 Good morning everyone and welcome to the European Theatre Forum 2020, Performing Arts in Focus. We are delighted and excited to be the presenters of this important and unique event. We say unique because this is the first European Theatre Forum ever and everyone because in addition to the guest list participants the program is live streamed which gives us the possibility to be here, seen and to get in touch with audiences everywhere. So welcome everyone. We will be the ones to guide you through the program of the European Theatre Forum for the next three days and when we say we that means Gina Calinoyo and Jan Detofoli. Let us briefly introduce ourselves. All right I'll start with introducing Gina. Gina is an actress from Romania and has been for 16 years working as a permanent actress of the Marin Sorescu National Theatre Krajowa where she also acted as artistic director during a transition time. She worked with directors such as Janusz Wizniewski, Peter Schneider and Robert Wilson and has collaborated with famous theatre makers Anatoli Vasiliev or Ginio Barba and Thomas Richards. During her work at the theatre she studied theatre theory and completed the dissertation on Gersi Grotowski, art actor metaphysics. Seven years ago she took part in a creative Europe funded European theatre collaboration project called The Art of Aging and started working with the German collective Weckgruppezwey and Staatstheater Braunschweig which has become a long-term relationship. Five years ago Gina began working with the French company La Balagant Retrouvée and took part in two performances as an actress and director. Three years ago she moved from Romania to Germany and joined Staatstheater Dresden as a permanent member of the ensemble. Thank you Jan. Now a few words about Jan. Jan is a writer, playwright, academic and publisher born in Luxembourg from an Italian father and a Luxemburgish mother. He holds a PhD title in contemporary French literature from Sorbonne University in Paris. As we speak his play App Human is being rehearsed at Tatra de la Ville in Luxembourg. His plays written in French, Luxembourgish, German and even Italian presented in various international season in theatre across Europe. They are published by Drey Maskenverlag in Germany. In the fall of 2018 Jan has been a guest author of the literary Scholarview Berlin and he is also teaching literature and drama at the University of Luxembourg. This is us. Welcome everybody. So this is the first European theatre forum performing arts in focus. What is it supposed to be? Why are we here? What are the main topics? Well first of all the forum comes to place the foundations of a European representation for the entire sector of theatre and performing arts as one of Europe's major art forms of course within and outside Europe. Second one of our goals is to make visible and to promote the theatre and performing arts in Europe with the diversity of performance forms and across language barriers of course of which we are a perfect example. So not only as an art form but also as an important public space for dialogue. And third the next three days of the forum and the topics addressed will give the possibility of a creative dialogue process within the sector and with policymakers. So this is an important moment and an important opportunity for the whole sector. This aspect of the contact and dialogue between the sector and the policymakers is even more important right now as we are going through a global pandemic which puts us face to face with reality unimaginable before. The impossibility of direct contact, the absence of presence and this barrier affects all layers of the human being all ages and starting from the way we raise and educate children, the way we interact, manifest with each other the way we think about the future, all this. So as you can see we have a rich and exciting program and still we will not be covering all of the sector's challenges, questionings and needs. The program itself results of a six-month dialogue process within the sector led by a consortium of 12 theatre and performing arts organizations who have agreed on the most urgent questions to tackle but also on the need for more dialogue and more events just like this one in the future. We are grateful to the European Commission and the German Minister of State for Culture and the media who in the frame of the German presidency of the European Council are funding this free day event. As we have to meet online, we have worked hard to offer you a metaphorical venue which our guest list have entered this morning for the first time and which is a virtual replica of the Stadt Schauspiel in Dresden, Germany which was supposed to be our hosting city for this first European Theatre Forum and where tomorrow's fast-forward European Festival for Young Stage Directors will open. Now some technical details. Our colleagues are currently sharing in the chat the link to a website that will be offering you live captioning and translation of the discussions throughout the three days. As you might have already noticed, we'll be offering interpretation in international sign languages during these three days as well. This is also a first time. Thank you very much. And finally, if you encounter any technical problems, you can get in touch with the European Theatre Forum team by posting a