘elbow’), Krater Theatre and
youth theatre school Southeast decided to join forces a few years earlier.
Youth theatre company Untold is one
of Bijlmerpark’s flagship projects.
Ernestine Comvalius, the director of
the Bijlmerpark Theatre, and Otmar
Watson, one of the driving forces
behind Untold and Obia (the show
which is scheduled for tomorrow
afternoon) will present their way of
working.
ROUTE 7
MAKING BASAL’YA BAZOBA
K-MU (Kinshasa), Compagnie Dakar & Theatre Embassy (Netherlands) | Location: RWT Tolhuisstraat
Basal’ya bazoba was a music theatre
project in Kinshasa, Congo, created
to generate attention to the issue of
child sorcery. In Kinshasa, an estimated 20,000 children live on the streets.
70% of them have become homeless after relatives accused them of
witchcraft. These accusations give
desperately poor parents an excuse
to kick children out of their homes.
In 2009, Theatre Embassy, Compagnie Dakar and K-Mu théâtre joined
forces to create a participatory arts
project about this topic. They offered
theatre classes to street children and
produced a highly successful show
that was performed on the back of
a flatbed truck all over Kinshasa,
attracting more than 100,000 spectators. After each show, one of the actors facilitated a discussion with the
audience in the presence of children
who had been accused of sorcery.
Guido Kleene of Compagnie Dakar,
who co-directed the show, Toto
Kisaku, the artistic director of K-Mu
as well as one of the performers, and
Berith Danse, who directs Theatre
Embassy, will jointly discuss the
inter-cultural (north-south), social
and artistic aspects of this groundbreaking project.
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SAT 29 MARCH
ROUTE 8
DANCING FOR CHANGE
Dance United ( United Kingdom) I Film + Workshop
Location:Islemunda
Dance United is an award-winning
dance development organisation
with an international reputation for
marrying artistic excellence with
social concern. It works with people
in difficult circumstances who are
marginalised in society and whose
potential is often unrecognised or
unfulfilled. As part of ICAF 2011 and
in partnership with LUNA, Dance
United delivered a highly successful
3-week intensive dance project with
young people as part of the artist in
residency programme. Join choreographer Carly Annable Coop in this
seminar workshop, which will use
film and discussion to learn about the
company’s methodology and work as
well as to hear about the company’s
new areas of development since that
project. These now include danceled interventions working in mental
health and family projects in the UK
using intensive contemporary dance
training to help transform the lives of
people.
a small crew created video impressions of different Dutch community
arts projects in Brabant, Arnhem,
Drenthe, Leeuwarden and in the
West of the country. Their trip was
co-organized with CAL-XL and during
ICAF the EMPAF Caravan of Dreams
will be installed in the RWT studio.
Festival visitors can see the EMPAF
exhibit, sea and hear the results of
what Junction Arts encountered on
their trip through the Dutch community arts world, and interact with
representatives of EMPAF to discuss
possibilities for future collaboration.
The partners of this dynamic network are determined to bring their
Caravan of Dreams back to the East
Midlands filled with concrete ideas
and commitments from European
partners for innovative and inspiring international community arts
collaborations in the years to come.
Jump on board...
03:00 PM
C&C CHAMBER MINIATURES
AKROPOLIS
Care and Culture (The Netherlands) I Performance
Location:Akropolis Humanitas
ROUTE 9
CARAVAN OF DREAMS
EMPAF (Engeland) I Installation and Discussion
Location:Islemunda
In the week prior to the festival
proper, a mobile studio driven and
operated by a team from Junction
Arts (Chesterfield, England), has been
traveling through the Netherlands.
The van contained an exhibition
of work by various community arts
organizations associated with the
East Midlands Participatory Arts
Forum (EMPAF), one of the oldest
community arts networks in the
UK. Along the way, Paul Steele and
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Culture links care for the elderly to
its immediate environment by making refreshing, surprising, moving
programmes that connect. In Chamber
Miniatures Akropolis Care&Culture
captures the daily life of residents in
retirement home Akropolis through
six small-scale performances – the
chamber miniatures. In these scenes
art plays an important connecting
role. The residents of Akropolis stand
in the spotlight, together with children, neighbours, family, volunteers,
arts professionals and non-professionals and art students from near and
further afield. These chamber miniatures are alternated with larger,
more energetic collective moments.
The sum total is an exciting happening alternated with more serene and
fragile moments while the audience
moves through the Akropolis retirement home. The spectator is a visitor
as well as a participant. This is Community Arts right in the middle of
elderly care.
This series of presentations is part of
the larger Care&Culture programme.
