Series of workshops on stories of the Missing in Cyprus – Performances: Stories of Loss / Hand Diaries: An Exhibition (2011-2013)

The project started in 2011 through a process of devised theatre workshops, aiming to produce a performance based on stories of missing people from the period of violence in Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s. The participants were Turkish-speaking, Greek-speaking Cypriot and international professional and amateur actors, and was aimed to present the stories told by families of missing people, as those had been published in two books. The play text would emerge from a collaborative dramaturgy process and the production presented to audiences in the north and south of the island.

Stories of loss

[workshop design and implementation, dramaturgy, productions] Director: Ellada Evangelou, Technical Director: Zoe Kakota, Text Dramaturgy: Ellada Evangelou, Yoryis Regginos, Despina Michaelides, Poly Papavasiliou, Charis Charalambous.

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Hand Diaries

Writing Team: Oya Akin, Zoe Piponidou, Leslie Frost, Pavlos Pamborides, Andreas Damianou, Christopher Liverdos, Petros Siammas, Leda Koumides, Charis Charalambous, Despina Michaelides, Annie Michaelides, Costas Hadjichristofi, Yiorgos Kakouris, Antonia Philippou, Ellada Evangelou.

Expanded Summary:

Rooftop Theatre (est. 2004), as a community-based theatre, where experimentation and inclusion were central to its work, aimed to speak about what was current in Cyprus at any one time, by conducting annual devised theatre workshops, on a theme that was decided by the creative team. The workshops would lead to a process of dramaturgy, with the production of a play and subsequent production to be presented in the north and south of the island.

Relating to the case study: the process was planned in 2011, and the decision was made to work on testimonies found in two books that had been published recently with stories of missing Cypriots from both communities from the 1960s and 70s. The books were, Oysters with the Missing Pearls (2005), by Sevgül Uludağ and Memories, by Panikos Neokleous (2011). The topic was still raw in the community, since the exhumations of missing people were continuing throughout the island, a result of the work of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) and activist journalists.

The workshop process started in April 2011, and the coordination team for the workshop had chosen to host and interact in the workshops with relatives of missing people from the Cyprus conflict, people that had either given testimonies (in the books) or had agreed to participate in the workshops. The aim was to open the dialogue around this taboo topic, bring different perspectives in the theatre process, which would then find their way to the stage. Despite the small size of the island, and that ‘everyone knows what happened’, the stories of the missing are repeatedly being used as tools for political propaganda, and the Group aimed to dissolve some of the myths that atrocities and violence were only inflicted by the ‘other side’.

Two workshops in the process, the creative team paused the workshops, after having realized that the content and the individuals who ‘represented’ the stories and characters that were being delt with in the workshop, demanded of the theatre group a more deep and profound preparedness. These were not just ‘stories’, they had layers of thought, emotion, memory and trauma, and what emerged after several weeks was the decision that the creative team first needed to make an introspection of their own ‘losses’, before dealing those of others. Moreover, the creative team considered the ethics of the practice overall, or even the end result of creating any sort of ‘spectacle’ from these experiences.

The workshop process stopped and was redesigned, so that it produced two separate plays: Stories of Loss (2011), which told the stories of loss of the members of the group, as a means to explore the concept of loss, and The Hand Diaries: An Exhibition (2012), created through a series of custom-made collective dramaturgy workshops, generating 6 scenes with the common authorship of 14 authors. The two series of workshops allowed the group to articulate their role as artists in the process, explore the ethics of community work in post-conflict zones (even if it’s one’s one community) and the responsibility of the artist as a value that needs to be constantly revisited.

The Unexpected:

A first phase of workshops and their redesign, leading to the second round of workshops, was a strong indication that as theatre artists we bear a responsibility towards all the individuals we include in community-based work, especially those emerging from traumatic conditions (such as the loss of a loved one in periods of violence). That responsibility rests in being ready to listen closely to how communities, individuals and groups feel, and constantly explore, through multi-disciplinary approaches and an open mind, the various possibilities for creativity and common work. The process of exploration in community work needs to remain dynamic, and artists need to remain alert of the fragility of both artists and the community itself.

...To make a meaningful difference and walk the talk of truly empowering young people once creativity opens doorways it's critical that the support doesn’t stop when the creative engagement ends but CARE remains steady and consistent for the whole person.

— Wendy Preston
OUTCOME:

Two performances and texts.

QUESTION:

What questions did this project call attention to about what is needed to support the care and wellbeing of artists or communities in need of care?

CONSIDERATIONS:

What questions did this project call attention to about what is needed to support the care and wellbeing of artists or communities in need of care?

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The multiple layers of trauma and how that relates to time, with different people needing different care.

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Beyond (formal) training, favourable conditions and good intentions, artists have the responsibility to reflect on creative processes, and to be in a constant readiness for new learning and bringing in new tools.

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Care is an embedded value within every community-based project, otherwise processes can ‘highjack’ the attention of artists into solely thinking of creativity and the artistic outcome

QUESTION:

Were there new learnings or an affirmation of past learnings?

CONSIDERATIONS:

New learning: although members of the community may appear to be strong and ‘over’ things, every process needs to be gradual and within it, artists need to embed deep and profound listening mechanisms, so that people are not re-traumatized.

RESOURCES

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