Culture and the New Imperialism

THIS FLESH IS MINE
Andrew French and Tariq Jordan. Photo: Richard Davenport

A few months ago, I had the chance to spend an evening chatting with Ken Livingstone. It was wonderful. Ken is 80 now, and his short-term memory isn't perfect, but his long-term memory absolutely is and his political understanding seems as sharp as ever. He also displayed a rare generosity of spirit, telling me how much he admired John Major, who had been his predecessor as Leader of Lambeth Council back in the 70s, and who "got things done". He was, it's fair to say, much less generous in his assessment of Boris Johnson, who "just didn't do the job" as Mayor of London (or anything else); but his only real bitterness was reserved for the tabloid press, who had caused him great personal pain and political turmoil by labelling him an anti-Semite. The same, of course, happened to Jeremy Corbyn. You've got to hand it to the Tory tabloids: only they could so manipulate the media as to convince the bulk of the population that men like these, who have dedicated much of their life to campaigning against racism, are actually themselves racists.

I've had some experience of this myself. Back in 2014, when we presented THIS FLESH IS MINE in a co-production with ASHTAR Theatre from Ramallah, I received quite a number of emails which accused me, and the company, of being anti-Semitic. There were no explicit references to Jewishness or Israel (or even Palestine) in the play, which deliberately used a mythological framing to distance its exploration of the cyclical nature of violence and its manipulation by global power blocs from the detailed specifics of the ongoing occupation. It seemed that the simple action of collaborating with Palestinian artists, which I absolutely agree in itself does come to constitute a political statement, was also regarded as inherently anti-Semitic. Where is the racism in that equation? In the artists who reach out to one another with the aim of furthering dialogue and understanding, or in the person who regards anything and anyone Palestinian as by definition expressing hatred towards Jewish people?

The ongoing genocide in Gaza has brought these issues to the fore again. Our online reading of THE GAZA MONOLOGUES in late 2023 attracted Zoom-bombers, who were determined that the stories of Gazan youth should not be heard. We did all we could to make sure they were heard, and to avoid making the Zoom-bombing itself into "the story". This is a real problem in the current debate (and I feel very conscious that in some ways this post is itself contributing to that problem). I have every sympathy with the people who have been calling on the media to stop making Bob Vylan's Glastonbury performance "the story", as this only distracts from the reality of what is happening in the Occupied Territories. Chanting “Death, death to the IDF” does not represent any sort of humanitarian or nuanced approach: but neither does the (nominally Labour) UK government's response, which has been to condemn the BBC for allowing its live stream of the concert to continue. The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has been taking an ever-more aggressive stance towards the public broadcaster over its coverage of Gaza, most recently demanding "Why has nobody been fired?" in relation to the BBC's showing of the exceptional and very moving documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which was pulled from iPlayer when it emerged that the 13 year old narrator was the son of a Hamas official. 

Let's pause there for a moment. Does the identity of the boy's father actually make the film inherently biased or inaccurate? I don't think so. The statistics around casualties issued by the Gaza health ministry are actually lower than most estimates, and that's because they are carefully verified. The BBC always states that these statistics come from "the Hamas-run Health Ministry", which is the equivalent of saying that we have "the Labour-run Health Ministry". Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. Yes, the UK government (and many others) regards it as a terrorist organisation, but this is a matter of semantics and positionality. The activist group Palestine Action is also now a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, even though its actions could easily and more appropriately be prosecuted as criminal damage. South Africa's ANC was also a proscribed terrorist organisation before that narrative underwent a complete turnaround. The Hamas attack on Israel was undoubtedly brutal and indiscriminate: but is it really justified to describe this action by an elected government as a simple (and mindlessly evil) "terror attack", if the actions of the elected (if decidely insecure six-party coalition) government of Israel are always called acts of "war", or even of "self-defence"? Why do we not call the actions of Israel "terrorism", or the actions of Hamas "war"? Isn't the difference only in the viewpoint? The documentary was as objective (and as subjective) as any other film made by and about young people going through constant bombardment and daily trauma. The only justification for its effective banning is the sense that this is somehow the work of "the enemy": a sense that also implies a view of Israel as being on "our side", the "good guys" in a Manichean, black and white world. The language and the discourse, the cultural dimension, really matter; particularly in this conflict which has such huge implications for the entire world.

The kind of censorship and prejudice that Nandy is exercising is not confined to the UK. America has a long-standing commitment to stamping out any criticism of Israel: Trump's attacks on students who protest against the genocide are only a logical development of the unwavering support shown by the US towards what is essentially its client state in a geopolitically vital region. Mainland Europe, and particularly Germany, is moving ever further to the right, which includes increasing its support for Israel, both economically and culturally. To give a few examples:

- Last month my friend Elli Papakonstantinou was presenting her theatre piece Holy Bitch at the Neuköllner Oper in Berlin. It's an angry, feminist work, and at one point there was a brief reference to the genocide in Gaza. The management asked her to remove this from the show, and, when she did not, greatly reduced the publicity they gave to the work. Journalists refused to cover it. The subtitles went blank when the dreaded word "genocide" was spoken.

