That’s Life, During War: A Festival of Theatre Reportage

Who are the ordinary people living in war?

Can theatre and reportage better represent them?

Giving an insight to what it means for civilian daily life - the physical, psychological and emotional impact - in what ways can theatre express these realities?

Workshops open to artists, activists, journalists and anyone interested in representation and the power of theatre.

Theatre reportage embodies the lives of those living in war.

This July a new festival will use theatre reportage to expose the lived experiences of those living under the conditions of oppressions and war, using an exciting combination of creative and research-led workshops, talks and performances from Palestine, Iraq and Ukraine.

With a focus on the Middle East (Palestine, Iraq) and Ukraine, this new three-day festival will offer workshops that propose alternative methods for the media to report on escalating wars and other experiences of occupation and oppression. It will explore how theatre, film and social media can perhaps better inform global audiences by using empathy building tools.

The festival is being led by Cardiff University artists and academic Dr Carrie Westwater and the international journalistic theatre group Teatro di Nascosto /Hidden Theatre, who use a method of theatre reportage to report on everyday living and working under oppression and war.

They use this method of theatre to tell true stories of daily life living in war and occupation - the pain, the fear, the loss of a future, the loss of family, the loss of their home… They use this method to also express unexpected moments of happiness in desperate situations, all supported by journalistic research.

The Festival of Theatre Reportage invites creatives, activists and academics to participate in workshops and an open conversation on the latest research. The festival will also present new and vital performances of theatre reportage on aspects of life living in conflict with trained theatre reportage actors, coming directly from the regions discussed.

Workshops will be delivered by the artistic director of Teatro di Nascosto who has developed the method over 30 years. Her work has been with Judith Molina, Jerzy Growtowski and been highly endorsed by Eugenio Barba as “breaking all the rules of theatre”.

The workshops will explore the method of theatre reportage, sharing its practice and training participants in embodied non-theatre aesthetics.

Host or Publisher School of Journalism, Media and Culture