message in the chatroom on the forum platform or by sending an email to the address that has just been shared in the chat. All right. And from here, let us now go over to the first welcome speeches. Here are a few words by Monika Gritters, German Minister of State for Culture and the Media. Difficult times digital area requires patience and adjusting to the situation. We are not sure what happens. Here we are. Yes, that's how it works. Imagine was what John believed, that we are all one country, one world, one people. John Lennon, who was called Yoko Onos, celebrated his 80th birthday this year. And with Imagine, he set the dream of a better world a real musical memory. He believed that we are all one country, one world, one people. And that the world can also be changed with this conviction. That at least Europe can be changed with this conviction, teaches us the European history. The people whose dreams and hopes in Germany and in the states of the former Osblocks wall and border zones to the United States brought. And with the growing Europe, these people, who have the way, sat next to coolness and fighting spirit, especially one. An idea of a better world, of a better life in freedom. And we need this idea of power today, I think more than ever, to think about the national horizon and the European unity, in many cases, to strengthen. That's why I'm very happy that it has succeeded in the framework of our German EU Council presidency with this conference, for the first time all connections and networks from the area of ​​advertising artists to collect on one table, if of course also only virtually again due to the pandemic. I thank the initiative of the European Theater Convention, the German Center for International Theater Institutes and the Federal Office of Free Introduction to Arts for the organization and the very engaged work. Because solidarity, network and collaboration are currently really indispensable. The strong nationalist currents, the erosion of press and cultural freedom in some also European countries, the tally rings around common solutions, for example, for a European asylum policy of Brexit and of course not the last sudden consequences of the corona pandemic. All of this are enormous challenges for a united Europe that can not be solved with the means of politics and economy alone, in any case. More than ever before in their history, the European Union needs forces that can understand and understand all borders and borders away. These are the forces of art and culture. What can the representatives of artists contribute to this? Understand and understand. I think a whole lot. They offer different positions, they bring people together into the conversation. And as a place of social self-reflection and democratic stride culture, especially theater-wise, into the society and thus the spread of society against. For these reasons, the representatives of artists in the European countries earn political support. First right now in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. That is why I support myself, of course, from my European colleagues and colleagues in the framework of the German European Council of Presidents with pressure for the fact that the corona construction aid of the EU also artists and artists and cultural institutions are getting better. In Germany, we are working again with high pressure on the need for existential assistance with extensive state aid and in the framework of the Neustadt Kulturprogramms Fördern wir außerdem gezielt vorhaben im Theaterbereich. Das ist angesichts ihrer sehr zentralen Bedeutung für eine starke und lebendige Demokratie auch das Mindeste, was wir Künstlerinnen und Künstlern schuldig sind, meine ich. Wirklichkeit veränderbar zu zeigen gehört zu den Kernkompetenzen der darstellenden Künste. Sie geben Utopien eine Bühne. Sie sind die Botschafter des Möglichen in der Wirklichkeit, auch in der europäischen Wirklichkeit. Und dass wir alle ein Land, eine Welt, ein Volk sind, davon träumte nicht nur John Lennon. Alle Menschen werden Brüder, heißt es bei Ludwig van Beethoven, im berühmten Schlusskorps der 9. Symphonie, die zur Europahymne wurde. Mit ihren Träumen von einer besseren Welt werden Künstlerinnen und Künstler auch in Zukunft Mut und Aufbruchsstimmung wecken. Damit werden sie Menschen weiterhin über Grenzen hinweg miteinander in Fühlung bringen, selbst in Zeiten, in denen Solidarität bedeutet, Abstand zu halten. In diesem Sinne wünsche ich dem Europäen zierter Form viel Erfolg und hoffe, dass daraus eine starke Stimme der Darstellung Künstler in Europa wird. Okay, okay, so we want to express our warm thanks to the Minister of State Monika Grütters for making this first European Theater Forum possible in the frame of the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union. And up next, since Saxony is the German land where Dresden is situated and as such the hosting region for this first forum, here are a few welcoming words by Barbara Klebsch, Saxon State Minister for Culture and Tourism. Achim Klement and his team would like to welcome the European theater scenes from Dresden to bring together. During the German Eurats Presidency, it is good that the diverse theater landscape of Europe gets a platform. That is always important for a network, but it is especially in this pandemic time even more urgent than to