This Flesh Is Mine. Brian Woolland
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emotional reality of what is happening on a human scale – the political drama that takes place in the flesh.
When Brian Woolland suggested the idea of a play that approached these questions through the medium of Homeric myth, it offered us the possibility of a real engagement without the pitfalls of simplistic moralizing. Refracted through the prism of The Iliad, the play could become at once immediate and oblique, resonating with echoes of the conflicts in the region without reproducing them in a literal (and hence inadequate) way. That is why mythologies persist so powerfully: they offer us a cultural space in which to explore our unraveling histories.
The need for such action was pointed out by the great Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish, who called his compatriot Edward Said “the last hero in that epic, / defending the rights of Troy / [to share the story].” For Darwish, Homer’s epic is the history of the victors, the colonizing Achaeans, and so requires contestation in the fragmented poetry of his “future Troy”, the culturally inspiring city of Ramallah. “No Homeric echoes for anything … / only a digging up of a comatose state / under the ruins of an encroaching Troy.” An intercultural Iliad for the 21st century has to carve out space for the marginalized: the captives, the women, the aged, the refugees. It has to become a site of resistance to the simplifying discourses of the political mainstream.
Homer’s Iliad ends with the funeral rites of Hector: and so its climax is the mission of Troy’s old King Priam to Achilles, humbling himself, appearing as a father and a man to offer the eloquence of grief and nakedness, pleading for the return of Hector’s corpse. It’s an incredibly potent image – one which has served to inspire many contemporary artists in zones of conflict as they strive towards the possibility of reconciliation. In August 1994, two days after the Northern Irish truce, Michael Longley published a sonnet called Ceasefire in the Irish Times. Drawing off this same passage in Homer, Longley ended with a couplet that also echoed the words of Gordon Wilson, a father from Enniskillen whose daughter had died in the Remembrance Day bombing of 1987, and who had appeared on television publicly to forgive her murderers in one quiet sentence that has itself acquired mythic status in Ireland:
‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.’
In This Flesh is Mine, that scene is not allowed to become climactic, and rightly so – in the Lebanese civil war there were constant periods of truce during which bodies were returned to their families across the Green Line before the fighting simply erupted once more. Every attempt so far at a solution to the Israel-Palestine question has faltered. The scene becomes pivotal, but not decisive, as poetry slips away and strange echoes of contemporary reality resound louder and louder in the mythic space.
Howling for our attention.
Michael Walling
In response to the contemporary globalised world, Border Crossings works through theatre to create a cultural space in which people come together as equals for creativity and dialogue. The company works across the borders between cultures and art forms, and between nations and peoples. Since 1995, Border Crossings has created productions in collaboration with artists from many backgrounds, examining cultural diversity and globalisation with a strong focus on what these important issues mean for people living in the UK today.
Recent productions include: Consumed (co-produced with Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre), The Orientations Trilogy (co-produced with SDAC, Yaksha Dagula, India, à fleur de peau, France and Teater Eksem, Sweden), The Dilemma of a Ghost by Ama Ata Aidoo (co-produced with the National Theatre of Ghana), Bullie’s House by Thomas Keneally, and Double Tongue by Brian Woolland. Border Crossings also produces the biennial Origins: Festival of First Nations.
The company offers extensive programmes of community engagement, participation and learning. If you’d be interested to collaborate, please email [email protected]
Supporting Border Crossings
To produce top-notch intercultural performances…
To run the UK’s only Festival of First Nations cultures….
To offer free and sustained engagement to youth and diverse communities…..
….requires significant investment. To find out how you can support our work, whether as an individual, as a company, as a trust or foundation, please call 020 8829 8928 or email [email protected]
Patron: Peter Sellars
Artistic Director: Michael Walling
Associate Director (Community Engagement, Participation & Learning): Lucy Dunkerley
Board of Trustees: Emma Courtney, Dr Alastair Niven LVO OBE (Chair), Maddy Pickard, Peter Scott, Shelagh Prosser.
Registered Charity No. 1048836.
Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England No. 3015984.
www.bordercrossings.org.uk www.originsfestival.com
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Twitter: @bordercrossings
During our run at Testbed 1:
Regarding Distance by Palestinian artist Yazan Khalili is on show at Edge of Arabia Projects Gallery, next to the venue.
Middle Eastern food available from Moorish.
May 14
Film Gaza – Opening Signs, with a talk by film-maker Jonathan Chadwick – 5pm at Edge of Arabia Project Gallery. Free.
May 25
Performance – Two Schmucks, Three Opinions – by Jonathan Meth and Steve Tiller – 12 noon at Testbed 1. Free.
ASHTAR is a dynamic Palestinian Theatre with a progressive global perspective. It aims at promoting creativity and commitment for positive transformation and political change through a novel combination of specific training and acting programs and professional theatre performances.
ASHTAR Theatre is a non-profit organization that was established in 1991 in Jerusalem as the first theatre training organization for youth in Palestine.
ASHTAR Theatre offers three major programmes: Drama Training for youth and teachers, Theatre of the Oppressed techniques and plays, and International co-productions.
If marginalized audiences are unable to come to ASHTAR’s location in Ramallah, it moves its stage to these often remote areas to include everyone.
Every other year ASHTAR engages in an international co-production that tours locally and internationally; the plays often receives noticeable critiques and reach to a wide range of audiences world-wide.
In 2012 ASHTAR Theatre co-produced Richard II directed by Conall Morrison and performed at The Globe Theatre in London as part of Shakespeare International Festival.
Its production 48 Minutes for Palestine, directed by Mojisola Adebayo from the UK, is another touring play that is making its way to different festivals and cities around the world.
ASHTAR’s ongoing global project The Gaza Monologues is another distinguished accomplishment that raises the individual voices of youth against war and occupation and generates solidarity among young people internationally.
In addition to the above ASHTAR Theatre run different types of Drama and Forum Theatre workshops in Palestine, the Arab World and beyond.
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