The end of an adventure… the beginning of a new one

Two weeks have already past since I left Slovenia. It feels strange. I didn’t expect the departure will be so emotional. Now I think about it, it had lots of similarities with the arrival: huge confusion, excitement, regular cries, nostalgic moments, stress of the unknown, the feeling of being lost…

I think this end of mission was even harder because we had such an intense month filled with exalting projects and conclusion events that the moment to say goodbye arrived abruptly. I guess it would have been easier in the end of November, when we were less busy and super nostalgic of our countries and relatives. On the other hand, it would not have been the same feeling of accomplishment.

The biggest element of this last month was a big challenge, that I accepted without really knowing what I was entering in. The point was to have a Theatre performance about Calais Calais, a diary written by a German activist, relating her traumatic experience in the french refugee camp of the same name. Reading the text was the first tough step: realising the precarious reality of thousands of refugees located only few hours from my hometown, plus the anger of local fascist was for me a huge slap. With Tomaž and Sofia, we had less than a month to prepare the performance, that will be shown in GT22, a cultural centre that had some expectations. This thing will be real and we had nothing. Big panic.But since nothing good comes from panic, we tried to overcome it, and came up with ideas, that we found surprisingly quite good. We decided to illustrate this diary through diverse forms of theatre : frozen images, dance, puppets, shadows… and for this we’ve been rehearsing almost everyday, jumping from emotional sessions to unstoppable laugh that become necessaries under pressure. One week before the D-Day, I yielded to panic : What was I doing here ? I had never acted before, how will I remember all the text without screwing up everything ? Luckily, , Sofia had the right words : whatever what we will do, we’re not doing it for others, but for us, to honor the text, and if it is sincere, it can’t be really bad. Once again, the meaning of her name was correct.

On the day of the performance, I felt something never felt before, a sensation of emptiness in my head, that I can’t remember any of my text. And we learn that the national TV is here to interview us, as if the pressure wasn’t already to high... But we had no choice, the audience was there, we just had to jump in. I tried not to look at the audience, we gave everything we had, It actually went all right ! After the performance, we had lots of positive feedback and it felt good to see that some people got really affected, even cried, because they got the message and found our illustration immerse and powerful. Apparently, we broke the record of audience, with 70 spectators for 40 seats. We even talked about having it again in Greece and France. A huge challenge indeed, but I think successfully accepted !

After this major event, some other followed, including the finale exhibition of my students of the Alternative Drawing class. It was a good reflect of the sessions : improvised and spontaneous ! Drawings were hanged on some strings, as drying laundries surrounded by candles. Very few people came, but we didn’t care : the student were so proud of having their work exhibited ! And the greatest thing is that they want to keep going with meeting weekly and drawing together : goal achieved ! Same thing for the open stage : it feels great to see that something you started will go on, maybe because it made some people happy.

So here I am now, in France, trying to figure out what happened, realising how things and people changed here but especially how I changed during this year. Not sure at all about what I want for this year, of what I want my future to be, but sure of what I don’t want in my life. And as new year’s resolution, I only want to keep everything I learnt this year in my mind : keep cool, listen to yourself, fight for who you are and what you believe, and experiences are much more important than material things. First time of my life I don’t know exactly how this helf-year will be, the schedule is blank, but I’m not afraid, I’m sure some cultural project will come, some foreigner friends, activist actions, and some other surprises will cross my way...

Colin