exchange Jesus. In Saxony there are over 80 playstations in the public area carried by the state, cities and municipalities, but also very much through private engagement. We stand with it for a cultural density that makes Europe in many regions. We live from the places to which society is possible to communicate. It takes place through the encounters of artists and artists with their audience. These social forums, which give our theater a space, are partly missing. Our common task is that the theater does not go under in this pandemic, that it is managed by offers, although health protection is kept in mind. And it is managed by state and social coverings, that we, too, need the multifaceted theater. For the theater forum, the way over the internet is a chance that it can take place. Yes, I am happy about that. We all know that the digital world cannot be a permanent place for the experience of theater. That is why I hope that you can exchange yourself with the European Theater Forum on ways to get through the crisis and how theater can then start again with energy. I wish you good discussions and I invite you to come to Saxony right away. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And last but not least, but we want to express our most warm thanks for hosting us at Staatsschauspiel Dresden, even if this has to be virtually, to Joachim Kleement, General Director and Artistic Director of Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Germany, and host of the Fast Forward Festival. Hello, good morning, everybody. Dear guests and participants of the European Theater Forum, as the local host of the first European Theater Forum, I have the honor to welcome you. As the minister has already said in her speech, we would have been delighted to welcome you as person and our guests coming to Dresden. Our city is located in the southeast of Germany, close to the borders of Poland and the Czech Republic. It's an important cultural city in a region located on the territory of the former GDR. Dresden is an important place to creating links between Eastern and Western Europe. I would like to invite you not only to participate by a digital communication in this first edition of the forum, but also in the same way to take part in Fast Forward, the European Festival for Young Directors. The festival was founded 10 years ago as a place for discovery. Under normal circumstances, Europe's theaters show to the audience their exploration and artistic achievements to the audience each year by presenting eight guest performances by young artists and companies from as many countries, rich in directing methods, inventive in the use of theatrical means and forms, serious in its examination of content, touching and entertaining at the same time. It's one of the most important festivals for young artists. Fast Forward creates intensive encounters with young theater talents from all over Europe. The festival is a European theater platform that has already given a boost of numerous artistic careers, including directors such as Jonas Koropidesen from Norway, Marta Gornitzka from Poland, Antoine Dubon from Belgium, Huki Lee Barjokaiter from Dytunia, Data Tavatsa from Georgia, as well as Kami Dagen and Mayu Sifat both from France. The festival serves as a place for discoveries. Within four intensive days, one can experience the diversity and variety of approaches of a young theater that sometimes passionately, sometimes critically and always inventively explores what makes stage art relevant today. Art also tells us something about the context in which it is created. And so this festival conveys something about the realities of life and the conditions that the theater makers in their perspective countries have to face in some time to fight for. What are the questions and visions do they share? It fast forward, you can discover how multi-faceted and multi-lingual young theaters participating in the future of Europe and how surprising and un-dogmatic this can be. There is however one dogma at the festival. On the last day, an international jury will award a prize to one of the participating directors. The festival prize is an invitation to realize a new work at our theater in Dresden and to gain experience in a new artistic environment. At the same time, it lays the foundation for international cooperation. Substannability is what interests us. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Fast Forward with a special festival edition at work was not planned. But in the theater, you are dealing with artists and, as it is well known, they are capable of creating new ideas and projects according to the circumstances. With a total of 10 works from Nistonia, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany, this year, you were supposed to experience theater life on stage while walking through the city and on the digital stage. Due to the pandemic, we can only invite you for four full days of the noise yourself in virtual worlds to test new perspectives, to take a stance and dance, or the necessary distance, of course. The festival is also a bridge between independent artists and established institutions. Many of the invited works were created as freely produced projects. In this respect, I also understand the festival is an artistic mirror to the participants and debates of the forum, in which very diverse