CircleTales & Yalla Arts
Rooted: a collaboration between CircleTales and Yalla Arts with Giorgia Ferrari, Maisaa Sweid, Valentina Todino, Marie Trinchant.
For our first-ever collaboration together, we invited four women who live in Exeter, who are originally from other countries (Italy, France, and Syria), to play CircleTales, a new collaborative story-making game, with the idea of turning the final story into a dramatic performance with Yalla Arts, a community theatre company based in Exeter.
There were a lot of unknowns when we started: What would the story be like? What ideas would be generated through the drama exercises? How would we convey the richness of language and cultural background of each of the participants? What form would our final performance take?
The story created by the four participants playing CircleTales together was truly epic: a real heroine's journey, which spurred lots of conversation about the imagery, archetypes, and the unfolding of a shared imaginative landscape.
In the drama session, we explored proverbs in our own languages, devised an improvised skit carrying forward the themes of fire, being in circle, nature, connection between women, and even created an original song thanks to the expertise of Valentina Todino, one of the participants, which became the theme music for the final piece.
What surprised us all was how naturally the story emerged, fully formed, and how the proverbs, song, and spirit of collaboration, inspired genuine feelings of creative energy and connection between us.
CircleTales is a tabletop game designed in Exeter by Annie Murdock and Herman Castañeda to help people, whether friends, family or complete strangers, find meaningful connection through collaborative storytelling: https://www.circletales.com/
Yalla Arts, founded by Aqeel Abdulla, is a participatory community theatre company based in Exeter that provides a safe space for participants from diverse cultures to share their stories, deepen their sense of themselves as creative individuals, and develop theatrical work in community: https://yalla-arts.com/