In the run-up to the EU referendum, the word ‘utopia’ continued to surface in British newspapers. By leaving the EU, Britain could become a utopia — or, conversely, a dystopian future awaited Britain outside of the European Union. Thomas More’s vision of an imagined, nearly-perfect society still captures the public imagination. The questions he posed about who should govern whom, what and who a community is, and what laws might apply in a utopian state are still as vital as when he wrote his satire, Utopia, five hundred years ago.
Wes’s Fellowship set out to explore these questions, through a partnership between Wes Williams, Richard Scholar, Pegasus Theatre in East Oxford, and the Cini Foundation in Venice. An intergenerational and diverse cast together devised a new play, Storming Utopia, scripted and directed by Wes and Angharad Arnott-Phillips from Pegasus. Sixteenth-century Europe had a sense of itself ‘as a recently forged community being torn apart by confessional difference, with huge numbers of internally displaced refugees on the move in search of a better (some might say Utopian) life’, Wes writes.
By working together on the play, the group could explore ‘different ways in which early modern concerns might prove both relevant and inspirational in the context of our contemporary geo-political moment, here in Oxford, today.’ The play was set in contemporary Oxford, drawing on elements from More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s Tempest, and Montaigne’s Essays. Over the course of Wes’s Fellowship, the production was performed in Oxford, including as the headline show for the Oxford Festival of the Arts, and in Venice. For its Venetian performance, the team translated more than half the play, and the performers were trained to deliver their lines in Italian.
As well as the play productions, the Fellowship and an accompanying Public Engagement with Research project (led by Richard Scholar) resulted in a number of additional talks, seminars, and performances on the project’s themes, delivered in France and the UK. Three short films were created in collaboration with two primary schools in East Oxford and Marghera, Venice, that explored the cultural and linguistic diversity of the two schools. These films were then shown in multiple different locations, including two of the Ashmolean’s LiveFriday events to audiences of over 200.
Knowledge Exchange Fellowships Brochure
Storming Utopia
