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Pertencia
The background to Pertencia
Pertencia is a brand new collaboration between two companies from different countries: Foursight Theatre, a female-led company from urban England, and Teatro do Montemuro, a male-led company from rural Portugal.
Frances Land, Co-Artistic Director of Foursight Theatre , talks here about the collaboration:
"It all started with a desire to explore new creative partnerships and international collaborations. Teatro Do Montemuro share our ethos for collaborative working and creating strong physical, visual productions, there are also key differences between the companies - Foursight is a predominantly female company rooted in the heart of urban Wolverhampton, and Teatro Do Montemuro are a predominantly male led company growing their work from a tiny mountain village in Portugal. The mix of these strong similarities and fundamental differences is what made the idea of collaboration so exciting.
"And so in 2003 we set of to Portugal on a research trip to the company's base in Campo Benfeito, to explore this potential creative meeting point. Our first steps involved workshops, discussions and skill sharing, an opportunity to explore relationships between urban and rural based companies and male and female perspectives on the creation of work. We explored different approaches to creating physical theatre, the use of masks, puppets and music, and shared ideas between practitioners working within very different cultures and environments.
"Seven years on we finally found the right time to take the plunge and to develop a piece of work together with a desire that this would not be clearly identified as a Foursight show or a Teatro do Montemuro production but something completely new, an equal marriage between two companies.
"We began by researching common themes looking to traditional folk tales imbedded in both cultures alongside contemporary stories of children robbed of their innocence and childhood. We shared dark fairytales of babes lured away by witches and bogeymen, and desperate real life stories of children abandoned, abused, abducted, uprooted from family and the places to which they once belonged.
"And so began the process of weaving together a piece of theatre from these stories drawing on both companies' strengths in a physical approach, a playful use of text, the use of music, imagery and humour, and a desire to probe into the darker aspects of life - to entertain and to provoke. Adding into this mix was the experiment of working in two languages, trying to develop a piece that was completely bilingual and scripted from a devising process and all in a total of six weeks.
"Pertencia is the end result of this exciting creative partnership, a richly layered grotesque contemporary fairytale, playing with our fears as children and as parents, drawing on stories of exploited children that, tragically, are common place across our world today."