At Home in Gaza and London
by Station House Opera

Wednesday 1 May

5 – 7.00pm

G16, Drama Department,
Martin Harris Centre

Screening and Q&A with artistic team – Julian Maynard Smith and Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso (Co-artistic Directors), Ania Obolewicz (producer)

ALL WELCOME

At Home in Gaza and London by Station House Opera is a live performance that follows the lives of people living in two locations separated by great political, economic and physical divides – Gaza in the Palestinian territories and London in the UK. Using a mix of live-streaming and recorded video, the performance goes beyond the headlines, offering voice to individual artists and giving expression to the ways of working and surviving under strained, damaging and threatening conditions.

Please join us to watch the screening of the performance recorded at Battersea Arts Centre in London and El-Wedad Theatre in Gaza in June 2018. The screening will be followed by a talk given by the artistic team behind At Home in London and Gaza, including Julian Maynard Smith and Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso (Co-artistic Directors), and Ania Obolewicz (producer). We will be joined via Skype by the artists in Gaza who took part in performances at the Battersea Arts Centre in London and Everyman in Liverpool, and El-Wedad Theatre in Gaza in 2018. 

Station House Opera

With past projects ranging from spectacular site-specific works created with concrete blocks to simultaneous performances across continents using live internet streaming, Station House Opera is an internationally renowned performance company with a unique physical and visual style. Founded in 1980 it has produced over 30 productions of widely varying scale and focus, all rooted in an interest to make work that brings together theatre and the visual arts in a single unified vision.

Led by Artistic Director and Co-Founder Julian Maynard Smith, Station House Opera have created projects in a variety of locations all over the world, from New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage to Dresden’s historic Frauenkirche and Salisbury Cathedral, and have toured the world, from Azerbaijan to Kosovo, China to Brazil working with over 100 performers in various projects. Station House Opera have pioneered the use of telematics in performance with works such as Life on Paradise and Play on Earth. They link spaces and performances via live stream, and recently with Dissolved and At Home in Gaza and London merge together people and spaces, creating new encounters and exploring identity.

Station House Opera’s site-specific installation, Dominoes, has been adapted for different cities and contexts across the globe, transforming the rhythm of the city for one special day. Hundreds of volunteers and audience members gather together to make this exceptional and unique event.

Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso 

is a producer and facilitator with a practice in contemporary work in or about the Middle East. Since 2010, she has been developing intercultural and cross-cultural work with performance artists and playwrights in the UK, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. She creates and performs work within the context of cultural resistance and as an associate artist of Kazzum, leads programmes of workshops with young refugees and asylum seekers across the UK. She produced and programmed the 2018 AWAN – Arab Women Artists Now Festival in London. In July 2018, she joined the Shubbak team as the festival’s Programme and Engagement Producer.

Ania Obolewicz 

is the artists’ producer at Artsadmin where she produces work by Station House Opera, Tim Spooner and Clare Patey. She has worked as an arts producer in freelance capacity and with leading arts organisations such as LIFT, ATC, Bush Theatre and British Council on projects ranging from plays development to mid-scale dance performances to large-scale site specific installations. Her work has included theatre, dance, live art, participatory art and cross-disciplinary projects, and has encompassed project management, international touring and festival producing. Ania holds an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths College (University of London) and MA in Theatre Studios from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

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