- Lina Majdalanie & Rabih Mroué are Lebanese artists living in Berlin, whose most recent work Four Walls and a Roof used Brecht's 1947 appearance before the "Un-American Activities Committee" of Congress to delve into questions of artistic freedom. At one point, they mention that when they first came to Germany, people used to ask them about censorship in Lebanon. Now people in Lebanon are asking them about censorship in Germany. 

- Back in 2022, before the latest overwhelming attacks on Palestinian populations, the great playwright Caryl Churchill had an award for her lifetime's achievement rescinded by a German-appointed jury because of her support for Palestinian causes. As Lina Majdalanie puts it: "Cancellation of invitations, awards, conferences, theatrical  pieces, exhibitions... Public accusation and condemnation of this writer or that artist, or anyone else... Dismissal of journalists, academics... Public funding subject to political obedience... The list goes on."

- In April 2020, the German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, decided that the Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe was "not suitable" to deliver the keynote at the Ruhrtriennale because of his supposed anti-Semitism. The root of this accusation turned out to be Mbembe's 2016 essay The Society of Enmity, in which he applies post-colonial ideas, examining Israel as a settler-colony, and pointing out how the treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories "recall the reviled model of apartheid". 

Mbembe's argument seems decidedly mild and understated in the light of what has happened since. It wasn't even a particularly unusual point to make. As long ago as 1951, Hannah Arendt had pointed out links between Germany's history as a colonial power and the development of the systematic murder machines of the Nazis' Holocaust against the Jews and other perceived "enemies". Mbembe's point was that European (and by extension, North American) societies have a need for a racialised "Other" - "a Negro, a Jew, an Arab, a foreigner" - to provide a justification for their acquisitive and rapacious colonisation of territories beyond their own. The "resettlement of the world" he explained, "often took the shape of innumerable atrocities and massacres, unprecedented instances of 'ethnic cleansing', expulsions, transfers, and concentrations of entire populations in camps, and indeed of genocides." The first genocide of the 20th century was not the Third Reich's Holocaust but the massacre of Herero and Nama people in Namibia by the German Second Reich. The mindless racism that it betrayed serves to underline Mbembe's point that Nazism cannot be regarded as uniquely evil, but should be understood as an extreme maifestation of the cultural mindset that underpinned imperialism, and continues to be present in neo-colonialism today. 

The reason Mbembe's argument was deemed anti-Semitic was not simply that he compared Israel's policy towards Palestine with settler colonialism and apartheid, but also that his placing of the Holocaust in an historical and cultural perspective undermined the prevailing belief that this event was uniquely evil in the history of the world. It suits the state of Israel to construct the Holocaust as exceptional and evil rather than historical, because that can be regarded as a justification for the total paranoia with which it segregates its populations, militarises its borders and attacks its neighbours. It also suits Germany, and the wider constructs of "Europe" and "the West" in which that state plays such a leading role. "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", the "struggle of overcoming the past", has come over time to elide into a strangely self-congratulaory position, whereby unquestioning German support for Israel and a delusional imagining of anti-Semitism in every critique of Israeli policy represents a fundamental break with the past. Paradoxically, it also permits other forms of racism to take hold, as the current drift to the right bears witness. If something is "Evil" then it ceases to be historically and culturally explicable: it becomes simply an enemy to be fought perpetually and incessantly. This is how fascism comes to beget more fascism.

The moment we look at the Holocaust as an historical event, then both its deep roots in European culture and colonialism and its current repercussions in global geopolitics make much more sense. "Reich" means "Empire": Nazism was a logical development of the 1492 project - the process whereby a self-satisfiedly "Christian" and "civilised" Europe imposed its hegemony on much of the world, with racist ideology as its justification. Israel's unbridled aggression is a similar continuation of what Columbus began: Western economic interests and a religion of the Book are being used to wipe out an indigenous population. It is through a nation's relationship to colonial histories that its stance on Palestine can most clearly be understood. The United States is an Empire founded on genocide: of course it supports the state of Israel. Great Britain ran the largest Empire the world has ever seen: it too, supports Israel. Germany is in a weird space of denial about its Imperial past: and it supports Israel. On the other hand, a country like Ireland (which we are proud to call Border Crossings' second homebase) has a colonised people's understanding of land grabs, of the use of religion to mask political incursions, of hunger as a weapon, of partition and the militarization of the streets. Ireland has a strong affinity with the Palestinian cause: as this current exhibition in London attests. The vast majority of the Global South - the nations that understand what it is to be colonised - stand with the Palestinian people too. It is deeply depressing to see that humanity is still locked in to the colonial paradigm. 