representatives of the performing arts come to sit at one table with political decision makers, also to discuss the challenges for European culture and arts caused by COVID-19. The theater is one of the important, freely configurable spaces of our democracy, a laboratory of social imagination. Beyond ideology, the debate about how we want to live can be conducted here without reservation. Theater insists on differentiation because only in this way it can help the choose to prevail, and it presents ideas and concepts, ideas and concepts for life. Above all, however, it strengthens our hope that we can influence and change the conditions of our life and are not just determinated by them. The pandemic has shown how fragile the structures are on which we have built our security. What we know that culture is a lifeblood of society because it encourages change and indicates what is possible, as the President of the Federal Republic recently said. But without solidarity, great attention, mutual respect and courage, we will achieve nothing, not only in art. That is why I wish you and us much of these in the coming days, without these abilities and talents, we will not be able to meet the challenges of the coming period, whether it is digitalization, the further development of our audience, or simply securing our artistic existence. I wish you and us good encounters, lively debates and much success, and many thanks to the organizers. Charlotte Auti is greater of Fast Forward, and Heidi Wiley and her team of the ETC for the conference for the intensive preparatory work and the good cooperation. I wish you good luck and health. Thank you. Thank you very much Joachim Kliment for these inspiring and kind words. We'll be back shortly after transition for what's up next. Now we are welcoming Barbara Gessler. Most of you in the audience might already know Barbara Gessler. She is the head of the Creative Europe Program of the European Union. This being the only program in Europe that specifically supports and funds international collaboration for culture. Barbara Gessler, good morning. Let's talk a little bit about the launch of the European Commission's Theatre Initiative. And maybe we can start with a logical question. What it is the European Theatre Initiative? Can you briefly explain us? Good morning everyone, first of all. I'm very happy to be here virtually. Like all the speakers that spoke before, I would have so much like to wake up in the hotel room this morning in Dresden and go to the theatre, to the Staatschaospiel, to attend this forum. But Elas, here we are. I'm very happy to have the opportunity to present to you the European Theatre Initiative. This initiative consists of a set of actions that we are planning to have and that we have already started having in the area of performing arts and most particularly in theatre. It has all started with conversations that we had with the sector, with the networks. Many of you who are now here have been involved in these kind of also informal conversations that we had and notably also the European Theatre Convention in Heidi. And we have come to realize that the Creative Europe programme does a lot of things for the performing arts and for the theatre, but there may be other issues that are at stake still for this particular art form that we would need to tackle. Hence, what we did was to launch a mapping with the broadest questions that we thought would be relevant to look at the reality of the German performing arts and theatre situation in particular. Because obviously, theatre is not only the oldest art forms as we heard already this morning and the one that helps us think outside the box, which is very important for us in Europe, but it's also obviously the one that is very much linked to linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe. And hence, it's also the one that has it maybe a little bit more difficult to travel across borders to meet people outside the country of origin. So in this first mapping, we looked at the major questions that were at stake and we gathered actually all of those that are now involved in the consortium organising this European Theatre Forum in a first informal dialogue in Brussels last year at the Theatre Nationale de Bruxelles. And from there, we had a whole day of very fruitful conversations about what would be the most pressing issues that the European level would have to look at. And we came up with a set of questions and launched a study that will be presented to you more in detail tomorrow. But we also realised that a place where people would come together across the European board, obviously in a setting which is close to theatres and performing arts realities close to a stage, would be a very welcome space for exchange in Europe as it doesn't exist outside obviously very relevant festivals. But as a general meeting point for European theatre and performing arts professionals. And so this initiative actually consists of all of these actions that we have taken so far and that we aim at continuing on the basis also of this discussion, of this dialogue, but also on the basis of the results of the study. And we hope to bring it together in what we call an initiative in favour of the European performing arts sector and most notably the European theatre sector. So can you develop a little bit about the next