How did this grant contribute to the realization of your project in regard to artistic exchange, local cultural development and/or the promotion of cultural diversity?
I was accepted to attend a Theater Master-Class during the Festival d'Avignon 2017 with TAMAM association as a professional stage actor and theater trainer. We aimed in this Master-Class to create a professional network that promotes a mixture and diversity between professional young artists coming from the two sides of the Mediterranean and international artists of theater; to create the conditions to create relations and network and opening opportunities for common theatrical projects, and our main and general purpose was to develop our own critical review - of the 18th theatrical creations that we saw during the Festival - which helped expressing our opinions and to argue it based on theatrical basics by writing a theatrical criticisms and collectively constructing a space of critical expression, a trilingual blog on which each day we published our critical articles “ for/against”. See link: https://masterclass-tamam.tumblr.com/ This Master-Class was supervised by professionals/master teachers -academics and practitioners-coming from Arab world and Avignon area; we succeeded in creating a theatrical immersion with eighteen theater plays programmed, chosen in the IN Festival and in different venues of the OFF Festival, we also had the chance to meet up with professional theater artists (directors, actors, dancers, technicians, musicians and art critics). As a Palestinian actor living under occupation, attending and participating in this masterclass gave me the opportunity to attend more than eighteen different theatrical creations in eight days, improve my theatrical imagination, strengthen my literary knowledge, identify different cultural-artistic practices, develop my creativity, improve my writing capability in theatre criticism and to construct a collective network of critical expression, meet professionals from whom I obtained and exchanged details about different theatrical practices.
How does exchange, networking and international contacts contribute to the development of your artistic and cultural project?
The exchange of knowledge، experience and ideas directly with people, meet and talk to people is the best way in our job as theatre artists. I made connections with lots of theatre creators and artists around the world and exchanged professional theatre experience with others whether from my colleagues in the Master-Class or from Theater Artist I met during our work in the Masterclass or during the Festival it self. And as I mentioned before we have created a network of 8 theater and art artist and we are planning on creating a second master-class in Festival d'Avignon 2018 and in a theater festival in the Arab world.
Can you elaborate on the learning and knowledge you have gained and shared throughout this experience?
Yes, of course, sharing our experiences as artists are the most important point where we can develop our projects and selves. I believe it is fundamental for artists to reflect on social and cultural issues that resonate global and local problems so they can address these problems and work on it and give a solution using our art. I believe that theatre cannot exist if it remains closed, without the international exchange and ignoring about different cultures, and traveling around the world is the essence and the goal of the theatrical art. In my artistic life, I work, study, teach, create theater plays and more importantly travel a lot in order to know more and more about all the world’s theatre movements and tendencies around the world in order to give this experience and knowledge that I gain to the people who are not able to do this and my students of course.
Please indicate a link to your current work (website/facebook page)
http://www.ashtar-theatre.org/ http://www.ashtar-theatre.org/