Partners of the project are ICAF, The
Rotterdams Wijktheater, Foundation
Humanitas, Utrecht University, the
Amsterdam School for the arts and
Musicians 3.0. For more information,
surf to: www.careculture.nl
SAT 29 MARCH
03.30 PM
GLOBAL SAVAGES
Debajehmujig (Canada) I Performance
Location:Fenix Food Factory
Debajehmujig Storytellers, an Aboriginal arts collective based at the
Wikwemikong unceded Indian reserve
on Manitoulin Island, Canada, has
been roaming through the streets of
Rotterdam in the week prior to the fes-
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tival. Even earlier than that they established contact with local community
activists and volunteers in Rotterdam,
who during this pre-festival roaming
residency served as their guide. Wearing traditional tribal dresses, they
engaged with passers-by to gather local stories and storytellers, which they
incorporate in daily updated versions
of their ‘Global Savages’ performance.
In this way, an already 18,000-year-old
story receives new input from one of
the world’s largest port cities. You will
be brought to a site of Debajehmujig’s choosing, somewhere in the city,
where around a warm fire you will
hear old stories mixed with contemporary local tales.
the Malaga Film Festival Award for
best director and best male actor.
Frontera [the border] is about a prison theatre process that is suddenly
interrupted by an ominous alarm. As
a result, the group, composed of six
prisoners and eight people from outside, are isolated in their part of the
prison. Apparently some epidemic
has broken out and no one is allowed
in or out. The lack of information,
fear and the possible contagion put a
strain on the interpersonal relations
and individual stamina. Exploring
issues of guilt and innocence, the experience changes their lives forever.
07.00 PM
FRONTERA
TransFORMAS (Spain) I Film I Location: Islemunda
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Frontera (2013)is a fascinating featurelength fiction film shot entirely on
location in a prison near Barcelona
with both professional actors and
actual inmates in the leading roles. It
is the result of a truly collective creative process that took place in Quatre
Camins prison between January and
July 2012. In 2013, the film received
Eva García, artistic director and producer of TransFORMAS – and herself
one of the actresses in the film – will
be present to introduce the film and
answer your questions.
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SAT 29 MARCH
07.00 PM
THREE, TWO, ONE…
DO YOU FEEL SOMETHING
YET?
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Mariaberg Community Theatre (Netherlands) I
Theatre I Location: Zuidplein Theatre
Performed in a dialect that even
Dutch people from the North will
have difficulty understanding, this
physical and absurdist production
has been collectively created by an
inter-generational group of residents
from the Mariaberg neighbourhood in
the southern city of Maastricht. Based
on interviews and improvisations,
the play tackles such delicate themes
08.30 PM
FROM THE ROOFTOPS OF
THE WORLD
as alcoholism, abuse, school, ageing,
loneliness, opportunities, traditions,
and love in a visually attractive show
that literally and figuratively moves.
In this show, the cast, which ranges
in age between 12 and 80, wanders
from past to present. Do these people
want to move forward or backwards?
They each get lost in their own web of
memories and desires and search for
answers to that all important question. But what do they remember?
And what do they wish for?
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Zid Theatre with Cornerstone (The Netherlands
and United States) I Performance I Location:
Zuidplein Theatre
Standard works about community art
such as Staging America (2003) and Local
Acts (2005) praise the work of Cornerstone Theatre from Los Angeles for
the way they rework classical plays
together with community residents
into impressive productions. Instead
of raising the community to the level
of the great classics, they raise the
classics to the level of the community
by writing new roles, creating new
characters and adapting contexts and
plots to local realities. In the Netherlands, Zid Theatre from Amsterdam
has been experimenting with similar
ideas, collaborating last year with
the prestigious repertory company
09.30 PM
LATE NIGHT STAGE
29
Toneelgroep Amsterdam on Chekhov’s
The Russians. Their latest production
is inspired by Shakespeare’s Roman
tragedies. In the last phase of the
preparations, Zid was assisted by a
dramaturg, a director, and a designer
from Cornerstone.
in From the Rooftops of the World, 40
community actors from culturally
and socially mixed neighbourhoods in
Rotterdam and Amsterdam enter the
political arena. They talk about their
frustrations with politics and about
their dreams for the future. In this
dynamic production which has been
created together with these community actors, ZID explores the impact
of politics on the daily lives of the
people.
Thanks to the US Embassy
SUN 30 MARCH
12.00 PM
FINAL CONVERSATION
Matt Jennings (Northern Ireland), Kerrie Schaefer
(England) and guests I Location: Zuidplein Theatre
Over the past four days, many conversations have taken place about space
and community art. Some of these
were more formal, like the morning
seminars, and others much more
informal, like the Round Table, the
impromptu shows of Debajehmujig,
the Playground, and the Captain’s
Tables hosted by some of the ICAF artists. Today, Matt Jennings and Kerrie
Schaefer – together with some special
guests – will try and tie together
some of the conversational threads
that have been developing in all these
different settings. Words, images,
movements, sounds, English, Dutch,
Spanish, Tagalog, Zulu and creative
non-verbal utterings could all become
part of this experimental attempt to
make some sense of what ICAF-6 has
been, could have been, or perhaps
should have been. Oh yes: this closing
event will contain food for thought as
well as for the stomach. This activity will conclude with a special First
Nations closing ceremony conducted
by Jeannette Corbiere Laval, an elder
on the Wikwemikong unceded Indian
reserve on Manitoulin Island, Canada.
addicted to electronic gadgets and
social media. Walking through public
space in a set that is suggestive of the
Bijlmer he encounters spirits, sounds,
and movements that gradually affect
him. In essence, the show is about
the young man’s spiritual awakening
through a direct confrontation with
rites that originate in West Africa.