steps? What are they? Because this is the first, the European Theatre Forum. It's basically the first official step of this initiative and you say that the intention is exactly this to make it possible further. Can you speak a little bit about these future steps? Yes, obviously the future steps. I mean, I want to put it that way. This is already an advancement. It's the first official theatre forum and I would really like to seize the opportunity if I may to allow in particular, to allow me to say thank you to the German presidency and to State Minister Grütters and her team for having joined us in this endeavour of reaching out to the sector together in the frame of the European, of the German-European presidency and obviously also to the organisers but we will have more possibilities of saying thanks to the consortium and the organisers themselves. The next steps obviously for us are wait for the results of the study which will also deliver very concrete policy recommendations to us and these policy recommendations will then be the basis of our future action at the European level. Obviously, we hope that the future EU presidencies will also take this adventurous route with us and eventually, as you know, as next year starts the new Creative Europe programme, we hope to be developing a more sectorial support approach for the performing arts and namely the theatre sector. Thank you very much, Barbara. These are very important steps and very important information about where we are in the present moment which is the situation of our sector and we really hope that this European theatre forum will give us the possibility to make this important contact between the sector and the policy makers and to make our voices heard. Thank you very much. Thank you. So let us now introduce a very important theatre director in the European theatre landscape, a savoir Serge Ranganis, general manager and artistic director of the Théâtre de Liège in Belgium, who's also president of the European Theatre Convention. Serge Ranganis was one of the first people imagining what a powerful initiative it would be in connecting Europe's key theatre and performing arts representatives together with policy makers. In meetings of ETC with the former EU Commissioner of Culture, Thébor Navracic, this idea fell on fruitful grounds. Quickly, other networks joined this idea and first gatherings happened and three years later the European Theatre Forum opens. Serge Ranganis not only has defended and produced all his life European theatre performances, he also considers supporting up and coming talents as his major responsibility. He therefore will be joined by Maria Aberg, a Sweden freelance director based in London, now an associate artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Reunite what is scattered project Europa is not only an artistic project, it's a way of living. It's our reality right now. So welcome Serge and Maria. I would like to thank Mrs. Barbara Gessler very much. And this with particular pleasure because we know that she is committed to working with us to create the spaces to exchange and support that we need. My thanks also goes to Mrs. Felicitas van Malinkort and Issa Edela from the German EU Presidency Team who believed and supported our EID of such a forum. I would also like to thank the colleagues from the different networks and institutions who have agreed to come together for this consortium and above all who have put all their conviction and energy into ensuring that this first forum can address all the important issues that everyone wanted to share. Thank you for your ability to listen, to exchange and to share. Finally, thank you to ID Wille and our team at the European Theater Convention who worked as for months now and the Vicent created and organized this joint collaboration with all European partners for the forum to come into life. Congratulations for this great job, especially to our dedicated project team, Ellen Gauthier, Alice Burroughs, Josephine Dussault and Juna Bogon. There is only one path to overcome our fears, that of knowledge. For several years now, many of us have been hoping to meet in one place to be able to share our commitments, our difficulties and our challenges. In favor of our theater, dance, circus arts and all the new forms that arise from them, wherever we are in Europe, in whatever sector we work, in dialogue with those who organize public policies in support of culture. Here we are, separated despite of us, but united in the same space of words and thoughts. Three days are given to us to tackle a number of essential questions and to explore this sector of the performing arts, which is so special because it's perfectly at odds with the profitability that is demanded of human activities a little more each day. Indeed, the labor factor is predominant without any possibility of mechanization in our field. The performing arts sector is under increasing tension between rising incompressible costs and constrained ticketing revenues, with limited audience numbers and limited performances in term of dates, as explained by economists Bohmoll and Bohen. A sector that is characterized by a disparity in the way it's financed in Europe, but also by a great diversity of functioning, ensembles instilled in city theaters, in countries with a German heritage, even if an independent