We need to re-think how post-coloniality is applied. The "post-" doesn't just mean "after": it means "in relation to". Culture and the academy have made much of post-colonialism in relation to cultures and peoples that once were colonised, to the extent that the approach has come to seem a bit tired, and rather patronising, as if (say) Gikuyu society in Kenya can only be understood in relation to the former (and current) British presence there. But if we turn the post-colonial mirror back on the former colonisers, it becomes altogether more illuminating. Let us start to recognise that we still behave as we do on the world stage because of the deep-seated assumptions and prejudices that made our societies into colonial powers. Let us recognise that the crass sloganeering of the right ("Take Back Control", "Make America Great Again") evokes a colonial policy of agression, acquisition and oppression, grotesquely misrepresented as "greatness". Once we have dared to look properly at ourselves, perhaps then we will be able to stop supporting genocide, and cease to brand as racist the very people who are standing against the scourge of racism. 

The views expressed in this post are personal to the author and do not represent an official position of Border Crossings.

PERFORMING POSSIBILITY - Guest blog by Niamh McGrath

Niamh McGrath in the
PERFORMING POSSIBILITY workshop in Cork

Alongside THE LEGEND OF EUROPA, Border Crossings and Teatro dell’Argine are also collaborating on a Youth project under the Erasmus + programme, called PERFORMING POSSIBILITY, together with the YMCA in Cork and Opera di Padre Marella in Bologna.  Although this is a self-contained project in its own right, PERFORMING POSSIBILITY is also proving hugely helpful in researching material for the professional theatre work.  

The young people in Cork, many of whom live in very remote rural areas of the county, have little experience of European travel, and few opportunities to encounter people their own age who live in different countries and diverse communities, particularly migrants and refugees. The young people at Opera di Padre Marella have often faced huge challenges in their journeys to Italy, and continue to encounter prejudice and bureaucratic difficulties as they attempt to forge new lives in Europe. The encounter between these very different groups is hugely valuable in and of itself: for that encounter to be creative, playful, exploratory and dialogic makes it deeply significant for them all.  

At the heart of the EUROPA myth is the story of the Athenian youth - seven young men and seven young women - who were regularly offered as food for the Minotaur: a tribute to appease the Cretan King Minos, who would otherwise invade Athens. This myth of young people being sacrificed to preserve the status quo feels horribly close to our contemporary situation, particularly when working with young people who have already given up and suffered so much in the hope of finding peaceful, comfortable lives in Europe, only to face suspicion, prejudice and stereotyping.  

What follows is an account by Niamh McGrath, one of the participants in the first workshop in Cork, of her experiences around encounter, art and advocacy.  

*

PERFORMING POSSIBILITY was a workshop that explored the themes of immigration, stay versus leave and connectivity through theatre and other forms of media. 

I’m writing this on June 8th, which marks World Ocean Day. On this day one can reflect on all the positives of the ocean: a source of food, a recreational area and a means of transportation and connectivity. But living on the island of Ireland, one has to acknowledge that while oceans, seas and other bodies of water can facilitate transport, they also lead to isolation. 

Ireland is on the edge of the European Union. This means that the young people in Ireland are not as connected with the rest of our EU peers to the extent we should be. Therefore the cultural exchange that PERFORMING POSSIBILITY offered is one that is so valued. For myself and 20 other young people in Cork, we had to opportunity to talk to other young people living in the EU. These young people are living in Bologna in Italy, another edge of the EU. These young people were immigrants, who had come from places such as Tunisia, Ukraine and Afghanistan. We were able to talk over Zoom. We talked about our dreams for the future, our music tastes and parts of our cultures (e.g. food). I hope that this cultural exchange will only be the beginning. 

One of the main themes we explored over the week was the idea of staying or going. On the Wednesday, our group wrote reasons to stay and reasons to go on two different pieces of paper. Then on Thursday, in pairs, we picked out words and phrases that appealed to us and wrote something about it. After we would write something, our partners would then respond with something else. My partner Pádraig and I circled around a reason to stay: to walk down the same streets as one’s ancestors. Pádraig came up with the phrase “to walk in the worn down comfortable footprints”. This line has stuck with me. The idea that if I were to leave Ireland, I would be leaving the comfort, the familiar and my own history. 

After writing pieces and answering each other, Pádraig and I had created a piece of theatrical writing that debated the idea of immigration. Then we practised performing the piece. This for me was the tricky bit, as I would not be an actor. But from this experience I have gained a greater understanding of the weight words can carry and how important and thought provoking a few well placed pauses can be. 

