Editorial

Feature in Issue 19-4 | Winter 2007

2008 sees Liverpool crowned as European City of Culture, and in this issue of Total Theatre we welcome you to The Great North West, as Beccy Smith, Ric Watts and John Fox give a taste of the region’s artistic life – from queerupnorth in Manchester to ceilidhs in Cumbria; experiments in multimedia performance at Hope St Ltd to burlesque on a boat, courtesy of Walk the Plank.

From the docks of Liverpool we sail away to the waterside of Brooklyn, New York to encounter an extraordinary crossover of visual and performing arts. Paso Doble is a collaboration between French-Yugoslavian choreographer Josef Nadj and Catalan artist Miquel Barceló, previewed here before it arrives on our shores for the London International Mime Festival in January 2008.

Another pair of collaborating artists, featured in this issue’s Voices, are American artists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens. They’ve taken artistic collaboration about as far as you can, and pledged to a seven-year programme of life-as-art, in which they will renew their personal and professional unity each year in a series of chakra-themed civil partnership marriages.

A very different sort of collaboration is documented in a feature that sets the scene for the latest Total Theatre professional development project. Called Renegotiations, it brings together six established artists in a peer mentoring programme. Find out more inside these pages.

Also bringing artists together is a series of ongoing exchanges called The International Training and Performance Residencies, in which artists from Asia and South America come to the South West of England in a spirit of mutual learning, documented in an article by Bianca Mastrominico of Organic Theatre, the artists who initiated the project.

The artist’s voice is a key feature of Total Theatre Magazine. In response to the death of Marcel Marceau, the man who brought mime to a world audience, we bring you a very personal tribute from his friend and pupil, Nola Rae.

Our regular sections include Pippa Bailey’s Out & About column, which muses on cultural diversity in theatre in the light of an open letter from Iraqi playwright Jawad Al Assadi. In our extended News section, catch up on the Total Theatre Awards at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007.

Diversity and collaboration; the artist’s voice; reviews, news and previews, and updates from our associated artists and companies – as always an eclectic mix offering perspectives on the contemporary performance scene in the UK and beyond, which we hope will be entertaining and enlightening for theatre makers and audiences alike.

This article in the magazine

Issue 19-4
p. 3