One Day in Europe

At the last MC meeting in Zaandam, the Netherlands, after a discussion concerning numerous approaches, the participants decided on a mutual starting point: “One day in Europe. 11/21/2006” provides the structure for a theatrical collage of the subject, which is planned as an artistic observation of Europe from a political, social critical or a general human perspective.
The partners introduced “remarkable incidences” of the day 11/21/2006, which were inspiring and got the debate started: Election, education plight and the famous domino-day in the Netherlands, tragedy of the mine workers in Poland’s upper Silesia and the bizarre zero tolerance-policy of the Polish conservatives which attempts to “clean up” the schools; the story about the young mother from central England and the death of her little daughter; the unbelievable life of a centenary “Mister 20th century”, and “Flag day” in Estonia; the north African boat people, boats overcrowded with African refugee arriving at the Spanish coast; the approval of horrendous amounts of financial capital for sealing-off the small German town of Heiligendamm for the g8 summit and a kidnapping in a school; the misfortune of wealthy Norwegians, etc. etc.
This small collection was so expressive and abundant in approach and content that it was easy to enter into a discussion regarding the content, artistic means and aesthetic questions. Does such a production require a joint title?
How about “Fears of Europe”? Would a thematic linkage, which was visible in the selection of topics, already be sufficient? How essential is a formal structure to standardize the single issues? What might the participation of an author to such a project entail? How can it be guaranteed that the production does not become a string of small European movable pieces, but actually become the result of the mutual artistic work? How can it also become possible within the large-scale production to maintain everything the partners consider enriching and rewarding, such as the mutual rehearsals of actors from different countries? How to make it possible to experience later totally different performances in front of very diverse audiences on a tour through several countries?
In actual fact, the controversial but highly productive discussions led to a second mutual understanding: the English author Richard Hurford was asked to develop some performance suggestions from material the theatres have forwarded (character outlines, resp. snapshots) concerning “One day in Europe - Fears and dreams”. Not a complete work but some associative material which takes the partner’s diversity into account and can be used as a basic starting point for rehearsal work.
The partners will work in three small groups to simplify the first rehearsal phase, and meet at the different opening nights in different cities. Only in the last two weeks before the joint opening will all actors rehearse together,
and then the individual parts of the production will be expanded and further developed. For the following 14 days the actors will be available to go on a European tour to the specific partner theatres directly after the opening.

Don’t miss the opening night; June 6th 2008 in Bratislava during the Annual Meeting.

Besides this impressive milestone of Magic Net where 14 companies joined together for ‘One Day in Europe’, a small two days congress will be organised on June 7-8. After a day of evaluations on the 7th, we will have a look into the future on the 8th.
The following topics will be discussed:

Evaluation final production
Evaluation Youth Net/work with young people
Producing in a European contexts
Magic Net co-productions and the audience
Becoming a European partner
Magic Net in the future
International networking

If you wish to join us in Bratislava, please send an email to info@magic-net.org.