Proudly Introducing our 2021 Residency Artists
Today marks the date we should have been arriving in Sicily for the first ever Open Creative Residency. Unfortunately, that isn’t happening this year…but we are excited to announce that exactly one year from today, four new and extraordinary artists will be arriving in Pezzolo for the first time, and we could not be more excited. Our new residency dates are July 26th - August 16th, 2021. Coronavirus may have pushed things back, but it cannot stop us!
We received an overwhelming number of submissions to our first ever Open Creative Residency and we we read every single one with great interest. We were thoroughly impressed with the quality of the applications; our sincere thanks to all those who applied! Congratulations also to Evelyn Dumont, whose environmentally conscious approach to theatre-making also made an impact on the panel and who has been named as a finalist.
We are so thrilled to introduce you to the four artists whose work was selected. Each of these fantastic individuals will spend three weeks developing their independent artistic practice. Their work will be featured in the third edition of the Trinacria Arts Festival which will be held August 11 - 13, 2021. We’ll be offering three fun-filled days of arts, theater, music, games, and more in the village of Pezzolo. Mark your calendars!
Meet the Artists
NIKI AFSAR is an emerging Iranian-American theater maker and writer. In the past five years, she has lived in Brooklyn, Tehran, and the D.C. area, practicing theater, studying Farsi, and developing her writing. After studying Comparative Literature and Media Studies at the University of Virginia, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she worked with Waterwell Productions, Spicy Witch Productions, and The Club at La Mama ETC. In July 2017 she moved to Tehran, Iran to learn her heritage language. While taking Farsi lessons, spending time with family, and teaching English, she continued to develop her writing and seek out theater. She worked with Bohemi Theater Group on their production of The Escher Play, which also presented at the 2019 Fajr Theater Festival. In the summer of 2019, she attended Bohemi Theater Group's Theatricultural Exchange Residency, where she began developing a performance based on an original poem, "Mesl Bolbol/Like a Nightingale." The poem and performance are based on her experience of learning Farsi in Iran as an American-born member of the Iranian diaspora. It explores language, memory, space, and how they inform our mythologies of identity. She is excited to further develop this work at Trinacria Theatre Company's Open Creative Residency in 2021.
DAN DAWES is a writer, director, producer, and actor based in East London, and spends most of his time running the company Idle Discourse, as well as working on an eclectic mix of freelance theatre projects. He grew up near Portsmouth, before attending university - where he studied Education with English and Drama. After that, he trained to be a secondary school teacher, and subsequently worked in schools in and around London for three years, before moving into full-time theatre work. Dan has worked across the world on hundreds of projects, from Shakespeare tours of rural England, to international festivals. Recent highlights include regular theatre tours to a UNESCO World Heritage palace in Czechia; a site-specific production in an 800-year-old tower in East London; representing the UK at a theatre festival in Lithuania; producing regular new writing festivals; and leading several Arts Council England funded projects. He also sits on the Board of Trustees for Green Shoes Arts, a company that teaches arts skills to vulnerable and disadvantaged people, and is a former Trustee of The Questors (the largest community theatre in Europe). Dan is fascinated with world-building through narrative, and collaborates with a multitude of different creatives on his projects to realize these worlds. He will be using his time in Pezzolo to create a mythos for a new play that explores the cultural links between island communities across the world. He also intends to collaborate with artists in Pezzolo to bring life and energy to the new world within this play.
SANNA TOIVANEN is a Finnish theatre artist specialised in physical theatre. Based in Barcelona, she is currently working as an actress and performer in Manes, an internationally touring physical theatre show by the Spanish company La Fura dels Baus, touring with children theatre plays in English in Catalonia and is a member of ToTum TeaTre, a street and physical theatre performers’network. In 2019 Sanna participated as a resident artist in an international art incubator co-financed by the European Union (Creative Europe programme) called Make a Move. Since 2012 she has been co-directing shows with her company The Hermit Hut Collective and has also co-directed and acted in Vudú Teatro’s show Scriptorium and acted in various other theatre projects in Barcelona. In addition to performing and directing, Sanna gives occasional physical theatre workshops and classes and is also a yoga instructor. She was a Guest Movement teacher in the international IAB (Institute of the Arts Barcelona) summer course in 2019 and led physical theatre workshops together with ToTum TeaTre in ManInFest festival in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2015 and 2016. Sanna has also experience in acting in many short films, music videos, commercials, and in dance and video art. From 2009-2011 she acted in an award-winning television series in Finland called Helppo Elämä. She was nominated for the Outstanding Actress Award in Monte Carlo TV Festival in 2011 for her role in the series.
HELOISE WILSON is an actress, dramatic writer and filmmaker based in New York and Europe. She has been working in film, commercial and theatre for over fifteen years. She usually tends to focus on documentary and community based theatre when creating for the stage. Her plays have been produced, curated and developed at various Off and Off -Off Broadway institutions in the states (Roundabout Theatre Company, Brooklyn College, JACK, Dixon Place, The Fringe Festival) and Europe (The Actor's Centre and other London Institutions). Her TV pilot Weezy Goes Outside is currently in the festival circuit. She is the second half of the female driven production company Little y (www.littley.co) and a co-founder of the European film start up SetPatrol (www.setpatrol.com)