About (7)
The Non Prophet Organisation and the Non Prophet Community Festivals, celebrating cultural diversity, aim to transform the latent potentiality of entertainment practices as a means of socio ecological engagement. Through collaborative performances between artists and ‘everyday experts’: ‘professionals of a theatre of the real world’, sharing in the creative process we hope to create a sense of inclusivity for everybody!
Our productions and performances as socio-ecological practice seek to transform our concept of cultural entertainment particularly in natural, rural settings.
The reason being the rural community is a microcosm reflecting our global macrocosm: What we’re proposing is to some extent a revolution to the origins of theatrical entertainment in Greek Dionysian festivals where the local community played an active role in celebrating the seasonal life-cycle.
In this digital age with the possibility of streaming events live and multi-media entertainment practices there is a window of opportunity to transform our cultural ethos in a community context to address social and environmental issues in an alternative way.
We will also promote tourism in our relatively un-spoilt countryside and along our Atlantic coastline. It’s important that we preserve this image of Ireland with the support of Bord Failte, Culture Ireland and local governing bodies. And we can do so by communities and counties linking up rather than compete by creating a festival circuit so performers and tourists alike can come with their families for a period of time to travel along the wild Atlantic way combining work and play.
The Non Prophet Organisation is about cultural activism in a (rural) community context, in particular through performance within the leisure or recreational industry. We’re concerned about the social conditioning of mass culture in a consumer society; the waste of human and natural resources and how we can transform our environment for the better through activism in a community.
Our objective, hopefully, is to help our natural and human resources to flourish within relatively rural communities by being a cultural hub for the various community organizations and infrastructures already in place to work and play together to create a representative voice that addresses the cultural/environmental needs of humanity.
The rural community is a microcosm reflecting our global macrocosm. In this digital age of multi-media and alternative performance practices there is a window of opportunity to recreate our notion of entertainment and how we produce it: What we’re proposing is to some extent a revolution to the origin of recreational social activities in Dionysian festivals: The community played an active role in celebrating life, performing and creating there own cultural practices.
We will be working on a local level with a global outreach through the World Wide Web. We already have envisaged performance projects working with like-minded international and local community based organisations, etc. who are already working at local level to make the world a better place.
If you would like to know more about us or participate in any shape or form in The Non Prophet Organisation and Festivals please feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to welcome and accommodate you.
The Non Prophet festivals are gatherings of local and international performers in many disciplines collectively considered as “artivists” – performers who are social activists, concerned about the socio-economic welfare of the earth’s natural and human resources. We’re interested in collaborating with other professionals and every-day experts - Distinguished by the participation of non-professional performers or so-called ‘everyday experts’ sharing their everyday expertise based ont their own lives. All the world is a stage with performers who are not actors, but specialists in particular spheres of life: ‘professionals of a theatre of the real world’ who are sometimes paid, sometimes volunteering, sometimes unaware they are performing for others who act and create to reinvigorate the socio-economic and ecological structure of our community.
Through our Non Prophet Festival of live performances, participatory site specific projects working with community we wish to entertain and effectively communicate with humanity to address cultural issues that concern us all, such as our mental and physical well-being.
Hi Folks,
The Non Prophet Organisation is about cultural activism in a (rural) community context, in particular through live performance and documentary. We’re concerned about the social conditioning of mass culture through mass-media entertainment in a consumer society; the waste of human and natural resources and how we can resist this destructive evolution through a festival that celebrates life.
The Non Prophet festivals are gatherings of local and international performance artists, theatre and filmmakers collectively considered as “artivists” – artists who are social activists, concerned about the socio-economic welfare of the earth’s natural and human resources. We’re interested in collaborating with other artivists and every-day experts* to create entertainment to reinvigorate the socio-economic structure of our community. Through our small arts festival of live performance, documentary, community TV and radio we wish to entertain and effectively communicate with our local and global community to address cultural issues that concern us all.
Our hope is to help our natural and human resources to flourish within our locality by being a cultural hub for the various community organizations and infrastructures already in place and together create a representative voice that addresses the cultural needs of humanity.
