The Borges Project
New Project Group (Borges Project)
At the 1995 ITI World Congress, the New Project Group was formed with the immediate goal of developing and carrying out a multinational creative projects. The King Lear Project (1997) and the Ariadne and Anger Project (2002) followed.
The current collaboration, The Borges Project, inspired by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges's "The Circular Ruins," was presented at the 2006 ITI Congress in the Philippines, May 22-28. News about the project's development can be found on NPG's website .
Read Heather Cohn's impressions of the Borges Project at the 2006 ITI World Congress in Manila in her article How to Dream a Man in the American Theatre archives.
Artistic Statements
SWITZERLAND
Team: Philippe Nauer, Dominique Rust and Natalija Saile-Pocuca
Dreamland
From Jorge Luis Borges's short story "The Circular Ruins," we have picked out the topics of "dream" and "reconstruction." Dreams are constant companions during an entire lifetime. While dreaming, everything seems to be possible. Everyone knows to what is means to wake up and be torn away from a dream. You try to grasp the density of the dream—to describe it, to fully restore its pictures. But mostly, only fragments remain. The reconstructions are incomplete. The intensity fades in the light of daily life. In keeping with our previous works, we will pursue a non-linear and not purely theatrical style of storytelling. We will play with specific terms and parts of "The Circular Ruins" and develop, through videos, sounds, objects and words, an ambiguous puzzle. In "dreamland" we won't take on the roles of actors in the classical sense. We consider ourselves much more as speakers and OJs—object jockeys.
PHILIPPINES
Team: Eustess C. Guia and Cyrell Collado
Dreams are not true and truth is not a dream.
The play narrates the stories of the tri-people in Mindanao: the Lumads, the Low Landers (the settlers), and the Muslims. The Lumads assert their ancestral domain, the Low Landers the right to self-determination, while the Muslims have it as a Bangsa Moro.
We live not to survive, but we live to co-exist.
UNITED STATES
Team: Kevin Bitterman, Michael John Garcés, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Aya Ogawa and KJ Sanchez
Themes of arrival and identity resonate with the American journey of constant renewal. America is waking to a reality that’s been dreamed by a detached political and economic elite. Destroyed and desecrated holy sites abound, palenque, rosewood, machu pichu—all ruins. We have attempted to explore the dramatic act of creation, a place in which no assumption can be made, creating a context in which failure is not only possible, but likely, and in which the spectator may be caught up in this tension, an agony of creative suspense. Our words, music and movement are generated towards a creative act.
CROATIA
Team: Larisa Lipouac, Bojan Navojec and Ivica Simic
1 Corinthians 3/13: Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is…The temple of god is holy, which temple ye are.
“Do not be afraid! You are not alone.” —Tin Ujevic
CAMEROON
Team: Zigoto Tchaya Fr Tchameni Jr
This is a look into the essence of one’s existence and the pursuing of our phantasms. Existence is all a dream which we have to be conscious of. Our existence is the projection of the dreams of the gods, as Fire God gave life to the Adam of dream. The play questions cosmology. How did man come about? Man is the projection of the god's phantasms. We all live in a dream world. The whole essence of the dream is for the pleasure of the gods. We are dreamed to worship them. The whole process goes on in a circular manner just as the ruins in a circular form were destroyed and the process starts all over again. Our world has been dreamt and imposed upon reality by some gods. It can not be controlled.
BELGIUM
Team: Valerie Cordy
The dream of a man, is it part of the memory of all of us?
How do we tell a story that isn’t our own?
Can we impose dreams upon reality?
What does it mean to be alone behind a computer?
Does the computer have its own aesthetic?
JAPAN
Team: Chikako Bando, Arata-Alicia Kitamura, Leyna-Marika Papach and Niho Tsukimura
One creates another—that is an idea that human beings believe as the most important action in constructing their universe. Borges’s “The Circular Ruins” presents and explains this by telling of one’s dream and adds a new horizon—one who dreams and creates another is also an existence created by other one’s dream. We create a circular structure in which one element/existence is made by another’s dream. It is like dialogue or trio-logue—by invisible existences supporting others invisible to them. It is united together, and it will be united again together with the same breathing.
GERMANY
Team: Frank Düwel, Katharina Uhland and Alexander von Hugo
The Egoism of Dreams
To dream someone or to be dreamt by someone is a part of human nature. To make these dreams come true is the beginning of violence, strangeness, and maybe humor.