Georgian theatre company refused visa to perform in Britain
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Version 0 of 1. The Flare festival, which takes place in Manchester in mid-July, is a celebration of performance by emerging artists from all over the world. Although, maybe not from Georgia. The New Collective, based in Tbilisi, are due to perform with a durational piece, Welcome, selected by festival director Neil Mackenzie. The show takes the form of a week-long house-warming party, and is a look at contemporary migration, inspired by Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The festival invited them and would pick up their costs. But the British authorities are so concerned that this young collective will want to migrate to the UK that their visa application has been refused. They are young, single, without dependents and have very little in their bank accounts, so cannot prove satisfactorily that they are “genuine” visitors to the UK and would leave following their performances. Clearly, those who issue these visas have not peeked at the bank accounts of young British artists and seen how very little they earn too. Young British artists invited abroad very seldom face the difficulties faced by young artists who live outside the EU and are invited to perform here. Indeed, the bi-annual British Council Showcase will be at this year’s Edinburgh fringe: a terrific opportunity for those selected, it is unashamedly about selling British culture all across the world. Every company I know which has travelled as a result of invitations issued by countries from China to South America, and from India to the Middle East, says that this kind of inter-cultural, cross-border collaboration has been an eye-opener and influenced their work for the better. They have made life-long friendships, met collaborators, and made better work afterwards because of it. If we don’t want British contemporary theatre to become a little ghetto of its own, then our theatre-makers need to get outside of European borders more, and that is likely to become more difficult if we won’t let others in. We need to be able to invite more theatre to our shores, just as Flare is doing, and festivals such as the London International Festival of Theatre. But securing visas for such festivals has become a full-time job. It’s when young emerging British and European performance-makers such as Jamal Harewood, Sleepwalk Collective and Figs in Wigs get the chance to meet on a daily basis over an entire week with those making theatre in other parts of the world that sparks fly, imaginations are ignited and collaborations born. Our theatre culture is all the richer for it. New Collective’s director, Mareike Wenzel, who has a German passport and can travel here freely, first met the rest of the group when she taught them. But, she asks: “how can I teach students in Georgia and show them the possibilities of an artistic career, when all the time I have to inform them about their limitations?” Neil MacKenzie and Flare are continuing with their efforts to secure the company visas, and there is a petition at Change.org, with 684 signatures at the time of writing, asking home secretary Theresa May “to accept letters attesting to their good character and artistic integrity in place of proof of substantial income, to help correct a situation that seems so deeply wrong”. But New Collective’s story is just one of those that are increasingly heard about visas being denied to artists who simply want the opportunity to show their work, meet those from other places and cultures, and then return home. British theatre-makers are lucky enough to be able to do this all the time. But for how long, if there is no reciprocity? As this example and others seem to show, and as Wenzel observes: “artists’ freedoms stop at EU borders”. |