The rural community is a microcosm reflecting our global macrocosm. In this digital age of multi-media and alternative theatrical practices there is a window of opportunity to recreate entertainment and how we produce it: What we’re proposing is to some extent a revolution to the origins of theatrical entertainment in the Dionysian festivals where the community played an active role in celebrating life.
We will be working on a local and international level with a global outreach through the World Wide Web. We already have envisaged a number of performance projects working with like-minded international and local artists and festivals such asScarlattine Teatro & Il Giardino delle Esperidi Festival in Italy, Other Spaces in Finland and Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival in Ireland who are already working at local level to make the world a better place.
If you would like to know more about us or participate in any shape or form in The Nonprophet Festival please feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to welcome and accommodate you.
*Distinguished by the participation of non-professional performers of so-called ‘everyday experts’ talking about their own lives. This is a theatre of performers who are not actors, but specialists in particular spheres of life: ‘professionals of a theatre of the real world’ who are sometimes paid, sometimes volunteering, sometimes unaware they are performing for others.
The Non Prophet Organisation and the Non Prophet Community Festivals, celebrating cultural diversity, aim to transform the latent potentiality of entertainment practices as a means of socio ecological engagement. Through collaborative performances between artists and ‘everyday experts’: ‘professionals of a theatre of the real world’, sharing in the creative process we hope to create a sense of inclusivity for everybody!
Our productions and performances as socio-ecological practice seek to transform our concept of cultural entertainment particularly in natural, rural settings.
The reason being the rural community is a microcosm reflecting our global macrocosm: What we’re proposing is to some extent a revolution to the origins of theatrical entertainment in Greek Dionysian festivals where the local community played an active role in celebrating the seasonal life-cycle.
In this digital age with the possibility of streaming events live and multi-media entertainment practices there is a window of opportunity to transform our cultural ethos in a community context to address social and environmental issues in an alternative way.
We will also promote tourism in our relatively un-spoilt countryside and along our Atlantic coastline. It’s important that we preserve this image of Ireland with the support of Bord Failte, Culture Ireland and local governing bodies. And we can do so by communities and counties linking up rather than compete by creating a festival circuit so performers and tourists alike can come with their families for a period of time to travel along the wild Atlantic way combining work and play.
The performers involved will work with locals to showcase their productions and create participatory workshops and performance pieces to interact with local artists and artisans.
With mentoring and funding forthcoming from the European Cultural Foundation, CINEW, Local Enterprise boards, Arts councils, etc working with local and international organizations such as IETM, AOIFE & EFA we wish to create a performance pilgrimage so to speak, that celebrates our natural environment.
Artist residencies need to be created along the way, maintained and made available by the local community and advertised internationally. As well as practicing social ecology we will be motivating health and well being by creating events in quite country dwellings in a stress free environment. Local Artists and Artisans will be able to exhibit their work and interact with locals and visitors and share their expertise in diverse areas.
Having different local community groups as well as professional and amateurs working and performing, as well as volunteers and enthusiasts coming together for these festival productions will help create a sense of inclusivity and a collective audience.
The Non Prophet Organisation is already working and being mentored by members of various international organizations such as IETM performance network and working locally with community organizations such as The Men’s Shed, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, Parkinson’s’ Mayo, Foroige, and with the Mayo Arts Office. We are also working with local businesses and public venue representatives such as Clare lake-Committee, Claremorris Chamber of Commerce, Claremorris Men’s Shed, Claremorris Library, Family Resource Centre, Claremorris film Society and a local councillor working within the HSE. We have a number of projects we hope to develop with the aid of associations like CREATE to work towards creating disability inclusion theatre to create with the able-bodied and disabled alike.
We’re currently being funded by CREATE to do research and development on creating a documentary theatre project on living with Parkinson’s.
Through local radio and the audio-visual sector of our organization, we’re going to stream events live, setting up outdoor screens in pedestrian areas such as parks and town squares, in hospitals and old folks home so they can share in the performances and our educational entertainment.