03.30 PM
OBIA
Untold (The Netherlands)
Location: Zuidplein Theatre
Untold is a arts collective of young
residents of the Bijlmer neighbourhood in the South-East of Amsterdam.
It is an area inhabited by many people
of African and Caribbean descent.
Untold was formed at the end of
2002, after a group of youngsters
from the Bijlmer participated in an
exchange project with the Brixton
area in London. In England, the
young Dutch people performed
spontaneously for an audience that
was so impressed that they believed
they were watching an established
performance group. Since then, the
group has been together and over the
years has expanded to a membership
of almost 50.
This afternoon, Untold performs their
most recent production, a dance,
music, and theatre show called Obia.
Its central character is a young man
05.00 PM
FAREWELL WITH SNACKS &
DRINKS
30
ORGANISATION
The International Community Arts Festival is a production of the Rotterdams Wijktheater in association with Zuidplein
Theatre. ICAF 2014 receives structural funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and project funding from the Arts and Culture Division of the City of Rotterdam. We are also grateful for the support we have received
from Performing Arts Fund NL, Prins Claus Fund, Elise Mathilde Fund, US Embassy and Zuidplein Theatre.
ROTTERDAMS
WIJKTHEATER
Jan Ligthartstraat 63
3083 AL Rotterdam
Tel: 010 423 01 92
E: [email protected]
I: www.rotterdamswijktheater.nl
E: [email protected]
I: www.icafrotterdam.com
ICAF STAFF
VOLUNTEERS TEAM
Eugene van Erven Festival director
Anamaria Cruz Production manager
Sulamie Helmy, Marianne Maaskant, Jeanet Helmy-de Klerk,
Philomeen Doolaard, Sonja Maaskant, May Joseph, Annabel de
Zwart, Somescha Dib, Gelila Bezuneh, Esmeray Deler, Carla
Somersall, Sucaad Abbas, Sven Hopstaken, Jill Abas, Mijke van
der Zee, Arno Brouwer, Arnar Fells, Terry Ezra, Ferry Spigt,
Mairea Segui Buenaventura, Claudia Delso, Margreet Bouwman,
Margreet Zwart, Kees Deenik, Riomi Tindal and Jan Brouwer.
THANKS TO THE ENTIRE RWT TEAM
Heleen Hameete, Stefan van Hees, Jasmina Ibrahimovic,
Suzanne Bruning, Kaat Zoontjens, Robert Jan Schmidt, Wouter
Vrijkotte, Vincent Andriessen, Eden Bezuneh, Inez Schatz, Hans
Verhoef, Hans Lein, Marion van Dragt, Caroline van Langeveld,
Roos Muis, (intern), Olivia Ainsworth (intern), Roos Mens
(intern), Dorothy Blokland (intern), Veerle van Dieren (intern),
Gabrielle Jullen (intern).
Special thanks to Zuidplein Theatre and its staff for making
ICAF possible and offering us a home.
STUDENT TEAM:
Joost Segers, Moira van der Weijden, Benthe Leenders, Charlot
van der Meer, Isaac Hui, Chantelle Schoffelmeer, Camilo
Baquerre, Elvera de Bakker, Rick Mouwen, Calina van der
Velden, Tessa Kloost, Roos Hekkens, Noora Avenjärvi, Floor
Mutsaers, Laurel Cunningham, Vanessa Rousselle, Pepijn van
Hoorn, Alfred Böhm, Maurits Duran, Dennis Vermeulen, Joran
de Groot, Alistair Hopson, Sylvia Molenaar, Jorinde van de
Velde, Rens van Huijkelom, Isabella Lövenholdt.
31
FILM CREW
Angie Hernandez Izquierdo, Hector Prio Sanchez, Mercedes
Collado Bazo, Caterina Ferrer Hernandez, Bram van Veldhuisen.
DESIGN
Design nxix :: Fred Sophie
Image Michael van Kekem
THANK YOU
Islemunda, Humanitas, LCC Larenkamp, Sikko Cleveringa,
CAL XL, Universiteit Utrecht, Marjan Frankhuizen, Codarts,
Ingrid Stoepker, Jordy Dik, Arno Ouwehand, Fenix Food
Factory, Palmentuin, Circus Mix.
INTERNATIONAL C OMMU NI T Y A RT S FESTIVAL