Theatre’s Power for Change: My Journey to the Italy/Slovenia Border

Gareth Southgate had a “genuine desire to unite people around a particular project rather than divide people and cause upset,” said British playwright James Graham in his tribute to the departing England football manager after the nation’s defeat to Spain in the final of Euro 24.

Graham, known for his sharp political dramas that often expose division, doublespeak, and hypocrisy, is currently rewriting his football drama, Dear England, in light of this outcome. His words recall the role of theatre-makers and their responsibility to unite audiences around a “particular project.”

Is a good theatre director akin to a successful football manager? Theatre is traditionally built upon conflict, but does it have a duty to unite its audience, perhaps through empathy? These questions become more pertinent in the context of cross-border European theatre projects, where the mission is often as diplomatic as it is creative.

This brings us to events like the Theatre Olympics, staged in Budapest last year, and numerous other pan-European cultural initiatives aimed at fostering understanding and bringing the continent closer together.

While the sequin-studded showmanship of the Eurovision song contest may not have achieved this mission to unite through music this year, a quieter event on the same night aspired to European cross-border harmony through theatre.

In Gorizia, an adaptation of Joseph Roth’s 1938 novel, The Emperor’s Tomb, was performed as part of Mittelfest, an annual festival of culture on the Italian-Slovenian border. The city, divided by the border between Italy and Slovenia, will be a joint European Capital of Culture in 2025. This production was the first in a trilogy of plays set to be performed on both Italian and Slovenian soil.

Roth’s epic follows its protagonist through the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the First World War, and the rise of the Nazi party. The themes reflect the divided legacy of the region, which was part of Austria-Hungary until the First World War and then split after the formation of Yugoslavia. One side of the city was barricaded from the other until 1994; a barrier seen as Middle Europe’s own Berlin Wall. The region has long served as a meeting point between central Europe and the west.

Mittelfest, founded in 1991, aims to breach mutual suspicions and political divides in the region. The festival’s artistic director, Giacomo Pedini, chose Roth’s story because it “captures the spirit of our time.” Pedini asserts that the region’s history has been erased on both sides, and the festival aims to “remember.” He mentioned, “For Slovenia, it started in 1945, and Italy suppressed its history too.”

The motivation to unite through culture is commendable, but can it be successfully used as a diplomatic tool?

In this case, the ambition seemed muted. Directed by Pedini, the play felt like a cautiously rendered costume drama, cautious in its political parallels and distanced from our time. Despite the contemporary rise of the far-right, including Italy’s turn in this direction, its plodding pace stretched to almost four hours. I staggered out of the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in Gorizia at 1am, unsure how the production spoke to today’s politics.

This not the choice of source material but the cautious handling of it made it a missed opportunity. I hope the next two plays in the trilogy, opening in Slovenia in the autumn and in Italy next year, will be more willing to interrogate recent history. One is set in the 1960s behind the Iron Curtain, and the other in the dying days of the Soviet Union, involving a journalist investigating a rape case in Yugoslavia. We need a robust challenge from fiction and the stage, not oblique parallels through the veil of costume drama.

Historical drama, when well executed, can be equally confrontational. This festival has faced division more directly in the past. Under former leadership by Bosnian theatre director Haris Pašović, the programme did not shy away from provocation. Pašović aimed to “build bridges and not walls,” convened ensembles from both sides of the border, and infused the programme with politics. He also spoke against local politicians when they proposed raising the Italy-Slovenia wall to halt migration, provoking headlines like, “Pašović go home!”

Pašović thought he would be fired for his outspokenness, but he retained his job, and festival audiences kept coming. What has changed is the political climate. The hard-right League party, now in coalition with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, won the local elections shortly after. Far more people in this region now seem suspicious of “building bridges and not walls,” says Gianni Barbacetto, a veteran journalist.

A changed political climate may inevitably impact government-funded cultural programming, possibly defining how politically inflammatory a theatre festival can be. Is the festival’s purpose to foster a frank exchange of ideas, or merely to gloss over difficult conversations? And to what degree does funding define that? Would productions like Pedini’s be braver if the money behind them came from a non-governmental source?

Off-stage, suspicion seems to lurk beneath daily life across the region. Trucks crossing the border are searched for fear of illegal immigrants and alleged terrorism. Rumors and conspiracy theories abound about Islamic radicalism in Bosnia leaking into Italy. A taxi driver mentioned that casinos in Nova Gorica are secretly run as brothels.

Barbacetto sums up the long-held Italian prejudice towards Slovenians with the pejorative term, sciavi, or slave. At Transalpina Square in 1994, the site of the original border wall, he remembers when it came down. The square is now full of rubble, being refurbished for the Go! 2025 celebrations. Barbacetto recalls a time when two worlds were opening up – the concept of bridges, not walls, in action.

Cross-border initiatives in Europe need to be broad enough to appeal to a bilingual, bicultural audience. But at a time when Europe faces global challenges like the war in Ukraine, the shadow of Donald Trump, and the rise of the far-right, we need art to be increasingly politically challenging.

Perhaps cultural jamborees like this one should draw inspiration from Graham’s political writing or Pašović’s tenure, defined by a desire to agitate and expose the world’s wrongs from the stage.

Source: The Guardian