In many respects our organization and festivals are open-air forums engaging with everyday experts and promoting active audience participation that is beneficial to socio-economic growth of our global community in a more sustainable way:
Through documentaries, debates, panels and Q&As, academic and everyday experts from home and abroad we will attract humanities students as well as scientific fields and people from all walks of life.
We have envisaged performance projects with national and international organizations that share our environmental ethos. Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival, Donegal, Green Room International in Cork are also working in a rural community context. As well Il Giardino Delle Esperidi Festival in Italy, Other Spaces in Finland and el festival de Alegria in Morocco.
Socio-economic benefit and support and benefit in kind can come in many ways, from a church gate collection, charitable donations at events and fundit campaigns with free rehearsal space and venues provided by community halls, galleries, public parks and libraries as well pubs and restaurants, etc. Creative thinking can go along way to making this a self-sustaining community festival with adequate funding from our representative governing bodies.
Local hostels and hotels will gain from allowing events to take place in their spaces also by offering attractive pricing packages to promote festivals and providing performance spaces.
This is a brief synopsis of our ideas about promoting the arts in Ireland through outdoor entertainment and education, disability inclusion theatre and documentary. Our plans over the next few years is to begin to implement these projects in more concrete terms and to produce live performances and documentaries about physical and psychological disabilities to disseminate at various venues and events organized by The Non Prophet Organisation in collaboration with the other bodies who share our ethos and concerns about our cultural environment.
Since 2014 the NPO have been running a small arts festival and ongoing cultural events in the community of Claremorris and surrounding hinterland. Thus we have a proven track record and know what we are capable of doing depending on our budget, timescale and support.
· We coincide with high quality national and International events such as culture night and heritage week as our values and objectives are the same. The evidence, which we’ve attached, demonstrates this and our engagement with the community.
· We’ve put on high quality cultural events with artists and experts with support from public bodies, businesses and organisations in the community who bring their own expertise, advertising and audience to events such as:
· Mayo Co Co, Foras na Gaeilge, Creative Ireland, Conradh na Gaeilge, The Historical Society, The Men’s Shed, The No Name Club, Primary Schools, Local Agenda 21, etc
· Social enterprises such as Claremorris Community Radio, Clar IRD, The Town Hall Theatre
· Privately owned venues and businesses such as Claremorris Gallery, Aperture Designs, Perspective
· Many provide their services and expertise at a very reasonable price or for free, as they appreciate our work in community arts, culture and environment.
· We will launching our cultural events for the summer with Cruinniu na n’Og 15th June, The Little Prince. The event prototypes what’s on offer during Heritage Week. We’ll be able to gauge how much the participants enjoy and value being part of the creative process through level of active engagement, questionnaire feedback, etc. This event will provide more P.R. material with consent to advertise the summer school and photos, footage, etc.
· The facilitators are well-experienced and have confirmed their interest in participating. We will have two facilitators for a total of ten days of events.
· Mostly resources are sourced locally, recycled and upcycled. We have a lot of creative people in the community who have offered their support and will volunteer to help out at these events as their children will be attending.
· We are well known as communitarians who work for social inclusion, co-creating events, like our film and world cinema in languages other than English.
· These cultural events are about active community engagement through collaboration and the creation of sustainable connections within ourselves and with others.
Ala
Another alternative theatre group devising performances in a community context with whom I’ve worked in the past and soon to work with again, ALâ is a personal, social and community development organization founded in Galway, Ireland, in 2004. It is an inclusive, not for profit, membership run organisation, with charitable status. It uses theatre, arts and education as developmental tools.
{vimeo}73135192{/vimeo} ALâ have been running ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ Facilitation Skills Training courses over the past four years in conjunction with the Cty of Galway V.E.C, NUI Galway Societies and Clarecare. All of these courses have been facilitated by the best available facilitators/Jokers including Mary Duffin, Mags McMonagle, Janna Lindstrom, Annette Tierney, Andrew Jackson, Julian Boal, Gavin Crichton, Sarah O’Toole.
Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O.) facilitation skills training courses provide participants with a means of learning to use drama as an effective community engagement and social justice tool. To this end these courses offer both theoretical exploration and practical immersion in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, with a particular focus on Image and Forum Theatre and in the context of community organizing.
