artists feedback and comments

By Jeton Neziraj
CCTD- Kosovo

It was a really great opportunity to continue our cooperation with Jonathan, after his wonderful work last year. For 5 days we had chance to organize several art activities with different art groups around Kosova. The base of Jonathan's working visit was a workshop with young actors in Prishtina. Through “frozen” images and games actors could explore the concept beyond the project: recovery! How human beings recover after wars, traumas and/or different conflict situations! It was really interesting to see some of the images of Kosovan actors, in which they reflect their personal experiences during the war in Kosovo.
In generally, the whole project in Kosovo was as an mosaic that was completed from different ways of “viewing” the “problem”; by organizing this workshop with professional actors, workshop with young people in Kacanik, meeting several people who are involved in work with communities and by shooting a video with school kids!

I would like to say that the video film that Jonathan did with the school students was with the great interest, for kids and for “getting another view of the concept of ‘recovery”. Kids were so proud and they were fascinated by the idea that they played in a movie. I have got several compliments from them, especially from Yllka and Meridiana.

I have to say that the visit in Kacanik had another extra meaning, a symbolic one… Cultural life there is very poor and there are no cultural activities at all. Our visit and the work we did there was important for the group, and as Ahmet Krasniqi (Coordinator of the group) was saying: this workshop gave as a small hope that we are not forgotten and also helped me to keep the homogeneity of the group.

From all this work and from meeting several people I definitely ‘understood’ the complexity of the issue of recovery. It is definitely an complex issue. But, what I really liked from this project is that Jonathan did not simply seat on his working room to read books and try to ‘clarify’ things, instead, he went to work and meet people who past ore are passing through the recovery process.

Now, from my point of view, project should be oriented through organizing all collected materials into a theater piece that has to be followed by a book. I think it is important to collect all this Jonathan “dairy’s” across those countries he worked and publish a book. A book that expresses how the show transformed into a theater piece all this entire ideas and thoughts about recovery!!

And, it is also important to come back in Kosovo with the show! It is important for the participants in this workshops and for the general audience here in Kosovo to see a show that deals with the recovery! This would be like a collective therapy…!!!

Thanks Jonathan for this great project. I sincerely hope that the donors will support next stages of the project.

Che e il impatto del lavoro noi abbiamo fatto tra 16 Ottobre e 20 Ottobre? Che
sono i risultati?
E' stato un buon impatto il lavoro del laboratorio. Abbiamo deciso di
proseguire il lavoro su Alcesti, il primo incontro è previsto per il 16
novembre, giovedì. E' una felice coincidenza che è partito un lavoro sulla
pace per il 7 dicembre. Aspettiamo tue indicazioni per sapere come e se il
lavoro andrà avanti.
Tra i risultati buoni c'è una maggiore conoscenza tra i partecipanti e una
curiosità nata in chi ha sentito parlare del laboratorio.

Che erano le reazione dei particpanti? Che idee del futuro del proggetto sono presentato?
Alcuni dei partecipanti si incontrano per lavorare e allenarsi teatralmente.
Come ti dicevo vogliamo studiare meglio la figura di alcesti in tutte le sue
metamorfosi , in tutti gli autori che l'hanno trattata.

Era il lavoro come si a aspettato?
Noi eravamo molto aperti, non ci aspettavamo cose precise. Siamo stati bene
sorpresi . Chissà se è un lavoro da aprire al pubblico. Non so se il
pubblico può capire il percorso fatto durante il laboratorio.
Non so se tu hai mandato queste domande anche agli altri, o se vuoi che io
le estenda anche a loro.

Che cosa volete a succedere dopo adesso?
Vorremmo continuare il lavoro magari con scambi più diretti con gli altri
partecipanti al progetto , e sapere cosa si può fare per essere efficaci sul
problema della pace.

Fabio, Il Torchio, Napoli

People often need a mythical story that will give their sacrifice a meaning.

Also people who are in some way prepared for traumatic events can deal with trauma more effectively. There were three brothers who had between them lost eleven members of their family. When I met these brothers in Albania after the evacuation I was shocked by their vital capability, by the life force they embodied.

Comment by psychiatrist and theatre director in Kosova.

There is something interesting going on with the mourners. Firstly there is the central importance of a community to narrate a death and thereby give a life meaning. A wake is about telling stories. The dead person is eulogised and praised to the point of hyperbole, and a voice of realism or even of dissent is impossible once that person is dead. This is incredibly constricting for the survivor.

Anna Schmitz, Az Theatre

What I feel I am continually butting my head against is this great void in the middle of the play, the unspoken experience of Alcestis. I have been thinking about this in terms of a survivor's relationship to trauma and death. If the central event is the trauma then by virtue of their status as survivor a person is peripheral, it did not happen to them. In this sense we are coming up against something that is un-narratable, un-playable. The true end is absolute and puts an end to our representational capacity. Is this true?

