The lab is a part of the Future Epics project, envisioned to highlight the suppressed and forgotten historical narratives through arts. The project is a two-year Creative Europe cooperation between Heartefact (Serbia), Tasca (Spain), Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts (Sweden) and Dubrovnik Summer Festival (Croatia). This Lab is the first out of three labs that will be organized as a part of the project. It is an additional way of searching for topics that can be used later in the creative process and also a way of creating a team that could work on the final performances that will be presented at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival in 2020.

The Future Epics lab will gather dramaturgs, ethnologists and cultural anthropologists or students in that field. The main topics of this project’s narratives are mostly related to the cultural heritage in the widest context of this term – reconstruction, reevaluation, deconstruction, relativization and creating a tradition, in the sense of material and non-material cultural/historical heritage.

By exploring different historical periods, our participants will be encouraged to explore specific topics that can be related to a place, an object, a concept (of a historical importance), with a special reference to the concept of the collective memory.

During this lab, the participants will be given a chance to explore what leads to the creation of the place for memory and the invention of a tradition, to find out where is the boundary between the historical facts and the history we need, and to learn how to turn the historical elements from a linear diegesis to more clear causal relationships and narratives.

The participants will be mentored by Biljana Srbljanovic, one of the best-known playwrights and dramaturgs in Southern Europe. Her plays have been translated and staged all across the world, and her work usually contains a prominent dimension of facing the past through art. Her curriculum for this lab includes practical work combined with theoretical lectures, which will rely on concepts such as Eric Hobsbawm’s “Invention of Tradition”, Pierre Nora’s “Realms of Memory”, as well as Lehman’s theory of postdramatic theatre, Kristeva’s definition of the term “polylogue”, and Bakhtinian concept of polyphony.

The lab will last 6 days and will result in a showcase during which the participants’ artwork will be presented individually or collectively, depending on the group’s dynamics and affinities.

We invite the interested dramaturgs, ethnologists and cultural anthropologists of all ages and backgrounds to send their CV and short motivational letter to lab@futurepics.org by 31st December 2018. The jury will choose six participants for the lab.

The lab will take place from 11th to 17th February 2019 in Belgrade. Travel and accommodation costs for the participants are covered by the project.

Additional information:
Future Epics website: http://futurepics.org/
Future Epics facebook page: https://https://www.facebook.com/future.epics/