THE VOYAGE PROJECT

A company of actors from Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Poland. Israel and the US explore the core theme, myth and metaphor of the "Journey", based upon their personal and collective experiences amid the recent dramatic upheavals in their countries and cultures.

As once the winged energy of delight
Carried you over childhood's dark abysses
Now beyond your own life build the great
Arch of unimagined bridges

Wonders happen if we can succeed
In passing through the harshest danger;
But only in a bright and purely granted
Achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
Relationship is not too hard for us;
The pattern grows more intricate and subtle
And being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
Until they span the chasm between two
Contradictions……………For the god
Wants to know himself in you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

The Voyage Project - Director's Notes
The theme of Voyage or Journey is perhaps the most central and abiding of all dramatic and literary motifs; its meanings and definitions myriad, vast, nearly infinite. The theme is embraced by all the seminal works of the Eastern and Western worlds – The Odyssey, the Holy Grail, the Ramayana, the Arabian Nights and countless others. What these stories have in common is that they all reflect aspects of the human condition and embody aspirations, triumphs and sufferings that are universally recognized. Certainly they have changed and diversified over the centuries as each age has seized on them and restated the themes for their particular time. But whatever the temporal and cultural permutations may have been, the essential metaphor has remained unchanged – that of the journey through life with its confrontations and overcoming of obstacles, its triumphs and its transformations. Thus was born the idea of bringing together a group of young actors, each from a country which has undergone significant political or cultural changes . Rooted in their personal life experience and working through songs, stories, poems and dreams, we would then go in search of the collective and/or individual stories for our time. Geographically our voyage took us first in June of 2001 to the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, Romania, a highly picturesque Baroque city in the heart of Transylvania. During our Workshop there, two things emerged above all. One was the marvel of watching the members of this initially disparate and cautious group gradually open their hearts to each other, to me and, perhaps most of all, to themselves. Secondly, the more this occurred, the more it became clear I needed to surrender my conventional role as the Director of some pre- conceived formal theatre piece in favor of something more like a witness, facilitator, cajoler and provocateur to the wonderful and unpredictable process I saw unfolding before me. After a month hiatus, we met again in Cividale, the ancient mediaeval town in Northern Italy. In my notes at the time I wrote: "I am imagining something like a stop along the way to some unspecified destination where a group of travelers have met by chance or by design to pass the time by sharing songs and stories of their countries and of their lives. But that is only a form, for who knows what else may emerge in this magic time and what experiences may in some way forever change the hearts and minds (and journeys) of all those who happen to be present ."

Looking back at those words, they proved more prescient than I ever could possibly have imagined. As the actors recounted the legends and personal stories I had asked them to gather and as the shapes and contours and rhythms of the piece began to emerge, I experienced a powerful confirmation of the intuition that had guided me to undertake The Voyage Project in the first place. That:

Our personal stories contain within them the seeds of transformation both for the teller and the listener and that if, together with the old stories, we can simply learn to listen, then perhaps we will not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again throughout history.

We met again the following year in Sibiu but, this time, to give our first full performance in an ancient fortress in the hills above the town. In the ensuing time, 9/11 had occurred and a young American actor joined the ensemble to recount his first hand experience of this harrowing event. Due in part to our success in Sibiu, we were subsequently invited to perform in 2003 for the entire period of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. This time the continued escalation of the situation in the Middle East prompted me to add yet another participant, an Israeli who speaks of his experience in the Army during the first Intifada. And finally, having seen our show in Spoleto, both Mary Miller of the International Festival of Arts&Ideas and Ellen Stewart of LaMama have invited us to appear for the first time in the U.S..

Now, with what feels like the entire world in upheaval:  the consequences of September 11, the war in Iraq, the Bush Presidency, the conflict in the Middle East, the situation in Afghanistan etc., the message carried by the young voices of The Voyage Project has become all the more relevant and all the more poignant. Over the tragic din of conflict, they resonate as youthful testimonies of compassion which, in their intensely unique and personal way, pay homage to the human spirit and shine a beacon of hope on the essential wonder and value of being alive.

May the voyage continue!

Peter Goldfarb
Feb 2004

Peter Goldfarb's Bio