sector also exists and is strong there, and teams of artists engage for one production in the others, a sector that is also characterized by sectoral differences, the public theater sector and the sector of subsidized independent companies of artists, a practice which is in dialogue with the territory, a community, but which since the 70s has become considerably more international, specifically at the European level, thanks in particular to the exceptional development of festivals in most European countries, a art that appeared on the European continent and is historically linked to the different languages spoken in Europe, a art that has seen its practice transformed over the last 40 years into multiple forms, theater for children and young people, participatory theater, drama theater, dance theater, music theater, street theater, object theater, classical theater, new circus, new magic and so on. Always artisanal, it can also be sometimes a little bit conservative, since it's always based on an heritage ended down from person to person. Against the current phenomenon of our era of speed and dematerialization, it favors the long time of performance, the presence of bodies and voices in the same place and same time, but it is most often the bearer of a critical and political sense. But in all times, it faces several challenges. To address all the citizens of our cities with all their differences of origin, gender, culture, philosophical thought, to tell a plurality of narratives, to include technological evolutions without being enslaved by them, to rethink its functioning in order to reduce its ecological footprints, but above all to survive in an increasingly commercial environment, this art, who is at the antipodes of profits, and then, beyond all these challenges, the time of crisis has become. The pandemic we are experiencing and its consequences that affect absolutely all human activities, which reaches what is the essence of being human, the sociability that allows for exchange, empathy, intellectual stimulation, and emotional enrichment, the encounter with the author that allows us to remain human because thus that is how I recognize the author in me. Today we are all asked to keep our distance from each other. This is the feeling of danger that is induced by the presence of one's other fellow. And that person could be my daughter, my son, my mother, or father, my sister, or brother. This is certainly the most tragic and destabilizing consequence of the situation we are living through. All sectors are wondering when we will be able to return to normal, and unfortunately it doesn't seem to be happening soon. The performing art sector already, particularly fragile, is being hit with particular violence. Fragile because theater makers in the immense majority encounter difficulties in life, intermittency, low salaries, the status of artists that is difficult to access and not very protective, or even nonexistent in some countries. Since March, it's stupor that has gripped the workers in these fields. Then anger, finally, astinia, resignation with this second lockdown. No more performances, no more tours, no more border crossings, no more festivals. The venues, the performance venues that organize and enable the meeting between artists and audiences are closed. There are thousands of cancellations. The hope of restart of activities is chased away by the fear of a third lockdown. For the citizens too, this absence of a place to meet, exchange, discuss with its cathartic, or simply recreational, virtues cannot constitute an impassable horizon. Can we imagine that all lives, for months or even years, will be devoid of cultural activities? No theater, no concerts, no opera, no dance, no exhibitions, no cinema. What kind of society are we talking about? And who will still be there when life can start again? This dreadful period is being used by certain countries in the heart of Europe to muzzle even more of the freedom of artists who dare to express themselves. For them, for our fellow citizens, for us and our children, we must think together, artists, programmers, producers, intendants, policymakers to defend and strengthen the performing art. All this will hopefully take shape during these three days of exchanges. All this, you will feel, it's in the project carried by Maria Aberg, the director who is carrying Project Europa. A few months ago, thanks to Diego Rodriguez, we called each other with Maria. Maria originally from Sweden, works in London and Germany, immersed in a country that is leaving Europe. She was stopped a few weeks before the premiere of her show, which was to be presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Ironically, a project is taking on a European dimension. In order for it to live with us for a few moments, we asked Maria Aberg to tell you about it. And I'm very, very pleased to host Maria, please. Thank you. Thank you very much. So this is the story of where we are now. Back in 2016, when Britain had been shockingly and chaotically pulled apart by the opportunistic and short-sighted Brexit referendum, I was invited by the Royal Shakespeare Company to curate a season of work about Europe. I appointed the German dramaturg Judith Gastenberg and together we developed a season of work which we called Project Europa. The season was intended to explore and