Shake-in the City

The project “Shake-in the City. The art of inclusion” aims to make art and theatre accessible, to bring art to people who would not otherwise make an effort to experience it. This aim is relevant to the main theme of the European Year 2010 – Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. Our intention is to stimulate inhabitants of the lower potential areas in the suburbs of big cities and the region, to actively participate in culture. Preventing social exclusion through culture, providing inspiration, entertainment and motivation to take part in and experience art is at the core of the undertaking. We want to animate community groups by recruiting them as volunteers for cultural activities. We plan to „Shake” the towns and cities with William Shakespeare, the most popular pan-European writer of all times, whose works provide a platform of mutual cultural understanding between European societies.

Activities are designed to operate in underprivileged districts and socially excluded regions, directly with children and young people by involving them in activities together with the international group of artists of different genres, in preparing site-specific artistic events. They are to saturate the cities with artistic activities (performing arts, visual art, murals, multimedia, music and dance, etc), which are to be presented not only in city centres, but also in the suburbs and out in the region. There will also be a special artistic workshop programme for the children of Dolne Miasto, a socially and culturally neglected district of Gdansk as well as a collaborative production of “Pericles”, a community play prepared by the British Parrabbola group in cooperation with local community participants. Organizers plan to combine educational, artistic and advertising means to invade the city with art and culture, and give the inhabitants a sense of involvement and participation.

A number of major theatrical events are scheduled in each of the cooperating cities and regions, accompanied by theatre and art workshop programmes, involving volunteers and the general public. The major events will include e.g.: “As You Like It” by the Transcarpathian Hungarian Drama Theatre, coproduced by Gyula Castle Theatre (presentations in Gdansk, Poland and Neuss, Germany); „Henry VIII” by Bea von Malchus Solotheater  (presentations in Gdansk, Poland; Gyula, Hungary and Neuss, Germany); “Hamlet” directed by Oskaras Korsunovas, a renowned Lithuanian director (to be presented in Gdansk, Poland); a Shakespearean monodrama by Andrzej Seweryn, a distinguished Shakespearean actor of the Polish Slowacki Theatre and Comédie Française (presentations in Gdansk, Poland), a multimedia theatre presentation of “Macbeth” by Sopot Sphinx Artistic Group (the production includes modern video-mapping technology and elements of dance, animation, live music, visual techniques etc – stagings in Gdańsk, Poland).