It aims, in the work, to free up possibilities to move beyond the pathology of official narratives, and aspirations, freeing us to honour our unrecognized knowing, dreams, images and possibilities – as a movement towards a more just and humane world.
We are not interested in another event where we are talked at and spoon-fed the “right” answers. We are inviting people to interact, in real time in one place and face to face!
These courses bring facilitation to life. It is versatile and able to be applied to all facilitation areas; organisational, community engagement and therapeutic. We facilitate a very practical learning journey, which uses group work to introduce participants to the collaborative processes required for effective facilitation. It is a very practical learning journey, which builds on people’s experience and strengths as facilitators.
These courses offer a great opportunity for experienced and less experienced facilitators, consultants, trainers, activists and organizers wanting to use T.O. training tools more effectively. You will be offered lots of opportunities to practice and apply what you learn to your own work environment.
Kazu Suwa
Kazu Suwa is a Japanese classical guitarist based in London.
Kazu begun his study of classical guitar under Mikio Hoshido in Tokyo, Japan. After graduating from the Nihon University College of Art, Kazu moved to Spain to continue his formal studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid. During this period he attended master classes and private lessons, among them by maestri: Manuel Babiloni, Gabriel Estarellas, Jorge Ariza, Ernesto Bitetti, Alicia de Larrocha, and Paul Badura-Skoda. Kazu performed solo recitals at various locations; music halls, churches, Universities, etc. in Japan, Spain and the UK.
Scarlattine Teatro
Scarlattine Teatro believes that theatre has to catch, to face, to appeal, to seduce, to dazzle, to amaze, to desolate, to cheer, to distress, to consume, to change life through a multiplicity of voices and ideas, promoting fusion of different languages to build bridges between the performing arts and communities. The spectator is a fellow traveller who we want to infect and involve. They believe that's the way...theatre lives only through the mutual [regard] of people who live life.
We’d like to bring Scarlattine Teatro promenade piece In-Boscati. Il Cammino dello Sguardo#4. Ikariotico about Theseus and the Minotaur to McMahon Park as a prelude to A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be performed by our own “hempen homespuns” in conjunction with Scarlattine Teatro & Claremorris Men’s Group with mentoring from Belinda Wild of Green Room International.
Scarlattine Teatro – Campsirago Residency with its enchanted forest is an idyllic location for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which we would like to bring to Italy afterwards.{vimeo}74276295{/vimeo}
Other Spaces (also known by the Finnish title Toisissa tiloissa)
Other Spaces is a Helsinki based performing arts collective. Founded in 2004, the group consists of around artists from several fields of arts.
The working principles of the collective are:
- I continuous training
- II exercise as a mode of performance
- III metamorphosis as the leitmotif of exercises.
Other Spaces invents and develops collective physical exercises through which people can enter in contact with modes of experience and being other than human. The aim of the group is to change together. The group performs its exercises regularly in public practical demonstrations and organizes workshops, Secret Retraining Camps.
Other Spaces' aim is to change together. It implements the dream of [an] equal, justified form of performance. By that it reduces the planetary fear and grants the hope to survive...Other Spaces' activities have become more political and ecological during their seven year existence. Being with the audience has developed and the performances are increasingly participatory. Members of the collective come from various fields of arts, including choreographers, theatre directors, documentary makers, actors, painters, writers, dreamers and many other everyday experts.
{vimeo}73625971{/vimeo}
Guth Gafa
The goal of the Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival is to bring documentary films made to the highest international standards, including Irish films to promote the documentary film industry in Ireland and to introduce them to a national and local audience. They also hope to contribute to the local economy by bringing in a significant number of international visitors and by attracting a large local and national audience to festival events, in the spectacular setting of Donegal. The Non Prophet Festival’s would hope be to keep some of the directors and their documentaries in the country a little longer to come to our festival afterwards.
On an educational and training level, they and we would hope to stimulate the development of best international practice in documentary film making by providing a forum for screening entertaining films, post-show discussions and master classes dealing with social issues relevant to all our communities.
