Keywords

1 Introduction

Citizenship is usually understood as a contractual relationship of the individual with the state, that provides both the person and the state with a bond of rights, duties, and obligations towards each other. As an institution the concept of citizenship has been closely linked to modern notions of the nation-state. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the notion of citizenship has come under pressure due to the multiple changes and crises the world faces. Using the Experimental Theatre of Thrace as a seminal example, the aim of this paper is to present an innovative re-conceptualization of citizenship where citizens are not simply expected to understand the ways in which civic societies operate, but also to enact, embody and perform. Emancipatory and transformative in nature, the works created by the ETT involved the development of the perceptive, imaginative, and empathic capacities of a socially engaged citizen who does justice to the depth and complexity of lived human experience.

2 Citizenship as Embodiment and Performance

Political philosophers like Arendt [1] and Butler [2] have proposed an immanent connection between citizenship and performance. Moving beyond traditional citizen protocols, the conceptualization of citizenship as a performative expressive practice emphasizes the corporeal dimension of the citizen in the public space. Public space emerges by the appearance of public actions, by means of public corporeal and inter-corporeal performance. The creative transformations entailed by performance initiate new connections that move past institutionalized identities and enable new forms of the political to emerge. Performance offers an emancipatory potential in ways that transgress the boundaries between art and political action.

Isin [3] has articulated a reconceptualization of citizenship where citizens are not simply expected to understand the ways in which civic societies operate, but also to enact, embody and perform. Self- organized networks and independent collectives emerge and assume roles and responsibilities formerly attributed to the state. Isin [4] differentiates between active and activist citizens. Active citizens conform to already defined relations such as voting and taxpaying. Activist citizens create new ways of being a citizen. Citizen communities become builders of collective visions, questioning how we live and how we want to live together in the world. Performance is a mode of both knowing the world and creating new visions of the world.

The affiliation between citizenship as an embodied performative practice and artistic performance as a site for staging and contesting citizenship, is rather evident. The tradition of art seen as an act in the world, an emancipatory and democratic recourse with which citizen communities can respond to precarious situations has its roots in many European countries but it has been radicalized in many Mediterranean countries after the 2008 financial crisis. Committed professional artists have been cooperating with citizens from different cultural and social backgrounds to foster a creative imagination and generate through artistic performance humane forms of engagement and dialogue about our societies, many times playing a seminal role in the development of new aesthetics [5]. The aim of this paper is to examine the case of the Experimental Theatre of Thrace as a pivotal Greek example of the emergence of new forms of citizenship as a performative expressive practice.

3 The Experimental Theatre of Thrace

The case examines the creations and initiatives of the Experimental Theatre of Thrace, especially the landscape political action ‘Teatime Europe’. The Experimental Theatre of Thrace (ETT) was a non-profit, self-organized, self-administered, and self-funded cultural organization active in Thrace, Greece between the years 2008–2018 [6]. This autonomous organization with the city of Alexandroupolis, Greece as its base, was founded in the beginning of the financial crisis back in 2008, by a group of citizens who were interested in creating a meeting point where the local communities and social groups could interact to create a dialogic environment using the arts as a vehicle. The organization’s artistic director was the theatre director Giorgos Zamboulakis, him being also one of its founding members.

Alexandroupolis is the capital of the Evros regional unit in East Macedonia and Thrace and an important port, mainly connecting Greece with Turkey. The city is about 14.5 km west of the delta of the Evros river and 40 km from the border with Turkey. The Evros river is the longest river that runs solely in the interior of the Balkan peninsula, forming the border between Bulgaria and Greece, and then between Greece on the west bank and Turkey on the east bank to the Aegean Sea [7].

Being an autonomous organization that did not comply to agencies owned or run by the government or regulated by official policies and commercial interests, the ETT produced during a period of ten years a series of theatre performances, seminars, workshops, meetings, events, performances, actions and a drama school included. Since its foundation as an independent cultural organization, Experimental Theatre of Thrace made an important contribution as a local collectivity, successfully bringing the whole community together while using visually elaborate work to foster an active social and critical direction. The philosophy of the Experimental Theatre of Thrace has always been to become a dialogic forum to discuss social issues. A space open to the whole city and all its citizens. With reference to Richard Sennett’s idea that as individuals and as a society we need to learn how to engage with those who are different from ourselves the ETT has always argued for a dialogic approach—one conducive to an open-ended dialogue [8]. Through open calls and by using local and social media and word-of-mouth communication the ETT succeeded in creating community engagement, involving members, sharing common issues and meeting on an ongoing basis to furnish support. The EET has been collaborating with several local organizations in the area, as (a) the Association for the social support of youth—ARSIS is a non-governmental organization, specializing in the social support of youth that are in difficulty or danger and in the advocacy of their rights, (b) the local centre of supporting victims of gender-based violence, used as an organizing strategy to call for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls, (c) a series of other social, environmental, and cultural organizations, as well as the traditional musician and dance groups in the area.

