Impact case study database
Dramaturgies of Conflict: Making Bolero
1. Summary of the impact
A project spanning the UK, Germany and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bolero created partnerships between the Balkans and the UK and led to youth theatres being set up in Bosnia and Kosovo. The project lasted four years and its impact is still being felt in the Balkan region today.
Impacts on Creativity, Culture and Society. Collaboration with venues and artists across Europe led to an original form of artistic expression, manifested in a touring performance. Research-led engagement with under-engaged audiences in post-conflict areas led to their participation in Youth Theatres and engaged them in the arts.
Impacts on Understanding, Learning and Participation. The project and its themes of music and conflict contributed to processes of commemoration, memorialisation and reconciliation in both Sarajevo and Pristina. Methods of learning have been incorporated into subsequent youth theatres and educational curricula in the Balkan region.
2. Underpinning research
Bolero was part of a practice-as-research enquiry into the dramaturgy of music and conflict. The research proposed that Ravel’s music was significantly changed due to his experience of World War One. Owing to this context and its subsequent performance histories (ballet, concert, ice dance etc.) parallel research enquiries emerged into post-conflict theatre and commemoration.
The research imperative was framed by Ravel’s instruction to conductors to ‘follow the score’ and the work ‘biographises’ the piece of music, Bolero. Using verbatim text, devising techniques and archival research, the body of work advances Rebstock and Roesner’s Composed Theatre (2013) by using music to structure theatre in both form and content, to propose a ‘post-music theatre’. The project’s dramaturgy followed Barba’s notion of ‘weaving together’ found and fictional texts about Ravel’s music to create a biography of the original composition fused with the performers’ ‘auto-dramaturgy’ of surviving conflict.
Bolero argued that Ravel was influenced by his personal experience of conflict and explores how his post-WWI music performs commemoration of war, whilst at the same time exhibiting traits of the onset of his own dementia, the dissolution of memory, and ‘acts of memoricide’ (Donia, 2006). Bolero stages Ravel’s score by creating post-dramatic, post-music performance and deconstructing post-conflict narratives around its original composition. The collaborative processes of the research tested the conventional delineation of artistic roles, especially in reconfiguring the relationship between audience and performer and exploring ‘orchestral theatre’ (Curtin, 2019). This led to a conceptualisation of the ‘immersive concert’ as frame.
The process was iterative and organic and involved archival visits and site-writing at Museé Maison Ravel and L’Opéra Garnier in Paris, where Bolero was premiered in 1928, and the Olympic Museum at Zetra Stadium, Sarajevo, where Torvill and Dean won gold at the 1984 Winter Olympics, as well as research into Ravel’s opus and its musicology. Interdisciplinary methods used to make this work have included verbatim theatre, multiple devising processes, as evidenced in the Digital Theatre + Making Postdramatic Theatre Handbook (2018) (3.5), and archival and musicological study of scores, with creative, critical and dramaturgical input from dancers, pianists, conductors, musicians and ice skaters.
This particular enquiry is part of an ongoing investigation into practice-as-research as a dramaturgical process evidenced through an iterative process of practical exploration, conference papers and published outputs. For the underpinning research, Pinchbeck drew on Klaic’s contribution to Theatre in Crisis (2002), where he writes about the catalysing role theatre plays in times of conflict. The Bosnian cast of Bolero (2014), who lived through the war, shared their experiences and this addressed the act of ‘memoricide’ that took place there (Donia 2006). Their autobiographical narratives allowed the final piece to explore the materiality of memory, both personal and cultural, and weave together ‘dramaturgies of remembrance’. This was explored in Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration (2018) and related writing and talks on the topic.
3. References to the research
3.1 Pinchbeck, M. “Making Bolero: Dramaturgies of Remembrance” in M. Pinchbeck & A. Westerside, eds., Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97970-0
3.2 Provocation at TaPRA, Bristol in September 2016 as part of the Directing and Dramaturgy working group – paper entitled “Making Bolero: Dramaturgies of conflict.”
3.3 Make Believe – UK Design for Performance 2011-2015 (Cardiff: SBTD, 2014), p. 109.
3.4 Paper at ISTR, Lincoln 2018 – Requiems for Sarajevo: The dramaturgy of ruins, the musicality of repair.
3.5 The development of new performance methodologies for Concerto resulted in invitation to contribute exercises ‘Autographology’ and ‘Blindfoldology’ to T. Crossley & N. Woods, eds. Making Postdramatic Theatre: A Handbook of Devising Exercises. (2018).
Available on request.
4. Details of the impact
This research acted as a catalyst for young people’s participation in theatre in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo. This Balkan youth theatre work linked directly to the themes of Bolero, exploring the relationship between music and conflict and the performance of commemoration. In October 2014, Bolero toured Bosnia & Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Zenica, Mostar, Tuzla) as part of the British Council’s Connecting Creatively Project which generated economic impact (Euro 208k) between May 2014 and March 2015 reached an audience of 740k across TV and radio [5.1]. In March 2016, Bolero also toured Kosovo (Pristina, Prizren) and represented a drive from the British Council to bring a high-quality British cultural export to areas of low cultural provision affected by the Balkan conflicts [5.1 & 5.2]. The project was an opportunity to bring together British, Bosnian and Kosovan partners to use theatre to engage new audiences and local artists, theatres and youth from post-conflict areas in contemporary performance and showed a wider audience in the UK the history of Sarajevo [5.1, 5.2, 5.3 & 5.5]. The overall audience for Bolero was 2k across the UK, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, including a performance to ‘a full house’ in Nottingham [5.5]. Bolero was the first educational programme run by a professional theatre in Sarajevo and received national press coverage [5.4]. The performance of Bolero in Sarajevo featured on Radio 4’s Today programme and Nottingham Playhouse’s satellite project – Mass Bolero – featuring Torvill and Dean, was shown on BBC’s The One Show and has now received over 177k views on YouTube [5.3].
