Sar chaw SJ!

This week, the KMPE team performed and delivered as a trio for the last time. We had the pleasure to collaborate with the Kurdish branch of Save the Children, led by Mr Nabaz and his team. We did our last performance of 'Mother Earth' together, plus we later delivered a workshop for a selected group of children where we all constructed our puppets and then performed with them. The children were great, very focused and enthusiastic, the large group of teachers who were present were helpful and everyone at KSC made us feel welcomed. As artists-facilitators, that is 'all' we ask for from the host organization: commitment and respect. And we had plenty of that at KSC for what we feel grateful. We really hope we can collaborate together again. 

Although sad to see SJ go back to Nottingham, the KMPE team will carry on the work we came here to do: promoting, encouraging and supporting individuals and collectives through the Arts.  

Tomorrow, we will be appearing live on Geli Kurdistan, a TV station who has been following the project. We will talk in more depth about how the first month in Suleimaniyah has been and we will also share about future plans. For the moment, just to say we have been invited to a youth detention centre and that we hope we will be able to work together. 

Learning curve

Day 25.
Yesterday was a hard day for us here. We experienced the not always nice side of the policy makers when met by a creative project. We had initially agreed to deliver a workshop for 30 children and that the host organization was to gather the making materials under the theme of recycling. However, when we arrived at the school, the number of participants had doubled, we were put in a room that could hardly even contain 30 children, and to make it worst, they did not provide enough materials for every kid to make their own puppet. We tried our best and managed to make something out of the imposed situation, but we left the school drained and not feeling very satisfied.

In the future, we hope to have learned that if the necessary conditions are not met by the host organization, then it is better to cancel the workshop. It remains the case between quality and quantity, and at the end of the day, the facilitator is the person who can make the informed decision of what is feasible and what it is not.

Our last lesson from yesterday, taught us to beware of the so called 'gentlemen's agreements' because as we now know, sometimes liars like to think of themselves as gentlemen.      

Audience feedback.

An audience member said of yesterdays performance: 'I cried when the strangers [the puppet people versus the mask people] found a way to overcome their fears of each other and became friends'.
For us, her words exemplify how theatre, and especially non verbal theatre, can appeal to different people in different ways.

A day to remember

Today we all performed at the Public Park and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, both for the performers-makers and for the audience that joined us and helped to create this event a very special one. Friends, family, and more than 200 audience members, plus few television crews, photographers and journalists attended the public performance and supported the artists through a journey that started 10 days ago when we all began to make our masks and puppets, and culminated today with a street performance in a central park in Suleimaniyah. The ambient was great, the audience was expectant and the feedback afterwards was quite unique and encouraging. All the merit goes to the 32 performers, and the support team, who worked so hard to produce their very own happening, and performed it in such a passionate, powerful and emotive manner. They made something very beautiful today, and we, the KMPE team, feel very proud of their achievement and honoured to be able to be supporting them. As one of the artists noted, most of them had other daily commitments which they have been juggling around in order to be able to comit with the work we were all developing together. Judging from today's performance, they have all earned a well deserved rest. We really hope this will not be the last time we work together. Congratulations.

    

Day 22. Ready to kick off!

As you can see in the previous post, tomorrow we will all be performing our little piece of devised street theatre. We are all very excited as it will be the culmination of an intense process of making creatures and also performance. And above all, it has been a process of working together, sharing, learning and having FUN.

Yesterday, we performed an adapted version of 'Mother Earth' at Rozh Nursery and we had a lovely and gentle time with the small ones. Some kids were scared by the masks and puppets, and others did not know what to think but by the looks of the photo besides, we all quite enjoyed the event.

In these last two pictures, you can see our best and most responsive audience (yet), after seeing 'Mother Earth'. They are the students from Tavga's Primary and we left their school very energised and feeling appreciated.   

Public performance!

Tomorrow at 4pm in the Public Park opposite the Palace Hotel in Suly. Join us if you can -you will have the opportunity to be part of the culmination of 10 intense days of work by SulyOn. It should be fun!

Day 20. The buzz

The making process is finished with SulyOn and we are now into a new stage: orquestrating the two 'tribes' -the masked family and the puppet family -in performance. They are a stong team of 40 (and more) performers who will take the park first, and then the streets of Suleimaniyah this coming Tuesday (more details of venue and times TBC). After a intense week of making, the picture shows the state of the room where we have been working at the Red Building.

Today we previewed our new devised piece 'Mother Earth' to an invited audience of more than 500 people, and amongst them, few dignataries and ministries from the Government. The children seemed to enjoy it most and the feedback we received was positive. Later on the week, we will return to Chouiefat International School, to extend the work and deliver a puppet making and puppeteering workshop to their students. We feel honoured for this opportunity and would like to thank John Nicholson and his team.

