HIStory, HERstory, HOUSESTORY, OURstory is a new theatre production scheduled to open in Nicosia this month.
It is the product of a bi-communal text development workshop organised by the Rooftop Theatre Group, the first of its kind in Cyprus. The creators of the group are Ellada Evangelou and Costas Constandinides who came up with the idea to form a group of theatre professionals and amateurs “with the purpose of exploring themselves and their society through the use of theatre.”
Ellada Evangelou, one of the co-founders of the Rooftop Theatre Group, said: “The idea came from Costas’ and my love for two inspiring people of the theatre, Augusto Boal and Caryl Churchill, who produce theatre productions, texts and performances, through alternative methods.”
Brazilian Augusto Boal explored new forms of theatre where the audience played an active role in the development of the play. In the 1960s, he initiated a process where the audience could interrupt the play and suggest different actions for the actors who would then carry them out.
He also developed a technique where the audience is not just a spectator but also a spect-actor where they could actually go on stage to demonstrate their ideas. He got this idea when a woman in the audience once was so outraged the actor could not understand her suggestion that she came onto the stage and showed what she meant.
In a similar way, Caryl Churchill was a pioneer in setting up workshops to develop her plays because she found sharing thoughts and ideas with different people inspiring. As her career developed her plays became less based on realism and more exploratory of life and society. Her aim, as that of the Rooftop Theatre Group, was to alleviate social problems through the theatre.
Drawing on the developments made by Boal and Churchill, Evangelou and Costandinides put the group together over the course of several months after arranging for funding and finding participants. They set up the workshops where the members met up every week for about three months to come up with the theatre text together.
Evangelou said: “Text development workshops are a relatively new method of writing texts, it is time-consuming and demanding and therefore it is difficult for a professional company to realise it. Moreover, it is incredibly risky. There is nothing more daunting than starting a theatre project with no text and writing it on the way. There are no guarantees about the quality of the text and production.”
The admirable characteristic of the group is that both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots are taking part in creating and developing the text, they also break down the boundaries between them and create new friendships.
The House is what inspired the group of twenty people who wrote HIStory, HERstory, HOUSESTORY, OURstory. “It is about the house: as memory, experience, relationship, seen through the senses, the material and immaterial world,” Evangelou explained. “It is made of 12 scenes which include monologues, dialogues, live and recorded music as well as film and projections.”
The rehearsal process was filmed to present the production to the media and also to use the footage during the performance.
“We are very lucky in that the result is a well-balanced versatile text, reflecting the gifted group of people that have worked to create it,” Evangelou concluded.
The production is being financed by the American Embassy and the Youth Board of Cyprus and the cost is estimated to be around £3000.
The play opens on July 17 at Theatro Ena in Nicosia. There will be a total of four performances in the capital and one in Limassol on July 24. For more information call 22-661354 or visit www.rooftoptheatregroup.org
