Europa

Description

Europa brings together four European theatres: Birmingham Repertory Theatre (UK), Dresden State Theatre (Germany), Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz (Poland) and Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia) - and four leading playwrights from each country - Steve Waters (UK), Lutz Hubner (Germany), Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk (Poland) and Tena Stivicic (Croatia). This revelatory piece of theatre sets out to explore the possibilities of collaborative playwriting, to produce a single work that is multi-authored and multi-lingual. Drawing on first-hand accounts, including memories from the 1930s up to the present day, the playwrights have collaborated to overcome language barriers and weave their separate languages into one single dramatic entity. The resulting play engages with increased levels of debate about European identity versus national identity. This edition features both the multi-lingual and the English text, and has an introduction by the dramaturg behind the project, Caroline Jester.

Caroline Jester led The REP's award-winning young writers' programme Transmissions for ten years. She is the originator of 'REPwrite', an interactive playwriting tool, and has developed playwriting projects throughout the world. She has taught on the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University, the Arvon Foundation, Salford University and BCU. She is the co-author of Playwriting Across the Curriculum (2012). Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk is one of Poland's foremost contemporary playwrights. Her plays include The Death of the Squirrel Man, The Suitcase, and Loose Screws. Tena Stivicic studied Dramaturgy in Zagreb and Writing for Performance in London. Her plays include Can't Escape Sundays, The Two of Us, and Fragile!, as well as plays for children Perceval - the Quest for the Grail and Psssst! Lutz Hubner was born at Heilbronn in 1964. One of the most performed playwrights in Germany, his recent plays include Das Herz eines Boxers (Heart of a Boxer), Creeps, Hotel Paraiso and Ehrensache (Respect). Steve Waters is a British playwright. His plays includes World Music, The Contingency Plan and Ignorance/Jahiliyyah and he is author of the book The Secret Life of Plays.

There is an unmistakeable lightness of touch in Janusz Kica's direction, with plenty of humour, much of it physical and transcending nationality and language. * Public Reviews *