The online interactive performance “Waiting for Brexit” by the Etheatre Project will be presented on 6 September, online in UpStage and at TaPRA 2019 at the University of Exeter.

On January 2014, Christina Papagiannouli cyber-collaborated remotely with international artists and cyberformance experts, who were born in different countries from those in which they were living at that time, to stage a cyberformance on UpStage platform on the topic of migration, immigration and emigration as part of The Etheatre Project practice-based research. Based on our personal migration stories, the live online performance looked at different types of visible and invisible borders, including passports and visas, man-made and natural borders to conclude that ‘global cities seem more like concrete transit locations – like metro stops where people arrive and leave (Papagiannouli 2014, 241).

Five years later, and with Brexit on our doorstep, Christina is re-looking at the topic of borders/borderlands, this time from the angle of a recently naturalized British citizen. Inspired by Waiting for Godot, this semi-adaptation semi-autobiographical performance will look at borderlands as in-between spaces, both literally and metaphorically: border checkpoints, airports, Beckett’s ‘a country road, a tree’, a multi-national identity, waiting for Brexit, the Internet, an online performance, practice research … can all be considered as borderlands, ‘in-between’ transit spaces that allow contradictions to be made and new aesthetics and subjectivities to be accomplished. Participants will be invited to draw their own images of ‘borderlands’ over the first day of the conference, which will be then used as backdrops/scenery for the live, chat-based, interactive performance.

Concept, Creation and Director: Christina Papagiannouli
Devisers/Performers: Christina Papagiannouli and Evi Stamatiou