Green Room
One has to create one’s own luck but I also believe in serendipity: working with David Rane, co-artistic director of Guth Gafa’s International Documentary Festival with his partner Neasa in Malin Village, Donegal, then with Michele and Anna of Scarlattine Teatro and last but not least with Belinda Wild at the DLI Summer School, Belinda and Ian Wild are co-artistic directors of Green Room International whose home base is a spacious and specially designed theatre studio in the centre of Bandon, West Cork, Ireland, practicing theatre professionals who have been training actors for over 20 years both in Ireland and the UK.
Green Room is also committed to bringing its workshops to international venues and to creating links with Theatre practitioners worldwide.
Brokentalkers
On a more concrete basis we’ll be working with the Mayo Parkinson’s Association and Brokentalkers under CREATE’S artist in the community scheme with mentoring.
Brokentalkers are a Dublin based theatre company formed in 2001. They tackle social problems such as homophobia and abuse in Irish church institutions. Dealing with community issues their ambitious work responds to the contemporary culture using elements such as original writing, dance, classic texts, film, interviews, found materials and music to represent that world in performance. This work has been presented in a variety of venues, ranging from theatres to public spaces, disused sites and the Internet.
How this came about:
My parents and I attend the monthly meetings of Parkinson's Mayo, where I informed the group I was going to make a documentary with my father about living with Parkinson's and asked the group if they'd be interested in participating. This sparked off an interesting discussion with more personal and intimate revelations than at previous meetings and some of the group were willing to personally participate in the documentary.Someone suggested forming a choir like in Galway and Brokentalkers’ ‘silver stars’ sprung to mind. I told them that I’d be willing to create a choir and for us to consider making a documentary theatre piece and documentary around this if I could get funding for it.
The idea is that those who personally experience living with Parkinson's on a daily basis can talk about their lives to better inform society at large about this marginalised community and through the arts work on giving Parkinson's a "voice" by creating a devised performance piece using documentary and forum theatre practices and Greek chorus.
The objective of the R&D phase will be to introduce the members of Parkinson’s Mayo to the innovative theatre practices of groups like Brokentalkers and Rimini Protokoll, which are unknown to most of these people living in rural communities. With the aid of HSE Counsellor (Brendan Murphy) and a psychologist colleague of his (Martina Dilucia) who have offered their support to build a relationship of trust with the group and introduce these theatrical and documentary practices to help those who wish to participate overcome their initial fears of public exposure in a safe environment.
What we anticipate will be the outcome of this phase of the project:
The group will have an understanding of these alternative theatre practices and their effectiveness in tackling social issues through devised collaborations.
I would hope to develop a means for the group to be able to meet on a more regular basis in order to attend performances, play an active role in their community and give them something to aim for.
A lot of the older people and especially the men suffering from Parkinson’s have withdrawn from their involvement with the community because of this mentally and physically debilitating disease. My father used to sing in the church choir as did other members suffering from Parkinson’s but ceased due the difficulty of mobility caused by no longer being able to drive or to mount stairs thus not only losing their singing voice, a symptom of Parkinson’s but also the interaction with others in a social activity they enjoyed. So I want to address similar issues for other and seek possible solutions.
Through the practice of forum theatre and theatrical exercises associated with projection for performance as opposed to speech therapy I hope to convince the group that what I propose developing with them will give them an opportunity to physically voice their opinion and deal with their daily oppressions society isn’t necessarily aware of. The main objective at this stage is to open up dialogue to explore and discuss issues of ‘Parkinson’s dis-ease within the community’ and to facilitate giving voice and visibility to people’s concerns and experience.
So that’s where we stand today, waiting impatiently for more news to share with you.
IETM international network for contemporary performing arts
An ethos of socio-economic transformation through transparency
We are all aware of the trickle down effect of a global economy but there is a growing belief that change comes from the bottom up and it is up to the individual within the community to break the oppressive silence and attitude of resignation that plagues our society due to our cultural inheritance.
There is a much greater public awareness and unrest with the repetitive rhetoric of rapacious imperial forces but there hasn't been a collaborative voice to challenge the class system and corporate view with its particular notions of ownership, creativity and power.
