GLOD: Political Theatre as a Civil Right
A two-season online political theatre festival 2020-2021
GLOD: Political Theatre as a Civil Right is a series of political theatre screenings from around the world including from Romania, Lebanon, UK, Mexico, Afghanistan, Palestine and Jordan. Join us every two weeks in solidarity with artists, activists and academics resisting from the ground.
Manifesto:
POLITICAL THEATRE AS A CIVIL RIGHT
In these socially and politically turbulent times theatre cannot be a passive bystander to the inequality and violences of society.
It is time for British theatre to become politicised.
It is time for British theatre to change.
Hosted by Howlround Theatre Commons
Coordinated by BÉZNĂ Theatre
GLOD
ROMANIAN NOUN
WET EARTH (SOAKED BY RAIN WATER OR MELTED SNOW)
MUD
CLAY
FROM THE HUNGARIAN GALÁD OR THE RUSSIAN ГЛУДА (GLUDA)
We go to the theatre to study and recover. Speech, hearing, learning, and healing are all conditions for the preservation of human dignity, and if the concept of law is to express the possibility of access to that dignity, we can say that political theatre is a civil right, as we can read it in the title of the BÉZNĂ theatre series. In this sense, the impossibility of political theatre and theatre conditions is an infringement. Fortunately, the revolutionary power of theatre lies precisely in the fact that when power, law, and truth are against us, theatre unites us and amplifies our voices. Glod - wet soil, clay, mud, soil, arable land ... The only question is how and what we form from it.
- Nora Ugron, "Színház" Magazine, Budapest (original in Hungarian)
Season one
06 July - 28 September 2020
06 July 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
ILLEGALISED - BÉZNĂ Theatre
ILLEGALISED is an international, multi-lingual production and world premiere of a new political text exposing the dehumanising effects of the British State’s anti-immigration policies on migrants and those seeking asylum in the UK. ILLEGALISED ruthlessly investigates the Immigration Industrial Complex and the vast profit made by the Home Office and its corporate partners from the illegalisation of human beings. ILLEGALISED is the first in BÉZNĂ Theatre’s cycle of multi-lingual plays denouncing Britain’s dehumanising of people for power and profit from colonial times to today.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Nadine El-Enany, author of (B)ordering Britain
Malia Bouattia, editor of Red Pepper Magazine
Monish Bhatia, lecturer in Criminology at Birkbeck
Theo St. Claire, actor, performer in ILLEGALISED & activist
20 July 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
Heavens - Zoukak Theatre Company
"Heavens" is a play by Zoukak theatre company, performed by a chorus of 3 women, tackling the subject of collective and individual memory of the Lebanese civil war. The play revisits themes such as Lebanon's missing and forcibly disappeared, and the general amnesty law of 1991, as the 3 women delve into their memories to give us a glimpse of what it was like to grow up as a girl/woman in war-torn Beirut. The performance is in Arabic with English subtitles, while the panel is conducted in English.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Maya Zbib, performer in Heavens
Junaid Sarieddeen, director of Heavens
Chris Thorpe, British playwright and performer
Nizar Saghieh, lawyer, researcher & activist for Legal Agenda (intervention)
03 AUGUST 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
I Have Met the Enemy - Common Wealth
I Have Met the Enemy is performed by Mo’min Swaitat, Alexander Eley and Shatha Altowai – a Palestinian actor, former British soldier and a Yemeni artist who connect in a joint attempt to understand the UK arms trade and its impact around the world. With lasers, techno and robotic installation to represent the 72 Eurofighter Jets sold by the UK to Saudi Arabia to be used in Yemen, I Have Met The Enemy asks audiences to take a close look at the UK defence industry and the role we play, as a nation and as individuals, in conflict and occupation around the world.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Evie Manning, Artistic Director of Common Wealth
Rhiannon White, Artistic Director of Common Wealth
Mo’min Swaitat, performer in I Have Met the Enemy
Alexander Eley, performer in I Have Met the Enemy
Shatha Altowai, performer in I Have Met the Enemy
17 AUGUST 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
Peace Oh Peace - Nabil Sawalha
Join Nabil Sawalha (winner of The Medal of Independence 1st Class from King Hussein for achievements in the arts) to watch clips and then discuss Peace Oh Peace - a show he toured from Jordan to Israel in 1995. Nabil toured the UK and the US for four years starting in 1997: Hello Arabs of London and Divided Hearts.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Nabil Sawalha, actor, writer and director
Dina Mousawi, London-based Iraqi actor and theatre-maker
Lara Sawalha, Jordanian- British actor
31 AUGUST 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
Oranges and Stones - Ashtar Theatre
Join us to watch “Oranges and Stones” by Palestinian Ashtar Theatre - the story of an impoverished refugee man who arrives from Europe after World War I under the guise of the “Balfour Declaration” and settles in a native woman’s home. “Oranges and Stones” is a play without words, told totally through physical action and original music. It portrays the reality of persecution in Palestine, and travels in time to seventy years of occupation and settlement.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Iman Aoun, actor, Artistic Director of Ashtar Theatre
Edward Muallem, actor, General Director of Ashtar Theatre
Mojisoba Adebayo, poet, playwright, director
Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Human Rights
14 september 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
Revenge - Laura Uribe & Juan Carlos Saavedra
Revenge is a documentary piece about the violence that two children experienced within their family unit. It is a journey towards memory and identity where, starting from the self, the gaze unfolds towards the violence that we experience in Mexico. This work seeks to wonder; What leads us to be violent? Is violence inherited or learned? Created and performed by Laura Uribe and Juan Carlos Saavedra.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Laura Uribe, Mexican performing artist; director, playwright, performer, teacher and stage researcher.
