LEAVeS

LEAVeS is a project of the La FORTeRESse association and the European initiative EU Collective Plays: a polyvocal experience that, with the collaboration of La Fura dels Baus and the Épica Foundation, wishes to discover new limits of scenic language and interaction with the public based on to topics as current as identity and the voices of refugees.
Anna Romano, project director, comes to the Épica Foundation with the text of this work that will premiere during the 2018-19 season at the Quartieri dell’Arte International Dramaturgy Festival (Italy). Its objective is to collaborate with the invited artists to refine their staging through collective work: improve emerging ideas, break with what is already established, find new dynamics and, ultimately, give life to the project so that it jumps from paper to action thanks to the exchange of concepts and knowledge that will take place.

Samia Yusuf Omar was 17 years old and was originally from Somalia. Ella Samia was the 2,895th sprinter at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She drowned in the Mediterranean when her clandestine boat sank trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa.
LEAVeS is a tribute to Samia, but not to her biography. The authors were inspired by different events to transcend them with the intention of first using composition and then acting to deal with something universally known: our finiteness and weakness before Life and History.
Therefore, it is necessary to write so that Samia’s career never ends. Making theater is necessary, for each and every one of the anonymous Samias who defy the seas, so that they can continue asking us questions and questioning the world, our world.
LEAVeS is a polyvocal work resulting from a residency at the Théâtre des Doms de Avignon during March 2016, under the direction of the new artistic director Alain Cofino-Gomez.
The English version of LEAVeS will be published in 2018, translated by Maria Adele Palmeri and produced as part of the 2018-19 season with the collaboration of La Fura dels Baus, directed by Anna Romano. It is expected to premiere it at the Quartieri dell’Arte International Dramaturgy Festival (Italy) and it will be performed at other festivals organized by collaborators of the European project.

In the original conception of LEAVeS there is a constant interaction between the text, the acting interpretation and the video projections: these three elements maintain a fundamental dialogue from the dramaturgical perspective, allowing space-time leaps and carrying out poetic parables. From the Épica Foundation, it is proposed to take this game as far as possible: rear projections, loops and other investigations in the audiovisual field will be essential complements for acting work.
Another of Fundación Épica’s contributions to LEAVeS will be the Kalliópê technology, a mobile application designed for real-time interaction with the public to complement the drama and guide the viewers. This app has been used with great success in the Épica workshops and continues to investigate to find new narrative forms.

The first day of the workshop is dedicated to the presentation of the text to be worked on, the introductions of the participants (students of the workshop, members of La FORTeRESse and staff of the Épica Foundation) and the exercises of confidence and group cohesion. In this way, all the people who take part in the workshop become familiar with each other and begin to become a team prepared to carry out the intensive work that a one-week workshop entails.
The first brainstormings then take place. Participants are divided into four groups, one for each main LEAVeS scene, and are tasked with developing a performance proposal related to the assigned theme:
-Identity. The identity (or loss of it) of immigrants, a false identity imposed by society based on their appearance or place of origin.
-Journey / Metamorphosis. Physical, psychological and emotional changes that the immigrant will undergo during their trip.
-Dream. Dream scenes, delusions that are confused with dreams. In certain circumstances, freedom only exists in dreams.
-Reality. A manipulated reality, the false information that reaches privileged societies about the situation of immigrants and countries in conflict.
Based on the theoretical work, the participants get down to work and begin to prepare their scenes, which will be reviewed and improved by the whole group as the workshop progresses.

The scenes are set, it’s time to shape them. The participants develop their work, always following the ideas and themes proposed in the original LEAVeS text, based on essays and sharing. They will have to develop not only the dramaturgy, but all aspects of the performance: lighting, costumes, scenery, projections… As always, the narrative will be complemented through Kalliópê, the Épica Foundation’s flagship mobile application, which will guide the public through of the show giving advice, clues and commands on how to interact with their environment.
In this way, the scene on Identity becomes Plastic Island, a large garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific, the inhabitants of which have had to adapt to a new ecosystem: plastic is revered as the only possibility of survival and rites based on the traditions of the ancient world are rendered to it. The Journey will be a real journey for the public, who will cross minefields and sail in small boats, forced to live the experiences of immigrants up close. The Dream will culminate in a space trip where one of the protagonists will feel how she leaves suffering, the Earth and her own body to achieve a freedom that is only possible when she sleeps. As for Reality, attendees will be guided by a Spanish lesson: while a voice recites phrases that they must repeat, offering a simple and pleasant reality, the lessons will be exemplified by oppressed characters (a Muslim mother “delicately cleaning” her hair of his daughter becomes the control over the body of the young women by their own mothers).

The public is received at the main gate of the Epic Foundation. After introducing them to the LEAVeS project and giving them basic instructions on how Kalliópê works, they are directly introduced to the first room. There, three hostesses are waiting for them to check their passports: first-class travelers have the right col-10 offset-2 col-lg-8 offset-lg-4 to wear a life jacket, second-class must keep the extras (if any) and third-class will receive bags full of rubbish that will accompany them throughout the show.
They will then be guided to the Manipulated Reality room: they will have to repeat the phrases from a Spanish lesson while spying on the characters that exemplify them through some holes. There they will see the experiences of two oppressed Muslims: a man on the verge of suicide who has not eaten for weeks and a young woman controlled by her mother and forced to marry. At the end of the lesson, they are asked to remove the plastic that prevented them from seeing the scene in its entirety and they find reality: the characters are looking at them face to face.
The impact will be brief: a stewardess appears among the attendees and asks them to follow her to continue their journey. After struggling to get clothes and supplies, they will witness how various immigrants trudge before them only to end up dying one after another, turned into a pile of corpses, the organs of which will be auctioned off by the hostesses.
The journey does not end here: his new challenge is to cross a minefield that, although the hostesses assure that they are deactivated, will explode in his path. After losing some members of the group, they will get on a boat and cross the Mediterranean, where they will witness the death of an immigrant struggling to swim across it.
The Mediterranean cruise will again be interrupted by a bombing raid. After a few moments of confusion trying to run away from the bombs, the dream scene of an immigrant begins who remembers her family, her journey until now, and begins to faint as her mind moves away from her body. She will end up as an astronaut lost in space, thinking about the Earth and everything it leaves, until she dies.
The climactic scene takes place on Plastic Island, a mountain of garbage accumulated by human impact on the environment, where a society that reveres plastic and considers it the only hope for human life resides. Upon finding the body of the immigrant, they revive her with a ritual imported from the ancient world: her body is sprinkled with bottled water while a mantra on resurrection is recited. Finally, the immigrant wakes up and triggers a great celebration of plastic where the public is encouraged to shout and throw garbage at the inhabitants of the island until they are completely covered by a huge plastic sheet.
As the show appears to be over, attendees witness the final scene, taken directly from the original LEAVeS montage. They are presented with the real recording of a call from a boat off the coast of Malta. While the spokesman for the boat calls for help, insisting that they are starving and the boat begins to sink, the authorities on the other end of the phone repeat over and over again that he has not called the indicated number and cannot help him. The call ends, and the audience is left alone with their thoughts and reflections on their experiences.