The thing that I believe will always stick with me from this experience is the realisation of the links between advocacy and art. There are many was to advocate for change - lobbying policy makers, running campaigns, protesting - but also through the arts. Theatre and drama can tell a story, prove a point and provoke a thought. The power in the delivery of what you say is priceless. 

In my opinion the best part of the workshop was the new perspective I left with. The workshop not only opened my eyes to the power of theatre but also showed me a snapshot into the lives of other young people who are living on another edge of Europe. This experience is something I would one hundred percent recommend. 

THE MOUTH OF THE GODS - a view from the Chiqutania

This is a guest post by Ximena Purita Banegas Zallio, one of the dancers from THE MOUTH OF THE GODS, who herself comes from the Chiqutania in Bolivia. Ximena delivered this speech at the premier screening of the project film, at Hoxton Hall on April 12th.

Ximena in THE MOUTH OF THE GODS

Good evening, everyone.

Tonight, we will experience the documentary of THE MOUTH OF THE GODS—a project by Border Crossings that took us deep into the soul of Latin America, weaving ancestral dance, embroidery, shamanic ritual, and the extraordinary fusion of Baroque music and Indigenous tradition. At the heart of this experience was a rediscovered opera: San Francisco Xavier, written in the Chiquitano language by an unknown Indigenous composer. This performance was not only a tribute to the past—it was a call to recognize the living, breathing cultures that continue to shape our world today.

Tonight, I come to you not just to reflect, but to connect—to give voice to a region where this music, culture, and history are still very much alive. I want to take you to this place, my home, one that many have never heard of before, but that holds a piece of the world's soul—the Chiqutania and the Chiquitano Dry Forest, in the heart of eastern Bolivia.

Es un honor hoy representar a mi país y, en especial, a Santa Cruz, para compartirles sobre el secreto y tesoro mejor guardado y custodiado que tenemos: las Misiones Jesuíticas de Chiquitos y Moxos.

Imagine a nearly utopian route of over 3,000 kilometers, where more than 300 years ago, Jesuit missionaries established missions deep in the plains and forests of Beni and Santa Cruz—in the heart of the Chiquitania and the Amazon. It was here that one of the greatest cultural discoveries of the 20th century occurred: the recovery of over 10,000 sheets of Baroque music—written more than 300 years ago, and still played today by local children and youth in music schools. These aren’t just notes on paper—they are threads of memory and identity, carried forward with pride and dedication.

The Chiquitania is a region where the threads of history, music, and nature are woven together in a harmony as intricate as the Baroque compositions that echo through its Jesuit missions. This is not just a forest. It is home to the chiquitano people whose heritage is preserved through centuries-old traditions. It is a living archive of sacred music—compositions passed down orally, preserved by communities who have made music not just an art, but a way of life.

Imagine a place where history is not locked in a museum, but lives in every carved log, every child’s violin, every note sung at dusk. That is Chiquitos and Moxos. These are not ruins. These are living cultures. Seven UNESCO World Heritage churches still stand—not as silent witnesses, but as vibrant stages where the largest collection of Baroque sheet music in the Americas continues to echo through the hands and hearts of its people.

But this harmony is under threat.

In recent years, devastating fires—driven by deforestation, commercial interests, and climate inaction—have scorched millions of hectares of the Chiquitano Dry Forest. In 2024, Bolivia experienced its most catastrophic wildfire season on record. Over 10 million hectares—an area larger than Portugal—were consumed by flames, with the eastern department of Santa Cruz suffering the most, losing nearly 7 million hectares. The Chiquitano Dry Forest, one of the largest intact tropical dry forests on Earth, was among the hardest hit. These fires are not only destroying a unique and biodiverse ecosystem—one of the largest and best-conserved tropical dry forests in the world—but also silencing the voices of communities who have protected it for generations.

These fires were not merely natural disasters—they were the result of deliberate policy decisions and political agendas. The use of land in Bolivia has become a tool for political gain. Forests are cleared under the guise of "development," often in exchange for short-term economic or electoral favors. Protected areas are sacrificed to satisfy powerful agricultural interests. Land is handed out, not with the intention of sustainability, but as a political currency—fueling deforestation, deepening inequality, and placing Indigenous territories in jeopardy. Large-scale slash-and-burn agricultural practices—tolerated, and at times even encouraged by government decrees—have made the land more vulnerable than ever. The consequences are devastating: critical ecosystems destroyed, thousands of families displaced, and the loss of biodiversity that affects not just Bolivia, but the planet.

When we lose forests like the Chiquitano, we don’t just lose trees—we lose memory, culture, and connection. We lose medicinal plants unknown to science, we lose wildlife that exists nowhere else, and we lose a vital shield against the climate crisis. 

