Martina Čurdová

I work as a theatre director, performer and lecturer. I have studied Theatre performance and directing at Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. Very prestigious and progressive art school, but I was disappointed. I couldn´t see any sense. I have felt art has a lots of power. The power that people went to experience in the theatres of ancient Greece, not only the catharsis, but also metanoia, a principle of deep transformation.

In search of new approaches I went for an arts internship in Spain, working with second and third generation migrant youth. They were going through a heavy integration process and their anger and aggression were immense. We were supposed to work on a Catalan author, but it was clear to me that is not the way to go for us. I offered to work on their own stories and bring them on stage. Stories of people who were rejected, whose stories existed in shadows, flattened and often misinterpreted both by the majority and their own families. The impact of that evening performance was what I was looking for in theatre. That was in 2010 and since then I have been working as a freelance theatre director, peformer and trainer.

I see theatre as a space of personal development and social change. I have been working with communities in conflict (post-war, border regions,...), marginalized and socially or ethnically excluded (Roma, refugees, rural communities, suburbs and empoverished communities,...) or communities that just want to bring change. I use diverse techniques ranging from documentary devised theatre to new circus. I have been involved in various research projects (H2020 Commemoration project planning, Aegean University Migration Trauma Summer school, Czech-German theatre transborder research project etc.) that have been dealing with options of social change through arts.