interrogate European theatre and theatre-making practice and to investigate the question of a European identity past, present and future. It was also a celebration, collaboration of connection and of community. The programme included three large-scale productions, seven new plays by leading European writers, a youth theatre project, a symposium in collaboration with the University of Birmingham and a specially commissioned photography exhibition, photos from which you'll see during this speech. The season involved artists from over 20 different countries, all identified and invited by myself and Judith. For me personally, it was work that I had waited a lifetime to make. I grew up in Sweden, I moved to Italy as an 18-year-old and from there I applied to drama school in London, where I ended up staying for over 20 years, with brief stints in Ireland and Berlin. My entire working life has been made possible by the open borders of Europe, by the communal effort of putting into practice an ideal of a shared and peaceful future. And my practice as an artist is deeply rooted in Europe, its traditions, innovations and complexities. When we started working on Project Europa almost four years ago, it sometimes felt like the idea was an enormous mountain that we'd set out to climb, where the opening night of the first show on April 16th, 2020 was our equivalent of reaching base camp. It was to be the first time the audience would meet the actors on stage, the first time we would set off those theatrical fireworks into the sky that symbolized everything the season stood for. Of course back then, right at the start, the entire season was just an idea. As intangible and unpredictable as ideas often are, projecting into the future is always uncertain. You have to allow yourself to be led, not even by anything as solid as a vision, but by a notion, a hunch. And you have to trust that others will support and amplify this intangible notion. Reaching the summit is a gamble, and the only thing you can count on is risk. If our starting shot was the 2016 referendum, it quickly became obvious that Brexit could and should not be the North Star in our thinking. It seemed reductive, even as an example of the very insularity that had resulted in the shocking referendum result, to focus on an issue so binary and simplistic. We had to widen our perspective. So, how could we respond to the situation in a way that didn't just enhance the political division in the UK and drove our audiences even further into their already bitterly entrenched yes and no positions? It seemed clear to us that the gesture of the work had to point towards the future. Not in a naively optimistic way, not in a way that offered solutions. Everybody knows it's not the job of artists to offer solutions. Thank God. But in a way that enabled open and robust debate and an acceptance of contradictory perspectives to create a sort of temporary community, both on the stage and in the auditorium. But we also had to deal with the question of Europe itself. What is it? Is it about the geographical area or the EU? Is it about the cultural landscape or the political one? Is it a place of memory and nostalgia, the birthplace of civilization, or is it the scene of some of the most uncivilized atrocities this world has ever seen? The answer is, of course, entirely subjective, ever changing and entirely unreliable. There is no singular narrative, no definitive perspective on Europe. We decided to put this subjectivity, this unreliability at the heart of our process. A project like this is by its very nature idealistic and the very making of it embodies exactly the themes it represents on stage. How do we live together? How do we collaborate across borders? How do we allow the subjective realities of one another to inspire curiosity and empathy? In order to create our own temporary community of collaborators, me and Judith set out to find artists who shared our excitement for these naughty and unanswerable questions. We looked for directors, writers, actors and designers and invited them to London and Stratford to hear their ideas. We wanted as much as was possible to represent as many different aesthetics, languages and lived experiences as we could. Judith sent me Patrick O'Rednick's brilliant Czech novel Europe Piano and suggested I Directed. This inventive text fundamentally deals with the impossibility of finding a singular narrative and the multitude versions of history and memory that can and must exist simultaneously. It seemed to perfectly encapsulate the themes of the season and I immediately fell in love with the impossible task of directing it. Barbara Frey joined us from Switzerland to work on a distilled and contemporary version of Per Gint. Tiago Rodriguez flew over from Lisbon to talk to us about his formative theatrical experiences in Belgium and to propose directing his own adaptations of both of Jose Sarmagos' brilliant novels Blindness and Unseeing. Matthias Andersson joined us from Sweden and started working with disinvited young people from all over the UK on their own personal stories. Writers joined us and tackled the question of what is Europe from in their own imaginative, playful, complex ways. David Carnavali, Yillish Chaka, Theodora Dimova, Sivan Ben Nishai, Christos Iconamou, Sumona Sinha and Sean. Our designers Bettina Maya, Anna