Theatre, documentary and technology are in the process of creating such a voice that cannot be stifled due to the structure of the World Wide Web, designed to resist the social and hierarchical order: Few are those who have not heard of Wikileaks or the Zeitgeist Movement that resist and challenge our present capitalist oriented consumer economy. This shift in our consciousness may also be at heart of entertainment moving away from dramatic practices and conventional staging to postdramatic practices.
Our interest lies somewhere between the postdramatic and predramatic performances. Both may seem somewhat lacking in structure and overly subjective, thus alienating generations of spectators of dramatic genres, still very much alive and part of humanity’s cultural inheritance. However if you’re going to bring about a transformation in our way of thinking about our environment everybody needs to understand the motivation behind any movement to make these changes of their own volition.
While the younger practitioners amongst us embrace this move away from dramatically structured entertainment towards multi-media performance pieces our goal would be to marry the old and the new styles of theatre and performance both live and virtual, in keeping with the Old Comedies of political satire and parody, such as Aristophanes’ The Frogs and the New Comedies of social ritual and marriage. The objective is to highlight the similarities between different social classes and how comedy can be used as a source of social correction and communication to free us all from our self-inflicted oppression, which includes our so-called oppressors who are just as much victims of our poor socio-economic systems.
Where Shakespeare and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed may meet:
The reason why we’re particularly interested in reinterpreting Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to start with is because it deals with themes of transformation; social class; the role of women and men; the notion of ownership and property in society. There are a lot of similarities to be found between the rising bourgeoisie in Shakespeare's time and the class culture that emerged in Celtic tiger Ireland when the working class began to transform the structure of our society due to their growing economic power.
Boal reflects in Theatre of the Oppressed on the move away from the feudal system and an agrarian society to a more urban society, which is similar to the movement in Shakespeare’s times and in Ireland when we moved away from our agricultural country existence towards the service industry and the urban lifestyle of the city. These changes to our rural landscape began some time before with the demise of the small farmer and their few acres of land, a way of life for many in rural Ireland, which declined with negative consequences for the farmer after our entry into the EU, reflected upon in Nancy Scheper-Hughes Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland.
Examining Shakespeare’s plays as well as using Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) and Forum Theatre techniques with groups within a community we can entertain and educate humanity to our symbiotic relationship with our environment.
Our goal would be to demonstrate the important role the arts and entertainment play in our lives, and in particular the potential role theatre and documentary could play in a rural community to engender environmental awareness. Most importantly why we as cultural creators on the world stage have a responsibility they cannot afford to ignore.
Technology and Mythology’s roles in shaping society:
We’re interested in examining the role of mythology and the influence dramatic practices have in shaping our psyche. We will also be exploring our own natural and intellectual resources to tell our own Epic tales and Heroes to generate a sense of self-esteem in this digital age where mythological and fantastic tales of superheroes and supernatural creatures once again occupy centre stage as a source of entertainment.
Irish myth speaks of Oisin’s return from Tir na n’Og (the land of the ever young) to his country transformed by the ravages of time. That sense of alienation one feels when returning to a country you no longer recognize, is often the case for natives who return from abroad. However we should not grow old and despondent with the downturn of our global economy but see it for what it is: a renaissance of rural community values and recognition of our inter-dependence in order to flourish. We need to redress this situation by regaining our sense of self perhaps through the appreciation of all our local environment has to offer us in the line of entertainment and to become more self-sufficient. However it is important to realize we are far from alone and must work locally but think globally to create an overall sense of harmony. There’s a lot to be said for the simple life and perhaps what we need is to slow down, take time to smell the roses and think about what really makes life worth living.
Local authors; Colmán agus Mairéad Ó Raghallaigh have created an imaginative series of graphic novels based on the history and mythology of Ireland, making available in an exciting new format many stories which were not widely available in their original form i.e. the Irish language. The graphic novel genre is common throughout Europe and America but has proven particularly suited to Irish. These are not the comics read by small children but appeal to readers of all ages from 10 upwards. An Tain was performed at the Cuirt Festival in Galway a few of years ago. There is great potential here for future telling of the tales in digital format and live performance and we would gladly collaborate with others interested in this genre.