I am worried about the resounding silence at the end of the play: Alcestis doesn’t speak.

Anna Schmitz, Az Theatre

Creating the voice around the missing shape of somebody else's body was extraordinary. I absolutely loved this and found it ‘freeing’ and deeply interesting- it evoked, for me, the sensation of keening. The sound that emerged was instinctual and not pre-conceived and a different sound sometimes came out depending on who had just been there and what part of the body they had been holding onto. And I found then when somebody replaced the missing body with their own- my sound changed. The images created with everyone doing this exercise was gorgeous.

Louise Burns, Az Theatre

Another image of survival and recovery is singing. We know of a number of stories where people have managed to stay alive by singing. These are shipwreck stories or mountain rescue stories. Singing connects up the three vital centres of consciousness: the head, the heart and the guts and so it connects up our energetic systems. We have done a bit of work on this in the workshops.

After Admetos returns from Alcestis' funeral he cannot go into his house. He is so powerfully reminded of the time when he brought his newly married wife back to his home and now he breaks down. He is unable to speak words and for some time he can only utter a series of sounds to express his pain. It turns out that ancient Greek is very rich in different sounds which express very precisely various forms of pain. These are generally translated into 'Alas' . The sounds constitute a kind of song in the sense that the music of song lifts the words to the level of sheer sound.

This relation of sound to physical and emotional feeling is a universal factor. The baby's cry and the human scream and the human cry of joy know no frontiers.

Jonathan Chadwick, Az Theatre

There is a tradition in Albanian culture which says that crying is good neither for the living nor the dead. This repression of feeling can create an outward strength but an inner collapse.

There is a custom whereby old women are often employed as mourners.

Comment by Agim Selimi.

I really enjoyed the workshop. It was wonderful to concentrate on the voice in such depth. Its difficult to keep the motor running when not doing theatre work, and it's horrible going into an audition with a cold voice.

Robert, Adam and myself have been meeting up once a week to workshop ideas so at least we get some practise that way. We are writing a new project based on the theatre of fear. We have researched a lot of the Grand Guignol transcripts at the British library, and are adapting them with modern news stories. I've also being doing a lot of research on the internet. There is some horrific video material available. "eBaums World" has a large selection of extreme videos of a violent nature. The interest for me has been to observe peoples' instinctive reactions under immense stress or
pain. I felt that what we were exploring yesterday had certain similarities with this. What I've been looking at has been far more basic and vulgar; a base jump that goes wrong, or someone being hit by a car, someone breaking their back, or someone witnessing a tragic accident. The
similarity would be vocal sound that they produce, and the effect that such an intense shock has on their bodies. I was once at a party and someone fell down two flights of stairs. He remained on the floor without moving but produced the most horrifying sound I've ever heard.
It was a low guttural moan. When the paramedics arrived he didn't know
why they were there or what had happened. He had broken twelve vertebrae. I don't mean to be so morbid, but I am fascinated with how the human body deals with physical shock. I imagine what you are dealing with is of a much greater psychological and emotional nature, but that reverberates through meat and bone and is therefore closely linked.

The hugging exercise was beautiful, and accurately portrayed grief
and loss, a desperate clinging and urgent want. Very painful. It seemed a
shame to break before it because the Barons Court smog seemed to suffocate the throat a little, and the voice wasn't as open as when we did the Ohm exercise.

I hope you didn't think that I was trying to take over in the devising
exercise. Jamie's story was butchered a bit because we had to change
the characters so that we could fit them all in. I was also apprehensive of offending him, I guess because the story is personal and close to the heart. This is a big crime on my part, because as an actor I need to be prepared to take that step. The stakes must be enormous with the work that Az Theatre deal with. But Jamie and the guys were great, and again it was rewarding to construct a story with such scale of emotion so quickly.

Thank you for a positive start to a creative week end. Please keep me
informed about your work. Take care.

I completely love the searching way you work in the workshops: I enjoy
them very much. If you would like more specific feedback, I thought this recent workshop was clearer in terms of what you're trying to discover and
achieve. So the breathing and movement exercises had a context from
the start because of your initial explanation. But then I quite liked not
being sure where the exercises were going last time.

I enjoy discussing my feelings about the play after reading. I felt the
discussion being invited was about what's happening in the scene or
differences between translations, whereas I would enjoy being
invited to give any response. I wanted to have a rant about loss and
relationships and how I feel about Admetus! That's just my taste, but it
might inform the next section, where we use our own stories by encouraging the actors to confront those themes.

But ultimately I love the workshops as they are. I love the pace of them
and find them soothing and challenging and cathartic and inquisitive. I
hope that's helpful.