Category: Theatre and Dance

Ways of Listening is a new research and development collaboration between the world-renowned theatre company Complicité and Theatre Regional d’Oran supported by the British Council Algeria and Algerian Ministry of Culture and Arts.

Following the call for applications for the project on October 14, 2021, the project is launched. 

Over the course of two weeks in December, nine Algerian artists, from a range of disciplines, will be guided by two Complicité Associates based in the UK, Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and Paula Varjack. They will develop a process of performance-making which transcends borders, languages and cultural differences using social media and other online platforms to explore how artists can create a live, embodied, collective theatrical experience when physically apart, and online. 

Together with Creative Producer, Lily Einhorn, the lead artists and Algerian collaborators will attempt to develop new practices, collaborations, and ways of listening to create a new artistic practice and legacy for both Algerian and UK artists.

Documentation will form a part of the working process and material will be posted to social media over the course of the two weeks. Complicité encourages artists to work from a position of curiosity and cultivates a desire for them to see things differently. A key part to the Complicité methodology is developing the consciousness to stand back from oneself and to see the world with compassion and empathy.

About Complicité

“…the most influential and consistently interesting theatre company working in Britain” -The Times

Complicité is an international touring theatre company based in London led by Artistic Director and co-founder Simon McBurney OBE. Complicité creates work that strengthens human interconnection, using the complicity between performer and audience that is at the heart of the theatrical experience. Complicité works across art forms, believing theatre, opera, film, installation, publication and participatory arts can all be sites for the collective act of imagination. 

Complicité’s recent work at includes Beware of Pity, The Encounter, The Master and Margarita, Shun-kin and A Disappearing Number. Founded in 1983, the Company has won over 50 major theatre awards worldwide. 

About Le Théâtre Régional d’Oran

Le Théâtre Régional d’Oran has been an architectural jewel that the city has enjoyed since 1905. After national independence, the theatre was nationalized in 1963 along with all the other theatres in Algeria. In 1972, it obtained its autonomy and became Le Théâtre Régional d’Oran  with as its first Director, the great playwright Abdelkader Alloula, who was assassinated by terrorism in 1994, since it bears his name. The T.R.O has not ceased to work for the promotion of the dramatic arts both regionally and nationally. To date, he has created nearly sixty-two theatrical pieces largely due to national authors. His dramatic repertoire contains works that are part of the genre, both classical and experimental. The authors who however marked him indelibly are the deceased Abderrahmane Kaki and Abdelkader Alloula.

The Algerian artists:

Zahia Ait Assia, Sensabyl Beghdadi, Sabrina Boukhorssa, Nora Boukraa Djellou, Younes Djouani, Medbouhi Amine, Lamraoui Mohamed Nadjib, Sihem Salhi and Younes Merabet. 

This in-depth creative experiment across countries and digital platforms will result in a final sharing to an invited audience on 17 December 2021.

You can downlaod the biographies of collaborating artists from Algeria and the UK below:
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