But the Bolivian people have not given up—and that’s why there is still hope and sharing their stories is as important now than ever. In the Chiquitania, local communities have risen. Musicians, elders, farmers, and youth have come together to protect their land, their music, and their future. And it’s time the world stood with them—not out of charity, but out of recognition. Because what is at stake is not just Bolivia’s heritage, but humanity’s.

So tonight, as we celebrate culture and representation, let us remember that true representation means listening to the voices at the margins. It means honouring Indigenous knowledge, protecting ancestral lands, and valuing the music, language, and lives of the people who have long been guardians of our planet’s most sacred places.

It is a deep honour to speak to you tonight on behalf of the Bolivian people—a people whose voices, culture, and land deserve to be seen, heard, and cherished on a more global stage.

Thank you Border Crossings for this opportunity.

Alastair in Athens

This photo was taken in Athens, on an August evening in 2021. The three people are sitting just outside the entrance to the Theatre of Dionysus, and beyond the theatre is the Acropolis. It's a space that is sacred to our organisation and our profession: the cradle of European drama, and of European democracy. The space where both of these things were invented. Even today, this is the model that we strive to follow. In 5th century Athens, the theatre was an integral part of the city's political and spiritual practice. At the sacred festival, the citizens gathered, and they watched plays. The performances worked through mythology to address the present moment. They tackled the great themes of war, migration, plague and justice. The stage offered the citizens (who were all adult, male and Greek) an insight into the minds of others. So often the protagonist was female. So often the Chorus represented foreigners, migrants, children, older people, even frogs and flies. Always the theatre was about including those who were excluded, and the citizens watched and absorbed these performances as they prepared to act as legislators and jurors.

On that August evening, these three people walked into the sacred auditorium, and were meaningfully together in spite of all their apparent differences. The young woman in the yellow dress is Alicia Wiseman, and she was 17 at the time. She's a very talented violinist, and has a highly developed social consciousness. The other young woman is Aisha Tambajang, who worked with a Danish organisation that was partnering with us on a European project: it's called Crossing Borders - you can see there might be synergy! Her role was to assist young people, particularly Muslim women and girls, who had migrated to Denmark.

What I love about this picture is how deeply these two young women are engaged in conversation with the older man. He's British, from the generation that grew up straight after the war. To look at him in another context, you might think he was someone with a rather conservative view of the world, someone suspicious of change, wary of the perceived other. But, as this photo shows so clearly, he was actually incredibly open to everyone, to the cultures they carry and the ideas they bring. In old age, he was eager to learn, forward-thinking and positive in his outlook. This warm and hopeful man, who was the first Chair of the Border Crossings board, embodied the spirit of the great Athenian theatre and democracy in his work and in his life.

Alastair Niven passed away on March 26th, aged 81. I will miss him more than I can say.

Border Crossings at 30

The Times: 30th January 1995

The front page of The Times for 30th January 1995 seems strangely familiar, with its headlines about Tory splits over the EU, tensions in Peru and concerns about climate. But the truth is, the world was actually very different then: on the day when Border Crossings was officially registered at Companies House. Charitable Registration followed in August of the same year, so by any reckoning 2025 marks 30 years of this organisation, and we're wanting to mark that anniversary through a number of initiatives that will reveal themselves across the year. On our birthday, let's begin by kicking off the series of 30 social media posts, #BorderCrossings30, each of which will look back at a significant moment in the company's story.

Choosing those 30 highlights has actually been very challenging. It's partly because there are so many great moments we want to remember, but it's also because not everything is as clear and simple as anniversary projects can make them seem. Border Crossings did not emerge fully formed into the world in 1995. It took several years before the company's intercultural identity was properly established - despite the name - and, as will become apparent over the year, just what that intercultural identity really means has kept evolving and shifting in response to cultural and political changes. The first few projects that the company mounted were responses to invitations and commissions, particularly from the British Council (now, shockingly, in serious danger of collapse). Nevertheless, it's possible to discern in some of these early performances the first shapings of what Border Crossings would become. I think that's especially true of FAITH HEALER, which toured to Brazil, Egypt, France and Hungary, and which I've chosen as the first of our 30 posts for 30 years.

Watching Rachel O’Riordan’s very moving production of Brian Friel's play at the Lyric Hammersmith last year, I was reminded just what a complex and compelling text it is, as well as sensing just how many seeds were planted for us in working with it. This is all the more striking, given that the director wasn't myself, but Richard Allen Cave, who worked very closely with me to establish the company. Richard was Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Royal Holloway, and that in itself suggests some important aspects of Border Crossings. We're not scared or dismissive of academia: actually, we embrace it and like our performance work to operate in dialogue with a wider discourse. Royal Holloway has been a crucial partner on many occasions, particularly through Helen Gilbert's collaboration around work with Indigenous artists. Helen's new research project, CoastARTS, will again involve us in an exchange between research and creativity. 