Juan Carlos Saavedra, Mexican actor, director and executive producer.
Luz Emilia Aguilar Zinser, journalist, theatre critic and researcher.
Season two
25 January - 05 April 2021
25 January 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
Return to Palestine - Freedom Theatre
Jad, a Palestinian born in America, decides to go to Palestine for the first time in his life. Wanting to know more about his people and identity, he finds out that reality is very different from what he has seen on the news.
Return to Palestine is directed by Micaela Miranda and devised together with an ensemble of graduate students of The Freedom Theatre School. It was created after extensive story-gathering through playback theatre with the communities engaged in The Freedom Theatre’s annual Freedom Ride. The play includes stories from Jenin refugee camp and city, Fasayel, Dheisheh refugee camp, Mufaqara and Gaza.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Micaela Miranda, director
Ahmad Tobasi, Artistic Director of The Freedom Theatre
Kareem Samara, composer, musician and activist
08 FEBRUARY 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
Extracts - Chris Thorpe
Chris is a writer and performer from Manchester. Chris writes and tours in the UK and internationally (when it’s allowed). Recent work includes Status (Rachel Chavkin/China Plate); The Mysteries (Royal Exchange, Manchester); The Shape of the Pain (Rache Bagshaw/China Plate); Am I Dead Yet? (Unlimited); The Iphigenia Quartet: Chorus (Gate); There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Royal Exchange, Manchester/Soho/Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Theatertreffen, Berlin): Victory Condition (Royal Court), and upcoming collaborations with the Royal Court, Nationaltheater Mannheim/Javaad Alipoor, Rachel Chavkin/Lekan Lawal and Yusra Warsama.
Chris will perform extracts from: Always Maybe The Last Time (upcoming Royal Court/Methuen Climate Commission); There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Royal Exchange, Manchester/Soho/Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Theatertreffen, Berlin); Community Transmission (commissioned & first presented by Sismo Stories & Performances, Amsterdam www.sismo.nl).
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Chris Thorpe
Nimisha Patel
Tanuja Amarasuriya
22 february 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
Sittaraha the Stars - Monirah Hashemi
Monirah Hashemi was born to Afghan parents living in Iran as refugees. Discovering early the power of storytelling, she moved back to Afghanistan in 2004 at 19, where she started acting in films and co-founded Simorgh Film Association of Culture and Art. At 21, she wrote and directed her debut play, Cry of History, which was performed in Herat to a mixed audience at the country’s first educational theatre festival in 2006. The play, the first one in Afghanistan to be produced solely by women, went on to win the festival’s best play award in Herat and Kabul International Theater Festvial and performed in National School of Drama Theater Festival in Mumbai and New Delhi in India.
Due to her involvement in theatre, writing and directing political plays she left Afghanistan and relocated to Sweden late 2013.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Monirah Hashemi, theatre-maker
Asad Buda, historian, writer, and artists’ guide
Shala Nyx, London-based actor
08 march 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
Women make theatre political
Join us for International Women’s Day for a celebration of Women in Political Theatre through showcasing work and a panel discussion with:
Nisha Abdulla, playwright, director, dramaturg and educator based in Bangalore, India.
Sonali Bhattacharyya, award-winning playwright based in London.
Jo Brăilescu, Romanian cultural educator & producer.
Kyla Davis, theatre-maker & home-maker.
ALSO SHOWCASING EXCERPTS OF THEIR WORK ARE:
Mireia Juanals, actress & theatre-maker from Barcelona, Spain.
Lora V Krasteva, theatre maker, political scientist and cultural producer
iulia isar, Romanian theatre-maker & youth worker, and Tara McGirr, half Thai-half Scottish actor & theatre maker.
22 MARCH 2020 1pm EDT, 6pm BST, 8pm GMT+3
Corp Urban - Giuvlipen
"Corp Urban" fictionalizes the stories of four Roma women and investigates the relationship between them and their own body, through a personal lens, but also in a social context: the body as a means of production, the body as property, the body as a cradle of motherhood; the healthy body, the sick body, the shameful body, the physical body as a mirror of social life and as the only personal possession. We make a foray into the universe of the marginalized, exploring the gray areas of morality and society and open for debate the controversial subject of sexual and reproductive rights, in a musical show, tender, assumed and brave, about body, sexuality, survival and identity, in 21st century Romania.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Mihaela Drăgan, actor
Zita Moldovan, actor
05 APRIL 2021 1pm EDT, 6pm GMT, 8pm GMT+2
CRIME - BÉZNĂ Theatre
1991-1993. St. Petersburg, Russia.
Communism falls. Unfettered Capitalism rises. The student of law believes that the free market economy will bring his country freedom. The family is optimistic about the wealth of the new future. There is mass privatisation. The family is broken by debt. The unemployed man kills himself. Pensions are cut. The student abandons his old mother after she arranges his sister's marriage to a rich man. The single mother sells her daughter's body for a McDonalds meal. The student murders & robs the pawnbroker.
CRIME depicts the reality of a country ravaged by deregulated Capitalism.
POST-SHOW PANELLISTS
Angel Lopez-Silva, actor
Mathew Wernham, actor
Dr. Penny Green, criminologist
