It was December 2007. Kenyan storyteller, dramatist, orator and theatre-maker Ogutu Muraya was in busy pursuing his higher studies in international relations and diplomacy with an interest in environmental studies when the violence in his country broke out. Kenya was in the middle of a contentious presidential election that year. The then-Opposition-leader Raila Odinga (who…
As the spectre of genocide increases in Gaza, we at Unrehearsed Futures took this opportunity to pause and reflect on the role that art can play in shaping vital public discourse about the stakes and nature of justice. In conversation with Palestinian-American writer and editor Lisa Suhair Majaj and South African composer, sound artist, librettist…
If it’s in the way, it is the way. – Frank Anderson, IFS trainer A lot of theatre training practices around the world, especially embodied practice spaces, emphasise on the mind-body split polarity. They ask one to “get out of the head”, “stop thinking” and “get into your body”. Given the kind of systems one…
After a rejuvenating conversation with Ieva Česnulaitytė last month around active citizenship and participatory democracy, we at Unrehearsed Futures returned to Brazilian practitioner Augusto Boal and his body of work with the Theatre of the Oppressed, to investigate how we could revisit his powerful ideas today. A theatre-maker and political activist, Boal elaborated on his…
For all practitioners who’ve been in a devising rehearsal room, the rehearsal space often has elements of democracy playing out – participation, ensuring inclusive agency, making space for multiple voices and multiple opinions and more. However, when we think of democracies around the world today, citizen empowerment may not be the first thing that comes…
The day is 6 March 2020. It’s the day Ghana became independent in 1957. Celebrations are galore. A festival is going on inside the Baba Yara Sports Stadium, in Kumasi, a city of more than 3 million people that was once the capital of the Ashanti Empire. The president of Ghana also happens to visit….
Can art really heal us? Last autumn, UK-based Limbik Theatre headed into the woods in Norwich, England with a multi-generational cast of local community performers, most of whom ran around wearing masks and hessian sacks. The company was trying to stage an outdoor show, but in the process learned something fascinating: Working on the show…
After an intellectually stimulating season opener on creativity, AI and fungi, we revisited an older conversation from Season 1 which was based on the open letter “White Colleague, Listen!”, where co-curator Amy Russell had invited one of the signatories, Mojisola Adebayo to speak further with our audience on the responsibility and “response-ability” desired from the…
A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds & Shape…