Through acting and music workshops and seminars, discussions, meetings, and communal social eating the group increased social bonding and developed a wider social network capable of providing social and emotional support. The ETT engaged with topics and narratives intertwined with current societal issues including the impact of the socio-economic crisis, the violence against women, the refugee crisis, immigration, xenophobia, racism, social alienation, environmental issues, issues of social cohesion etc. The sense of social and emotional cohesion was always channeled towards a collective artistic creation. All artistic actions were participatory and open to all citizens who would like to voluntarily participate. The ETT was itself a citizen experiment and a try-out to place the performing arts in the center of the social discourse.

With the performance of Euripides’ ‘Trojan Women’ the group started a dialogue on the issue of immigrants and refugees [9]. The performance of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘The good person of Szechwan’ presented the problems of unemployment and its impact on human relations [10]. The performance of Yannis Ritsos’ ‘Moonlight sonata’ examined the contradictions between the poetics of a society that vanishes, and the ways of a new society emerges [11]. With the production of Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’ the community worked on the theme of the auctions of public and private property and its consequences for the present and the future of society [12]. With Henrik Ibsen’s ‘The enemy of the people’ the collective investigated the issues of democracy, of intertwined financial interests and the manipulation of the public opinion by the mass media. [13].

To intervene quickly and without the excessive preparation required for theatre performances, the ETT also created a series of artistic activist actions. In 2013 the ETT created the action ‘3096’, on the problem of the violence against women. That was followed by the landscape political actions ‘Tea-time Europe’ in 2014 and ‘Eat-time Europe’ in 2016. With these works the ETT addressed the current migrant and refugee crisis in Europe in a distinctive site-specific and performative mode.

The ‘Eat-time Europe’ action lasted eight hours and took place in the region of Avantas, very close to the Greek /Turkish borders which is one of the points of entrance of refugees in Europe. A laid table in a prosperous green field, where everyone is welcome to sit and eat. Four different scenes of a very old woman's life. A whole century in a moment. History repeats itself. Wars, invasions, migrations, displacements, deportations, exchange of populations, carnage, ethnic cleansings, and genocides. The history of the Balkans. The action placed unconditional hospitality and the welcoming of the other as supreme human values, suggesting that the way in which self and other are always already intertwined together, hospitality should involve the imperative to further immerse oneself in this bond. So eloquently formulated by Jacques Derrida: ‘To who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the new arrival is the citizen of another country, a human, animal, or divine creature, a living or dead thing, male or female’ [14].

4 Case Study: Tea-Time Europe

This section concentrates on the landscape political action ‘Tea-time Europe’ using the condensed and poetic form of the performance video as the primary material of analysis. The work was developed during a period of one year (2013–2014) and it involved around 250 volunteers under the direction of Giorgos Zamboulakis. The project was created in collaboration with the citizens of Alexandroupolis and gathered voluntarily all the creative people of the city: actors, musicians, photographers, painters, poets. Citizens who all together wished to take a stand, through art and activism, on the issue of the refugee crisis that swept all over Europe, making the Aegean Sea the grave for thousands of thousands of people. The aim was to remind everyone that the acceptance of the foreigner is part or should be part of what we mean with the word culture.

The action ‘Teatime Europe’ took place on the 29th of July 2014, at the delta of Evros River, nearby the border between Greece and Turkey. Evros River is one of the main gates of entrance for people inflow, seeking asylum in Europe. The performance duration was eight hours. The participants were organized in groups and each group had to follow certain directions and act under a period of 2 h. Being then replaced by other groups, they had to assist the new groups in their actions. All artistic means were discussed and defined during the long preparatory period.

In the tranquil and borderless waterscape at the delta of the Evros River a full circle of seats took center stage with well-dressed men and women sitting on them, the constellation of the seats and the bodies being a direct reference to the official Eurοpean emblem. The European flag features a circle of 12 gold stars on a blue background, a symbol of the ideals of unity, solidarity, and harmony among the peoples of Europe and, more broadly, the identity and unity of Europe. Of course, on another level the striated, metrical space of the geometric circle transformed the smooth and amorphous space of the open seascape to the formal, homogenous, space of the state apparatus, the law, and the logic.

