Malta’s harbour is set to form the backdrop to a unique and large international theatre project which will be travelling around Europe on board a ship between this month and April 2017.
The project, called Meeting the Odyssey, is an itinerant social theatre project that will meet people on the European coasts from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean with an international multilingual crew of artists on board.
Over 65 artists will tour in 10 countries, visiting all kinds of audiences and local citizens. The ship will tour the Baltic Sea, Poland and the Czech Republic in 2014; France, Italy and Malta in 2015 and the Ionian and the Aegean Sea in 2016. The final moment will be celebrated in Helsinki in February 2017.
Malta – represented by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts – is one of the co-organisers of the project, together with entities and theatre companies from Denmark, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Estonia and Greece. Viirus Theatre, Finland is the coordinator. The project was recently awarded an EU grant of over one million euro through the Culture Programme 2007-2013 – Strand 1.1 - multi-annual cooperation projects.
In Malta, the plan is for the project to be featured as part of the Malta Arts Festival 2015; it also includes the possibility of having one or more Maltese actors as part of the project; Malta will also be involved in the artistic discussions.
In each port the ship enters, it will settle in for 10 to 18 days. Different kinds of activities will be organised around the presence of the ship in the city, including workshops, instant performances and one main production, which will be performed more than once.
Apart from embodying the theme of Homer’s classical voyage by travelling across Europe, Meeting the Odyssey will draw inspiration from the themes of Homer’s classical tale. The longing to return home, journeys, war, temptation and the links between myth and modern society will serve as inspiration for the theatre productions that will be used throughout the project.
The idea of using a ship as the main meeting place is linked to the voyage of Odysseus, but also signifies the being a “neutral” place, not belonging to any nationality, nor to any partners, or to a land in particular.
This ship will represent the place for creation and exchange of experiences; this would be a place of transition, for the artists to change their practices and way of thinking while they are crossing different seas and countries.
The artistic crew will consist of a mixture of people from all the partners, varying from year to year, but maintaining a continuity of some form with an artistic coordination by the artistic board.
The project will include two types of theatre productions: four “main productions”, produced by the co-organisers and performed by the artistic crew on the ship or in the hosting venues. These performances will touch themes and issues that the partners find important in Europe today.
The project will also include 14 “instant performances”, created by a small team on the ship, a direct response to the people in the places the ship arrives in. These performances will serve the following year’s main production and help the co-organisers to track the issues of Europe today: what is Europe today? Who are the people living in Europe compared to who they were? What is their personal Odyssey?
The overall mission is to recreate a contemporary Odyssey by reaching 18 ports in Europe and thousands of people, with high-quality theatre productions and interactive workshops reflecting issues of our society today.