CoastARTS includes Irish partners, and of course FAITH HEALER is an Irish play. The Irish dimension of Border Crossings was there from the very beginning, even though the Irish company was only formally established in 2019. My own (rather brief) formal theatre training was at Trinity Dublin in the later 1980s, and that time spent in Ireland also shifted my perceptions around colonialism, resistance, and the relationship between theatre and politics. I vividly remember sitting in a Dublin bar with an actor from the Abbey Theatre and a young American studying at TCD, when a man came round the tables collecting money for the IRA's campaign in the North. The American was surprised when the actor strongly refused to donate, and even more surprised when he learned that Dublin was actually the capital of an independent republic within a divided island. The 1995 Times front page features a story about the planned release of IRA prisoners in the Republic, "as a reward for the ceasefire". It would be another three years until the Good Friday Agreement, and of course that was far from the end of the story. 

Insofar as we talk of peace and reconciliation in Ireland, theatre, culture and Brian Friel have all played very significant roles. It was shortly after writing FAITH HEALER that Friel joined forces with the great actor Stephen Rea to set up the Field Day company, and I realise now just how influential the ideas behind that organisation have been on our own. From its legendary first production of Friel's TRANSLATIONS onwards, Field Day always opened its shows in the disputed and volatile city of Derry, before showing them on both sides of the border. This wasn't just tokenism: Field Day's plays were re-workings of established narratives, peoples' histories, which allowed audiences to see the deeply embedded conflicts of the present moment in a new and clearer light. That's also what we are trying to do when we make a piece with Latin American people in London, with Syrian refugees in Turkey, or with Palestinians in Ramallah. Like Field Day, we recognise the value as well as the challenges of working across the divide, and the importance of acknowledging how deeply we are ourselves, by virtue of historically formed identities, implicated in the tensions that we explore. 

Field Day was also a model for us in its understanding of the need for further exchanges, debates and conversations beyond what happened on the stage itself. They assembled a stellar board of directors: Seamus Heaney himself, Tom Paulin, Thomas Kilroy, David Hammond, Seamus Deane...  The guidance of distinguished artists and cultural figures at Governance or Patron level has been ever more crucial to us as the company has moved into ever more complex areas of artistic intervention: Peter Sellars as Patron; Jatinder Verma and Alastair Niven as Chairs; Conall Morrison, Kristine Landon-Smith and Niall Henry, all prominent directors; strategic and political thinkers like Malú Ansaldo, Valerie Synmoie and Roshni Mooneeram.... Like Field Day, we encourage them to become directly involved in the public discussions around our work: Peter's contribution to THE LOCKDOWN DIALOGUES was really significant in helping us respond to the changing landscape after Covid.

For Field Day, a crucial element of the discourse was the deeply important set of pamphlets which they published through the 1980s, particularly the first, in which Tom Paulin took A New Look at the Language Question. Paulin's advocacy of Irish English helped pave the way for the ongoing exploration of the politics of language in a shared post-colonial space that has characterised our theatre. In our second year, long before he became officially involved, Jatinder came to BAC to lead a post-show discussion on BRAVELY FOUGHT THE QUEEN, a play written in Indian English. What did that mean in terms of audience, of thought structures and worldview, of class, education and perspective? Almost every project since that time has been characterised by the use of multiple languages, and has challenged the hegemony of English through the employment of other languages and other Englishes. 

I am also very struck by Field Day's pamphlet number 6, Myth and Motherland, by the philosopher Richard Kearney. Of all the pamphlets, this one is the most abstracted, attempting to place the immediate turmoil of history within the larger structures and conflicts of myth. "What is required", he argues, "is a radical interrogation of those mythic sedimentations from our past and those mythic aspirations for our future which challenge our present sense of ourselves, which disclose other possibilities of being."  We have, says Kearney, "to keep our mythological images in dialogue with history."  Until I started to think about the significance of FAITH HEALER as the first of our 30 moments, I hadn't registered consciously just how much this dialogue between myth and historical process underpins our work. Sometimes it's really obvious: SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA re-reads Aeschylus and current debates around refugees in the light of one another, while THE MOUTH OF THE GODS pushed contemporary Indigenous activism into a productive clash with evolving spiritualities. DIS-ORIENTATIONS used the traditional Chinese story of The Butterfly Lovers to explore gender and sexuality between Europe and Asia, and THIS FLESH IS MINE filtered Homer through a Palestinian lens. Sometimes it's more subtle: both BULLIE'S HOUSE and THE DILEMMA OF A GHOST saw a culture's treasured myths challenged by a modernity that seemed inadequate at best and at worst malign.

It's very powerful to think about things we were doing 30 years ago like this. It helps us to imagine where we might go next. THE LEGEND OF EUROPA beckons...