The group of people are drinking tea, simultaneously creating music using the teacups teaspoons as improvisational musical instruments, combining the tea drinking rituals of the northern European countries—a time when people have returned from work and are enjoying their tea, listening to the news of the day—with the traditional Greek way of creating circular rhythms, music, and storytelling, welcome or farewell. An improvisational musical tradition with roots in both Thrace and Asia Minor which combines improvisations, performance, and the communication of emotions. The rhythmical motif of the jam session being always the beat of the human heart. The group slowly moves on, and the sound is transformed into music, culminating in Ravel’s recognizable rhythmic pattern from Bolero, the ostinato that is steadily repeated throughout the entire piece. A reference to the classical European high culture of the nineteenth century with some affinity to Arabic Sufi music [15]. A case of cultural appropriation?

In the next sequence, the seated group continues its jamming session but now the sea around them and amidst them is covered with floating lifeless bodies and debris; adults and children, arms and legs hanging down the side, bodies washed up, life jackets, clothes, shoes, backpacks, suitcases. Apparently, the catastrophe does not provoke any reaction from the seated group, not more than a couple of tears rolling down their cheeks.

In the final sequence, the circle of the seated people disappears. A solitary female figure dressed in black is the only person who remains. She is sitting alone in the middle of the open, calm waters where the drowned bodies and the debris are still floating. Kaiti Makri, the performer/singer of traditional music and founding member of the ETT sings a cappella the traditional song ‘Tzivaeri’. A song originating from the Dodecanese islands that deals with the suffering and hardships of the Greek immigrants abroad. A mother lamenting for her treasure, her immigrant child. A song well known to all Greek immigrants and a painful reminder of Greece’s recent historic past as a land of frequent emigration; a situation that has resurfaced once again during the economic crisis. Also, a painful reminder for the city of Alexandroupolis where a great a part of the population is third and fourth generation refugees because of forced ethnic migrations that occurred in the context of the Balkan wars. The affective power of the song and of the human voice activates the imagination and the emotions. Grief, melancholy, mourning—bridging inarticulate places of memory and personal experience. In opposition to the paratactic, linear flow of the previous moving images, which are infused with rhythmic markers of time and spatial striation, this image expresses a sense of stasis; of suspension in an in-between space where time seems to stop. Or where time past, future and present coexist. Perception becomes a space of reflection, and the audience immerses itself into a collective experience like dreaming. Are these images emerging from the unconscious of humankind? Remembrance images of collective memory? Sarah Ahmed proposes that ‘emotions do things, and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments’ [16].

Politicization is an affective experience. But the affect is not simply found in a particular body but in the circulation between bodies and signs, transcending the spatial or temporal sense of the here and the now. These emotions and affects chart for us a personal journey to a place from where as individuals, as communities and societies we might allow the experiences of others to be heard. All questions remain unanswered, but the images created by the collective ethos of the citizens, members of the ETT, ask of us to step out of our stagnant habits, overcome stereotypes and reflect on archetypal humanitarian ways of providing asylum and welcoming the other. Emancipatory and transformative in nature, the performances created by the ETT involved the development of the perceptive, imaginative and empathic capacities of a socially engaged citizen who does justice to the depth and complexity of lived human experience. The citizen that with curiosity and care, seeks to understand and, where possible, to improve the world we all find ourselves in. The process created by the ETT developed a comprehensive community and promoted collective artistic expression as a dynamic social experience and a vehicle of personal and collective transformation without for a moment reverting to artistic simplifications. The projects created a socially engaged participatory art, channeling art’s symbolic capital towards constructive social change and not even for a moment forgetting to discuss, analyze and compare the works critically as art. Art can act as a vehicle for the dominant social and political imaginary operative in a particular society, but it can also attempt to dismantle it and counter the core social representations of a given culture. Art can reify a given situation or break with it to bring alternative worldviews into focus. Art can act as a powerful framework for collective identity by producing powerful counter histories. Art can raise questions about the world we are living in, and staging inquiries aimed at proposing possible solutions. Art can offer alternative modes of perception. Art can celebrate political developments or propose an alternative world. Art can foster experiments with alternative social and political structures or new modes of collective interaction.

5 Conclusion

During its ten years of existence the Experimental theatre of Thrace created projects of artistic activism that belong to the sphere of making art that works politically. Long before the exploitation of the refugee crisis for political economic and artistic purposes, the ETT fostered a new kind of citizenship ethos and developed another way of being a citizen, the citizen performer. In their collective works they presented new perspectives to see and to imagine the world; by creating subtle, affective, and visceral impressions beyond the immediately measurable, countable, and describable. The ETT proposed a world based on the ethos of solidarity with the Other as the foundation upon which all other relations rest. Being an autonomous non-profit organization that did not comply to agencies owned or run by the state or regulated by official policies and commercial interests, the ETT is a seminal paradigm of the creative collaboration between professional artists and communities, both benefiting greatly from the collaborative process. The ETT provides us with a great example of how artistic projects can regenerate communities and how communities are empowered to produce cultural artistic projects where the creative process promotes ethical and social responsibility, awareness, and social sustainability.