Tales of Spring and Winter: Gender, Histories and Intergenerational Exchange in Global Theatre

'Tales of Spring and Winter' is a creative and critical investigation into women making theatre within and for fractured communities, in the wake of violence, or in the shadow of historical conflicts, around the globe. We will be working directly with artists from Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Palestine, Serbia, Sri Lanka and India. The central unifying theme of Tales of Spring and Winter is dialogue between the generations, in the broadest sense: encounters between old and young; transitions from past to present; historical regeneration and renewal; the return of spring after winter. Our aim is to find out what underlying and particular qualities women theatre-makers bring to the processes of generational bridge-building, in post-conflict, diasporic or fractured communities across the globe.
This project is conceived as the first step towards creating a new forum and network for women theatre practitioners around the globe (the Women's Global Theatre Forum). The goal of this website and organization is to make the work of women theatre practitioners visible to the world, now and in the future; to further and support their work through networking, strengthening links, facilitating communication and sharing practice; and to forge connections between women theatre practitioners and those working in international development.
This project is structured around the creation of two new original performances. We will be collaborating on a new incarnation of Dear Children, Sincerely, by working with the six female directors who comprise Project Ariadne: Hope Azeda of Rwanda; Ruwanthie de Chickera from Sri Lanka; Frederique Lecomte from Burundi and D.R. Congo; Iman Aoun in Palestine; Dijana Milosevic in Serbia; and Susannah Tresilian, UK. Dear Children, Sincerely, has already begun with a Rwandan-Sri Lankan collaboration between Hope Azeda and Ruwanthie de Chickera. We will be crafting a new and original contribution to this on-going ambitious project, instigated by Project Ariadne, in which theatre-makers from around the globe have been invited to collect stories from elders in their communities. In turn these stories, as told to the younger generation, are then woven together into performative memory-banks, an oral cultural archive, to preserve and give voice to the hidden and personal stories behind national stories. In this collaborative project we will extend and develop in new directions this ambitious global intergenerational project.
Alongside Dear Children Sincerely, we will be taking a contrasting dramaturgical approach to the issues of hidden histories, intergenerational conflict and reconciliation. Playwright and Principal Investigator, Elizabeth Kuti will be writing a new play, Cold Season in Calcutta, inspired by Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The artists involved in this piece are: Trilby James (director, UK) and the Anglo-Indian actors, Shelley King; Shanaya Rafaat; Umar Pasha; also Sean O'Callaghan; Madhyama Segal (dancer, India); Kiran Segal (Choreographer, India); and musicians Daniel Dhondy and Hassan Mohyeddin. This creative re-imagining of The Winter's Tale will be informed by collaboration with these international performers, and also by historical theatre research, and interviews with the Bengali community in the UK. Transposing key elements of The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare's intertwining of Bohemia-Sicily; the sixteen-year Time gap; the theme of violence against women and the younger generation's "healing" of the older generation), Cold Season in Calcutta will explore, through the lens of gender, interlocking themes of the Anglo-Indian relationship; the legacy of empire; the diaspora, gender and intergenerational struggle.
Through comparing the work of women theatre makers across cultures and national borders, this project will uncover new insights into the way women theatre makers across the world are re-telling personal and national stories, in the context of turbulent political landscapes.

'Tales of Spring and Winter' is conceived as a springboard for creating a new forum connecting women theatre practitioners around the globe, to nurture and to publicise their work. By collaborating with our diverse range of theatre-makers, dancers, musicians, activists from India and Project Ariadne, and by mentoring two students from National School of Drama in Delhi, this project will enable these practitioners to enrich their practice, skills and understanding, and feed these back into the communities where they work. These practitioners will benefit from international industry contacts that would otherwise be impossible. To ensure that the partnerships and networks forged through this project will continue to grow and develop after the project's life-cycle, we will:
1. Set up Women's Global Theatre Forum. The goal of this website and organization is to make the work of women theatre practitioners visible to the world, now and in the future; to further and support their work through networking, strengthening links, facilitating communication and sharing practice; and to forge connections between women theatre practitioners and those working in international development.
This forum will publicise the work of collectives such as Project Ariadne and encourage the reproduction of this type of grass-roots creative initiative. By highlighting the work of the specific women practitioners involved in Tales of Spring and Winter, and then extending that to other women practitioners who are making work for social and political change, the Women's Global Theatre Forum will be a force for gender equality. It will be both a resource and a contributor to processes of reparation and reconciliation in international development, by giving visibility to the work of women in global theatre: describing the work; articulating its political goals and mission; pay attention to gender issues in global theatre, and record for posterity the work of women theatre artists so that women are no longer continually written out of world theatre history and theatre discourse.
The Women's Global Theatre Forum (WGTF) will also encourage more exchange and engagement between ODA countries and elsewhere, with a positive effect on the creative economies in these more vulnerable regions, and a beneficial impact on the livelihoods of actors, performers and theatre workers.
Another goal of WGTF is to nurture future collaborations, co-productions and partnerships between UK organizations and international artists from LMICs on the ODA list, thus building capacity and enhancing the cultural economies of those countries.

2. We will share and communicate our research findings with a wider general public through the performance of the two new works that will result from this project, by staging them in a special day dedicated to Tales of Spring and Winter at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester on Saturday 24th June 2017. The Mercury Theatre is the leading theatre venue of the East of England, with a main house capacity of 487 seats, serving a wide demographic (Colchester being both the home of a radical university and a garrison town). Workshops, talks and Q&A will allow practitioners and the public alike to engage and offer critical feedback on the project's findings and outcomes.

3. We will be inviting leading UK theatre practitioners (Nina Steiger from the National Theatre; Chris Campbell from the Royal Court Theatre; Jatinder Verma from Tara Arts and Janet Steel from Kali Theatre) to join us at the Mercury Theatre, with consequent potential impact on their programming policies.

4. We will seek further funding for full production and touring of Cold Season in Calcutta and Dear Children Sincerely (our two creative outputs)

5. We will work with NGOs and INGOS and charities to ensure our findings are taken up by development policy makers.

6. We will seek further funding for a documentary made by film-maker Nic Blower for broadcast by Sky Arts or BBC 4