Current Fence projects

All our Tomorrows

The Fence has, since 2017, been developing a strand of work entitled All Our Tomorrows.

In this, the playwright is recast as a public figure in which theatrical production is but one manifestation of the significance of the artist in public discourse. We began with Ireland has struck Oil in partnership with King’s College, with Gabriel Gbadamosi as the lead playwright, in London.

This is being followed-up by Greece is Gone with playwright Andreas Flourakis in partnership with Trinity College in Dublin, and our recent presentation of Andrei KureIchik’s Insulted, Belarus(sia) is a further iteration of this strand.

My Heart is in the East

The project My Heart is in the East (MHITE) project centres around a play by Jessica Litwak that deals with Muslim-Jewish relations across centuries. MHITE shines a light on a cultural heritage neglected by most Western narratives: La Convivencia, when Moslems and Jews were able to co-exist fruitfully for centuries. Not through rose-tinted spectacles, but by the working out of differences in religion, gender, social status through the transformative power of language and the imagination. MHITE seeks to explore a shared identity around what binds us rather than divides us – both 1000 years ago and today. MHITE is a collaboration between The Fence, The HEAT Collective and Az Theatre, involving Fence members Jessica Litwak (New York), Fred Fortas (Paris), Jonathan Chadwick and Jonathan Meth (London) and has been developed at La Mama in New York and at Bazar Café in La Charité sur Loire, France, with a staged reading with live music at the Clapham Omnibus in London.

International Dramaturgy Lab

Brainchild of Fence member and dramaturg Hanna Slattne, The International Dramaturgy Lab (IDL) is an exciting experimental initiative developed in collaboration between an international array of dramaturgical organizations and networks, including The Dramaturgs’ Network UK; Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) USA, Canada, and Mexico; The Fence; STOD Finland; and the Danish Dramaturg Network. The aim is to connect dramaturgs, directors, playwrights, theatre makers, and thinkers around the topic: What does it mean to work dramaturgically across borders?

80 people drawn from the above organisations divided along areas of intersecting interest into around 15 Groups of about five people each, are working together. This project will culminate at the LMDA conference in Mexico City 2021.

Plays for Young People

Plays for Young People 3 is in planning with AFTEC in Hong Kong for Autumn 2021 Plays for Young People brings together emerging translators in Hong Kong to engage first-hand with international playwrights drawn from The Fence. As a bilingual Life Learning Theatre with a special focus on youth development, AFTEC has created this event to draw together those with a shared passion for theatre and the understanding of the need for quality plays written specifically to be performed by young people. AFTEC strongly believes in widening the vision of young people to beyond this city’s borders and to comprehend and recognise other cultures, their similarities and diversities. By working closely with practitioners and playwrights from these countries, we hope to be able to take further steps in a sustainable journey in which the plays, in English and in translation, will be offered to schools, youth centres and tertiary institutions for staging and meaningful discussions.

CRE-ACTORS

The Fence network is delighted to be collaborating with Border Crossings (Sligo / London), Théâtre du Soleil (Paris), Teatro dell’Argine (Bologna) on CRE-ACTORS: Training intercultural theatre-makers for a diverse Europe, with support from EU Erasmus+.

Running from September 2020 for 2 years, the project will facilitate the exchange of best Vocational Educational Training practice between key organisations working in collectively created theatre that engages with social and cultural diversity, internationalism and minority communities.

Boom! Creative Encounter and Staged Readings from UK and Dutch playwrights

The Fence, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the United Kingdom, and Dutch Performing Arts together collaborated on Boom! a project that explores the shared heritage of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, while looking to the future. A diverse group of three UK and four Dutch playwrights have begun meeting together to encounter each other, learn about their shared colonial history, and to explore what might be interesting to each of them to write about.

Click here for more details on Boom!

About Fence Projects

Fence members come together to generate a variety of theatre projects.

They decide what they want to do and with whom. Fence projects can come from anyone and anywhere across the network. Some have been collaborative writing projects; in some cases Fence members have translated each other's work for subsequent commercial production or festival performance; some projects have been pilot or full-scale productions.

Past Fence projects and collaborations

 

2019	Die Berater, Theater Matte, Bern. Commercial production of Ulrike Syha's translation of Neil Fleming's play The Consultant
2018	Festival du Mort, La Charité sur Loire
2018	Sight/Unseen, London
2018	Plays for Young People 2, Hong Kong
2017	Ireland Has Struck Oil, London
2017	Hopper Project, La Charité sur Loire
2016	Plays for Young People 1, Hong Kong
2013-ongoing	Collaborations with Eurodram, the European theatre translation network
2013	Malaysia
2013	Non, Teatro Orologio, Rome. Bi-lingual play written by Sara Clifford and Denis Baronnet.
2012	Swimming Pool, Avignon. Co-written theatre. Written by Svetlana Dimcovic, Fred Fortas, Christophe Cherki, and Nadu Nelzy, as a result of a Fence collaboration with Etc_Caraïbe at Fence 13 in Guadeloupe. Directed by Svetlana Dimcovic
2012	Erasmus partnership: Graz, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Brighton
2008 & 2010	HotInk theatre festical, New York: plays in translation. Over the years, hotINK has introduced New York audiences to the plays, translations, and direction of many Fence members, including Minja Bogavac, Dieter Boyer, Paul Brodowsky, Edward Buffalo Bromberg, Neil Fleming, Andreas Flourakis, Ahmed Ghazali, Doug Howe, Nikolai Khalezin, Ewald Palmetshofer, Tee O'Neill, Kaite O'Reilly, José Maria Vieira Mendes and Christian Winkler.
2005-6	Janus Project: plays in translation performed at Leeds, Tampere, Amsterdam and Graz