Taking Back the Booty: Loss & Belonging in the Eastern Mediterranean
Taking Back the Booty: Loss & Belonging in the Eastern Mediterranean
About the Process:
Taking Back the Booty is a staged performance in which four women of the Eastern Mediterranean share their experiences of displacement as related to belonging, loss and reclamation through words, music, dance and the visual arts. They touch on the displacement of the body in the physical space (addressing the womb, the land, war and occupation); displacement of the mind and the mental space (through mental illness that follows conflict, the inherited trauma of displaced parents…); and displacement of the spiritual and social space (through patriarchy, societal, familial constructs).
In this multilingual production, the performers will blend English, Greek, Turkish and Arabic, reflecting the transnational and cross-cultural history of displacement, particularly as it relates to the Eastern Mediterranean. Focusing on personal lived experiences of the universal issues of forced migration and voluntary displacement, the production is simultaneously personal and universal.
Creative Team:
Four women with roots in different parts of the Eastern Mediterranean will write and perform together:
Reem Maghribi is a UN consultant, NGO director, gender specialist, story curator and narrative artist (www.reemmaghribi.com). Manuella Mavromichalis is an exhibited artist, novel writer, art educator and poetry slam finalist. (www.manuellamavromichalis.com). Bahriye Kemal is a published British-Cypriot poet-performer, writer, activist, academic, university lecturer and post-colonialist. (https://bit.ly/3ewEjCg). Maria Kouvarou is a PhD in Musicology, a published creative writer and a performer. (https://bit.ly/3gC0wR9)
They will be supported by: Omar Alshikh is a journalist and poet and curator of the story collection “Belonging in the Diaspora”. Loizos Constantinou is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and instructor. Adi Atassi is a Syrian-Cypriot artist with a long history exploring and exhibiting on the island. Sharq.Org is an NGO specialised in story curation, cultural production and identities of the Mediterranean Basin & Middle East.