Following training in Nottingham in 2014 fledgling youth theatres were established in Sarajevo (SARTR Theatre’s FAKAT Drama) and Pristina (TEATRI ODA Theatre’s, ODA for youth), adopting Nottingham Playhouse’s processes for working with young people, and new methodology, to create a unique offer for people in the Bosnian and Kosovar capitals [5.1]. An independent evaluation report collated for the British Council highlights how ‘For both theatres (and to an extent for Nottingham Playhouse), the Bolero project has been a hugely important articulation of their respective desires to incorporate young people more centrally in their plans. Frustrated by a restrictive education system that teaches facts, they see their respective youth theatres as being exemplary projects that restate the role of young people in society, value their ideas, and develop new audiences for a more diverse programme of work’ [5.1]. The project played a significant role in developing the confidence and transferable skills of the participants. In the British Council’s evaluation of the Fakat Drama workshop, over 80% of participants said that the intensive week changed their behaviour with most citing increased confidence, improved focus, and opportunity for friendships outside of school, and they described a change experienced through ‘finding my voice’, ‘being listened to/valued’ and ‘having ideas accepted’ [5.1]. 50% of participants felt they were now better at listening and they ‘had more respect for others’, and 100% of the sample said that it had changed their view of theatre: before the workshops only 20% went to the theatre, with 80% now saying they would [5.1]. The Head of Arts for the British Council in the Western Balkans also noted how parents and facilitators recognized the workshops as a mechanism for enhancing self-confidence, communication skills, creative development, critical thinking, working with differences, and [they] witnessed significant progress in these participants’ [the children’s] skills.’ [5.1]. Pinchbeck’s work contributed to the model used in these workshops by devising exercises and educational resources, that continue to influence theatre-makers, academics and educational policy across Europe. For example, the Director at Teatri ODA Theatre highlighted how the workshops led to changes in educational policy and the curriculum in Kosovo, and the dramaturg at the studiobüjnekoln at the University of Cologne noted how ‘exercises in the handbook have now been built into our teaching provision here at the University of Cologne’. [5.2 & 5.6]. The project also provided a case study in an international volume on performance and ruins as a model for practitioners seeking to understand how to present events in ruined spaces [5.7]. The British Council Head of Arts in the West Balkans, also noted how ‘...this project kick-started a new way of working for theatre organisations and individuals working in the theatre that still has a tangible impact today.’ [5.1]. The workshops were transformative for the creative teams, workshop leaders, and the young people participating in Sarajevo, Pristina and Nottingham [ 5.1 & 5.5]. For example, one of the young participants in the FAKAT Drama workshops noted how they ‘opened us up to talking about our emotions’, bonding the group and teaching them teamwork, while the experience of performing at the Nottingham Playhouse also ‘opened me up to a number of options for my career and what I will do with my life’, with the participant now (6 years later) considering studying drama in the UK [5.5]. Similarly, another participant from Bosnia felt the experience opened up ‘a completely new universe’ that altered their perception of their own ability, with them going on to become a screenwriter and actor in films such as Scream for me Sarajevo [2017] [5.5]. A workshop leader in Sarajevo has also gone on to become a drama teacher and stated that ‘...during the Fakat Drama workshop in the UK, at that moment just one universe opened up for me, which I wasn’t even thinking about...’ [5.5].
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
5.1 British Council corroboration: Testimonial letter from the Director of Arts, Western Balkans, British Council; Infographic: Connecting Creatively Project; British Council Office (Bosnia & Herzegovina) project evaluation report on Fakat Drama Youth Theatre Workshops; British Council videos including interviews with team, partners and audience members. Videos available at URL links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDDuon_zG-8 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyxX8V1XNsQ;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jg8Fd4o-6k; https://vimeo.com/98774946
5.2 Testimonial Letter from Director of ODA Theatre, Prishtina.
5.3 Bolero, Nottingham Playhouse corroboration: Nottingham Playhouse Annual Review https://issuu.com/nottmplayhouse/docs/nottingham_playhouse_annual_review_
Bolero Programme, Nottingham Playhouse performance; Mass Bolero (Satellite Project) on YouTube https://youtu.be/8WOO6qoEcgo and The One Show.
5.4 Selected Press and Online Coverage: Including: Nottingham Evening Post, Radio Sarajevo, Klix, Depo Portal, and Hayd u Park.
5.5 **Interviews with partners and participants in the Bolero Project, Sarajevo: ** Including: The Director of Arts, Western Balkans, British Council; Fakat Drama workshop leader and participant; and Devisers/Performers from the Bolero team. Recordings available on request.
5.6 Testimonial Letter from the Dramaturgie at Studiobühnekoln, Universität zu Köln (University of Cologne).
5.7 Case study of Bolero in an international volume on performance and ruins. Simon Murray. Performing Ruins, *(*Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Additional contextual information
Grant funding
Grant number | Value of grant |
---|---|
ACE 26257281 | £14,995 |