Company Information
Voices was produced by the Center for Children's Theatre Development (CCTD) in Pristina, Kosovo. CCTD was founded in 2002, and its principal goals are to develop theatre skills and proficiency amongst the youth in Kosovo. Its projects aim to connect theatre to social problems and social change through an educational framework. Voices was directed by Jonathan Chadwick of Az Theatre, UK who was working in partnership with CCTD.
Voices endeavours to give voice to the relatives of the more than 5,000 persons missing as a result of the conflict in Kosovo. One of the principal funding partners in the project was the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) within the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo, which is responsible for the identification of remains and the linking of those remains to missing persons. Voices sought to use theatre as a means through which the families of the missing could have a forum to express their ongoing frustrations and confusions about their unaccounted for relatives. Because of the project's aim to be participatory, the first stage of the work involved conducting interviews with people who were missing relatives to record their stories and experiences. The theatre portion of project was carried out using two theatre companies, one Serbian and one Albanian that each consisted of a writer, a moderator/joker and three actors. The two writers were given the raw interview material and invited to script a set of short scenes mirroring the experiences of those interviewed. The final selection of scenes reflected work from both writers; however, due to language differences between Serbian and Albanian communities, the performances and theatre companies remained segregated. To further enhance the participatory nature of the project, the scenes were presented in forum-style theatre, where the audience is able to interrupt the performance and suggest alternate formulations. This format allowed local people to voice their opinions and concerns regarding the issue of missing persons. Thus, the construction and final presentation of the stories presented in Voices were always linked to local stories.