And as we prepare for our last week together in Kurdistan, we are increasing the workload to accomplish as much as we can while the three of us are here. Therefore, tomorrow we will be performing at Rozh Nursery and later on the week we will also perform at Tavga Primary School and at Hamdy Primary and Secondary School for which we are all very excited. We are also meeting the Kurdish branch of Save the Children and the College of Fine Arts in the hope to be able to collaborate with them.

We will keep you updated.
The KMPE team. 

Day 17.

Another day of making and also meeting. SulyOn are really working hard and the results are paying off. Tomorrow all the puppets and masks will be finished and ready to play with. Yadgar Abu Bakir and Azar Othman plus Nehro Schauki's energies along everyone at SulyOn have really made an impact on us, giving us strength and stimulating our practice and our facilitation.

This morning we visited Choueifat School and we met John Nicholson, its Director, who was very supportive of the project. He offered us to perform on the Open Day celebrating their 125 years and we have accepted with pleasure; now we are in the process of bringing together a more family orientated piece of devised theatre and this Saturday we will be performing it for the first time.

Day 16. And counting.

One more day left for making our masks and puppets before we embark in the next stage which will be to create a happening with our 'about to be born' characters in a public space, likely to be the street or/and a park. Some of the masks and puppets are almost finished and the rest will be finished this Thursday. We are all feeling the excitement of the upcoming street performance and it will be very interesting to see what we all come up with. We are hoping to have around 20 masks and 20 puppets (probably more) ready to hit the streets and an equal (if not bigger) number of performers willing to experiment and experience how the people of Suleimaniyah react and respond to our work. We have been immensely lucky in that new faces have just joined the making process and it has been their own colleagues who have adopted the role of facilitators. There is a great sense of camaraderie amongst the group and SulyOn are proving to be a`very commited, reliable and creative ensemble. We feel very lucky for this opportunity to collaborate with them and we really hope it will lead to further collaborations.

Regarding the mask making, the group has been exploring the psychological aspect of being inside a mask and the enjoyment of working with a new material which allows them to create volume; the puppet making process has brought big characters to life, often larger than life and full of personality. Interestingly, some of the puppeteers are deciding to puppeteer from 'inside' the puppet, thus not being seen, while others seem to prefer the role of the 'visible' puppeteer.

Once we finish with SulyOn, and led by film maker Siya San Saravan, we will all create a film with both masks and puppets. At this stage, we can only advance that the chosen locations are insightful, tasty and very much worth a visit.

Today we had a national TV channel filming the workshop, Al-Iraqiyah and they have promised to broadcast us next week in some length.

Tomorrow we will be meeting with another school in what we hope could form yet another fruitful collaboration.

Until then.

18th october

Hello friends, we have been having trouble getting on line to update you, but we have been having great successes with Institute of Fine Art Students and local t.v.  We are now in the process of making masks and puppets with Suly On, a group of Kurdish Artists here in Sulimanyiah. Also we have today made contact with a school with the intention of performing for some of their students and they are very excited by the idea of making a link with Brookfields School in Nottinghamshire.

One down.

Day 9.
Today we finished our first workshop at the Institute of Fine Arts, Suleimaniya, Kurdistan.
We worked for 4 days with a group of 20 students from different years of the Drama degree and their teachers, led by Hussein Kaka-Hama. The response to the masks and puppets was very welcoming and the students were very enthusiastic and creative along the process. They made their own masks and puppets which were later used in a performance for the Institutes' students. The show was energetic and powerful and the audience, a full house, seemed to enjoy their colleagues performance. We loved the performance too and felt very encouraged by the journey we all undertook together. Some of them, will join us tomorrow when we start working along the SulyOn's artists. They also invited us to perform a piece we are developing and we left feeling it was well received by the audience. Gali Kurdistan Television interviewed us during the workshop, which we hope will attract some attention and support towards the project.
Thanks to Hussein Kaka-Hama, his team, the students and everyone at IFA. It was a real pleasure and we are hoping to be back soon with new masks, new puppets and new energies.      

Arrival

Day 3
We are here in Sulimany, Iraqi Kurdistan, early in our month of Mask and Puppet Work and collaborations with local artists. We have now started having meetings and are being very well received with a lot of enthusiasm, smiles and positive negotiations. Had our first meeting with The Institute of Fine Art, Sulimany University. We shall be working with staff and student starting next week.
We have also established a very good relationship with Suly On, group of contempory artists,visual,performance and media. 40 or more members.  www.sulyon.com.
The forth member now of our core team of artists, Sulimany resident, is Siya San Saravan, film maker, visual artist and local network "guru". A fine addition of local energy to the team.