2024

The Mouth of the Gods

Usually this blog ends the year with a post looking back over Border Crossings' work across the last twelve months. For us, the main focus of 2024 has been THE MOUTH OF THE GODS, and I do very much want to write a post about that project, which has taught us so much about how our work can evolve to suit its rapidly changing context, within the framework of The Sligo Manifesto. But at the moment it feels as if that post needs to wait, perhaps until we release the film version in the new year. As I look back on the year that is ending, it feels incredibly urgent to talk about the project we concentrated on back in January, and which has kept coming back to remind us of its own significance throughout the year. SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA. We've not yet been able to present the theatre piece, but the film has been shown in Turkey and in Tunisia. What's been happening in Syria itself over the last few weeks makes it feel immediate and necessary. But that's not the only thing.

Back in June, I went to a LIFT event called Democracy From Where I Stand. Unusually for LIFT (less so for us), this wasn't really a performance as such, but a direct engagement by artists and thinkers with the idea of democracy. The accompanying book starts with the assertion that "2024 will be remembered as the year of elections: over half of the global adult population will exercise the right to vote in dozens of states." That much is, of course, undeniable; but the year of elections has done little to ensure the future of "democracy", never mind advance the course of justice. Trump's return to the White House is the most obvious example of an election bringing into power a figure whose stated aims include the overthrow of constitutional structures, but it is far from the only one. Russia re-elected Putin, of course, but there were also surprising lurches towards populism and authoritarianism in Romania, Georgia, even France. In the early summer, the consensus in liberal social media wanted us to believe that India had expressed a powerful reaction against the pernicious rule of the BJP, but the reality is that Narendra Modi won a third term as Prime Minister: other parties were prepared to join his coalition, and his programme shows no sign of reversal. The international observational organisation V-Dem has dubbed the Indian example an "electoral autocracy". Even the UK's election in July, while putting an end to the hegemony of a Tory party that was (and is) drawing ever closer to the global model of populist extremism, was hardly the heralded democratic landslide that Starmer and his team pretended. Labour’s two-thirds majority in Parliament came from just over a third of the vote - the least proportional election result in modern UK history. The 2024 Labour "landslide" actually came from 600,000 fewer votes than the same party had won in its "disastrous defeat" of 2019, under the much maligned Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer sells himself as a competent manager, and there's no doubt that these statistics demonstrate managerial skill in relation to elections. In the UK as in the USA, it's not how many votes you get that matters so much as precisely where you get them. So the way to win elections is not to appeal broadly to the electorate through policy stances that might benefit them as a whole, but to target very specific interest groups through a process of advertisement, particularly online. 

Suppliants of Syria

SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA is based on Aeschylus' great play Suppliants, which includes the first ever use of the word "democracy". It was written at a time when Athens was making its first experiments in this radical form of government, and the Syrian refugee Chorus asks, as the Greek citizens debate their fate, "What is this thing they call democracy?"  Well - one thing the Greeks were absolutely sure about was that democracy was not about elections. We just assume that the two are synonymous, but the Greeks were far wiser than we are. For them, elections were understood not to be part of the democratic government of the people by the people, but to be a manifestation of oligarchy - the rule of the rich. As they well understood, a system of elected government leads to wealthy people retaining power because they have the resources to persuade voters through whatever form of advertisement may suit them. Including the overt bribery recently practised by Elon Musk, who paid out $1 million every day to buy votes for a convicted felon. This immensely dangerous megalomaniac is now contemplating a huge donation to the UK's Reform (which claims to be a political party but is actually a private company), and is wading into the German electoral process on the basis of his "investments" there.

So the lesson of 2024 is not that we need "better elections" but that we need to overhaul the entire system by which we delegate power from a sovereign people. (It doesn't help that in the UK the people aren't currently even held to be sovereign, but that's another issue.) Political office needs to be perceived less in terms of status and power (and certainly less in terms of wealth), much more in terms of responsibility. It needs to be exercised not as a means to appease established supporters and potential voters, but in relation to what is considered most likely to be beneficial to the populace as a whole in the long term. And that "populace" needs to include people beyond the immediate "nation" (whatever that's supposed to be).  So many of the problems we face are global, and so the response must be global also. We need to consider other countries when we consider migration and asylum. We need to consider other cultures when we consider foreign policy. We need to consider other species when we consider the environment. 

