ARIADNE OPENING SPEECH

The Ariadne residency at the University of Essex culminated in a micro theatre festival at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester on Saturday 24th June 2017; a day of seminars, presentations, discussions and performances closed with a performance of Dear Children, Sincerely (DCS), a mosaic play created with contributions from each of the Ariadne members. DCS was conceived by Ruwanthie de Chickera of Stages Theatre in Sri Lanka as a way to transmit the wisdom of elders who had lived through turbulent and transformative events in the twentieth century and was being expanded here as a ‘global conversation’ to draw together a range of voices to think about socio-cultural overlaps and departures.

Though some of the pieces did not follow the original project’s premise of the ‘voices of elders’, all of the plays examine the idea of intergenerational dialogues, bringing in issues of gender, political disaffection and the legacy of trauma, in order to meet the idea of what ‘words we would leave behind’ to help others find their voice. Here we see founder of the group, theatre director Susannah Tresilian, welcome the audience to the performance, and introduce the members of Ariadne, before Ruwanthie de Chickera explains the origins of the project in more detail.

STUDENT REFLECTION