Ines Chavarez-Pita and Jose Capella started to get to grips with the wooden O that is the Swan Theatre in Stratford, Bonagon. As we went on the intangible became more real. More and more brilliant inspirational artists joined us to build Project Europa, investing in this idealistic hopeful notion, lending their imagination and creativity to the idea of something that did not yet exist but which would at some point become our lived reality. Of course international collaboration isn't always easy. Developing a shared language to understand aesthetic, reconciling vast differences in funding and navigating those naughty moments in the day to day working and making like differences in how rehearsal rooms are run and how actors are involved in the creative process is time-consuming, complex and challenging. Holding space for a multitude of perspectives requires patience and care and creating a community no matter how temporary is hard work. It's also possibly the most vital and necessary thing an artist can do. Creating a community means drawing a circle in the sand and saying in here everything is allowed. In here we can practice discord, division and disagreement, test ideas, let our convictions crash into others and step out again slightly changed. It's creating the space often literally to do the hard and sometimes uncomfortable work of being human as a collective. Project Europa was fueled by artists drawing circles in sand. Barbara Frey was carefully constructing an intimate musical internal world in Pergint for her collaborators and audiences. Thiago Rodriguez was getting to know his actors and beginning to create the world based on their unique perspectives and sensibilities and I was knee deep in Europeana trying to recreate a sensory theatrical reexamination of everything that happened in the 20th century. We all know what happened next. Turns out the unreliability we thought we built into our process was even more unreliable than we ever could have anticipated. A few weeks before reaching the Europeana base camp the theatres in the UK and across Europe closed and all the work was cancelled. Every single freelance artist working on the season, every actor, director, designer, choreographer, musician lost our jobs overnight. Me and my collaborators found ourselves scattered across Europe, isolated and quarantined, trying to make sense of how quickly, unexpectedly and completely the world can change. As artists in the UK began to comprehend the extent of the COVID damage, desperation set in. The pandemic plus Brexit plus a funding system which has been tilted in favour of an increasingly commercial model for years and years meant that the theatre community was suddenly on its knees. Huge organisations had to suddenly dedicate all their energy and resource to simply staying alive and were forced to let artists fend for themselves. Of course, inside the unexpected the potential for change is hiding. When the dust had settled and theatres began to piece together a new reality out of the wreckage of the old, it became clear that project Europa could not take place in Stratford when Edwin is planned. Faced with the threat of permanent cancellation of the entire season, we were forced to look at the work again, trying to determine if it still had a place in this new world. And when we did, project Europa seemed almost prophetic. The questions that we had wrestled with in our rehearsal rooms were now the questions in everyone's minds. What is the nature of collective responsibility? What is humanity in the face of chaos? Where stands the individual in the tide of history? In other words, how do we live together in this new world? So suddenly I find myself with a new mission. I am determined to find a new home for this suddenly homeless season and in the spirit of the work it seems logical to look for that home in Europe. Together with the Royal Shakespeare Company and all the artists involved, I am trying to find a way that this work can survive. In the last few months, I've spoken to many, many theatres around Europe, interrogating whether or not it might even be possible to still plan for international collaborations when the world seems to be collapsing around us. It's my ambition and hope that the principles that guided us when we created the work, community, connection and collaboration will support us through this next chapter in the story of the season and it seems the majority of the people I've spoken to agree. We may not know how to make it happen. Perhaps the shows themselves will have to scatter across Europe just as its artists have done but then again projecting into the future is and always will be uncertain and maybe, just maybe, this new nomad version of Project Europa might be even more poetically appropriate than the work we initially set out to make. Yes, the world has changed. Yes, it might be harder now than it was a year ago. Much harder. Almost impossible to realise our ambitions but not quite. I believe now more than ever we as Europeans have to lean into the ideas that seem the most difficult to realise and to place our faith in the power of collective creativity, whether we are policymakers or creative practitioners because as a citizen and as an artist, I have got to keep believing in the power of drawing circles in the sand and asking people to step inside. Thank you.