This is the point in the argument when "realists" tend to wade in and say that it's never going to happen, so there's no point even trying. To which I reply that, only a few years ago, nobody would have believed that a person like Donald Trump could ever become President, let alone twice. Nobody would have believed India, "the world's largest democracy", would come to be dominated by the fanatics of Hindutva, who are seemingly free to murder critical thinkers, journalists, artists and activists, and to target the Muslim population just as they please. Nobody would have imagined that a genocidal campaign could be waged for more than a year against a helpless people, with the clear backing of the Western "democracies" who supply the weapons with which the oppressor wreaks such havoc. None of this seemed imaginable. None of it was "realistic". So, if these appalling, unimaginable things have come to be, we should and must allow ourselves to imagine the alternatives. That is the only way we can begin to take the practical steps through which this "unrealistic", "unimaginable" opposite of our unthinkable reality can begin to become realistic and imaginable. 

There are two places where the work has to begin. One of them is education, and the other is culture. 

And so, just briefly, I find that I do want to think again about THE MOUTH OF THE GODS. I'm not for one moment pretending that six performances of a baroque opera can change the world, but I do want to point out that this was a cultural and educational work that told a true history, a people's history, of colonisation and dispossession. In the process, it became an act of resistance, and an expression of resilience. It demonstrated all too clearly the economic basis of the global political system. It shared these things with the communities who had worked to make it, including no fewer than seven schools, and it celebrated that educational and cultural action. It was able to share in this way because it was not itself a commodity - nobody paid to see it, and so a new audience came who engaged with this performance in a different, more equal way.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this is our role as cultural workers. We have to imagine the world otherwise, and then offer up that possibility as something to be shared.

Wishing you all the very best for 2025. 

After Assad

Mount Cassius, seen from Antakya in Turkey. On the other side is Syria.

This afternoon, Ireland added itself to the list of European countries to suspend the processing of asylum applications by refugees from Syria. Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK had already done something similar.  It is, of course, very convenient in terms of right-wing domestic narratives about defending European identities and stopping the boats. It also plays very readily into the standard Western mythological narrative of the individual hero (or villain). When will we learn? "Get rid of the bad guy" we always say "and the problem is solved." It's truly extraordinary that, only a couple of days after Assad's fall, European countries should be taking actions that imply Syria's problems are over.

Of course, there are many Syrian people who desperately want this to be true. Many of the Syrian friends we worked with in Turkey to create SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA have been expressing relief, joy, and a deep desire to return to what remains their beloved home, in spite of the devastation wrought upon it. Some Syrians have begun the journey: and of course the actions of European governments can only encourage this. But there are also a great many people travelling in the opposite direction: people who, in one way or another, may have worked for the Assad government, or who may fear that others will think they did. Just because the dictator has fallen, it doesn't mean there is going to be a free and peaceful, benign and gentle regime established in his place. Look at what happened after Gaddafi's fall. Or Saddam Hussein's. Or Louis XVI's. A revolution, including one that overthrows a tyrant, leaves a void, and a void becomes a contested space that may be filled in many ways.

Those same European governments who have suspended asylum claims are also rapidly considering whether to remove HTS (the insurgent organisation that brought down the regime) from the list of terrorist organisations. It would suit their agenda to do so. However, HTS is an Islamist organisation that emerged from IS and Al-Qaida. Since 2017, they have held sway in Idlib, which was the last stronghold of IS - a place to which none of the refugees I have met expressed any desire to return. It is true that the HTS leader, known in Idlib as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has reverted to his birth name Ahmed al-Sharaa, and is taking some pains to paint the country's future as egalitarian and democratic (whatever that may mean - the Suppliants ask). But his history does not suggest the sort of leader Western powers like to see in the Middle East. From 2003-6 he was a jihadist combatant in Iraq, and spent time under American incarceration, including in Abu Ghraib. After 2011, he returned to Syria to fight for IS. On his triumphant arrival in Damascus, he spoke of it as “a victory for the Islamic nation”. “I left this land over 20 years ago, and my heart longed for this moment,” he said. “Sit quietly my brothers and remember God almighty.”

They might also want to remember President Erdogan of Turkey. HTS has a complex relationship with the Northern neighbour who houses so many of their compatriots, but there is no doubt that it was their uneasy alliance which allowed HTS to hold sway in Idlib for the last seven years. Turkey wants a Syrian regime that is hostile to the Kurds, and an excuse to reduce its enormous refugee population. As so often, Erdogan lines up uneasily beside the Europeans. 

Those last seven years in the micro-state around Idlib offer the best indication of how HTS may try to rule Syria (in so far as there is even a state left to rule). The basic services of government were supplied, and taxes were levied to pay for them. They also imposed deeply conservative rules, particularly on women, and dealt brutally with any opposition. Informed sources are suggesting we may see something close to the Taliban. Meanwhile, Turkey has increased its attacks on the Kurds, who are deprived of their uneasy alliance with Assad, and Israel has been advancing from the Occupied Golan, intent on taking Syrian military bases so as to avoid their coming under Islamist control.

Is this really the moment to suspend all asylum claims from Syrian refugees?