ID: BABYLON began in late 2018 with conversations and interviews with young people with experience of migration and from a broad range of backgrounds. The interests, hopes and fears they discussed formed the basis of all we did and made on the project.
Groups of young people in each of the partner countries made performance pieces to tour their ‘home’ countries and to one other partner country. The young people came together in April 2019 to meet, get to know each other and perform at a Youth theatre festival at Théâtre du Pélican – in Clermont-Ferrand, France followed by an international tour in 2020.
The project partners were all theatres or theatre companies who regularly work with young people. They formed ID: BABYLON in response to issues impacting teenagers today, including the rise of extremism and nationalism and issues around migration and the movement of people. We hoped to foster a sense of European citizenship for the young people involved, which would help them to look beyond the borders of their origin.
We worked with a number of Associate Countries who we shared work, learning and more with. They were: The Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia and the Czech Republic.
The International Tour
Who Am I was a piece of documentary theatre written by professional playwright Nadège Prugnard, a French author who has worked extensively on the themes of migration and the integration of these refugees on the European territory. Created with six of the young people in the second phase of the project as part of an international team and featuring a cast of young people from each partner country, the staging was conducted by Tijana Zinajić, a Slovenian theatre director.
Cast:
Mariana De Freitas Mothe
Theo Gonin
Rebeka Stokelj Hlede
Tina Malenšek
Tendayi Mutongerwa
Jule Viebrock
Creative Team:
Text by Nadège Prugnard
Directed by Tijana Zijanić
Executive producer: Inga Remeta
Produced by: SNG Nova Gorica, Gledališče Glej, delleAli theater, Das Letzte Kleinod, Théâtre du Pélican and the Albany.
The coronavirus crisis stopped the tour of our European co-production. However, we couldn’t bring ourselves to interrupt the whole project and we commissioned a film director Khevyn Ibrahim to create a short film with all the actors involved in the play which was filmed in Slovenia. Some young migrants involved in the first part of the project also appear in the film. The topic of the short film remains a reflection on identity, on finding one’s own place and having the courage to be themselves through art and nature.
Exhibition
The digital exhibition was an integral part of ID:Babylon and was based on research about European identity done by and with young people at the very start of the project.
The research was carried out by the project participants with support from researchers Tea Golob and Matej Makarovič from the School of Advanced Social Studies at Nova Gorica, Slovenia. It had two distinct elements: number based questionnaires and open ended interviews with young people from each partner organisation and country.
The questionnaire was completed by young people from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia which investigated the feelings of the young people about identity and heritage and values, whereas the material from the interviews was used to find interesting and potentially inspiring material for each partner group’s performance.
The two parts of the digital exhibition were shown alongside the performances that came out of the project and were linked to the each presenting country.
The digital exhibition was curated by two young graphic designers Asja Trost from Slovenia and Helene Thuemmel from Austria.