Border Crossings, an organisation that creates new intercultural, multi-media theatre in response to the contemporary globalised world, have announced the next phase of their year-long ORIGINS Festival.

ORIGINS Festival is a multidisciplinary celebration of Indigenous arts and cultures from around the world.  The 2021-22 Festival offers an unprecedented and evolving year-long programme, transforming digital and physical spaces into vibrant sites of creative enquiry, intervention and performance by Indigenous artists and thinkers who are leading the way. The Festival will offer the opportunity to engage with this work and to appreciate the relevance of indigenous culture to our own lives. 

ORIGINS will feature a thought-provoking collection of streamed events from Indigenous creatives. Following on from their challenging literary series, ORIGINS WRITERS, that brought together renowned writers from all over the world, they will continue to explore the major themes of Coronavirus, Climate Change and Colonialism through theatre and film. 

The ORIGINS Festival will feature Madeline Sayet’s acclaimed production Where We Belong, returning with a re-worked digital adaptation. Where We Belong is an intimate and exhilarating solo piece that highlights the internal racism embedded in the country’s makeup, Madeline shares her journey to the UK to study Shakespeare. It is an eye opening look at belonging in a fraught and not-so-United Kingdom. The production is produced by Woolly Mammoth in Washington DC. 

Running alongside Sayet’s piece will be Hidden Histories, a film by Border Crossings that similarly follows an Indigenous traveller’s journey to London. Narrated by multi-award winning actor Mark Rylance, the film unearths the extraordinary tales of Pocahontas, Joseph Brant, Bennelong and Mai, drawing parallels to modern day in a timely assessment of our city and its relationship to the lands it once colonised. 

Indigenous Australian documentary film Etched in Bone will also be streamed as part of the Festival’s programme. This sensitive documentary shows the theft and eventual return of human bones to Arnhem Land, highlighting the shameful trade of ancestral human remains deep rooted in colonialism.

There’s also an opportunity at the ORIGINS Festival to experience three-short films by Mongolian and Mayan artists. 

Border Crossings’ Artistic Director said: “As this year’s ORIGINS programme continues to emerge, it feels particularly appropriate that we can use an innovative streaming approach to re-visit Where We Belong, the big hit of the 2019 Festival. The show is all about travels and exchanges between London and Native America, and now, having shown it at Shakespeare’s Globe, we’re able to show a new version direct from an empty theatre in Washington DC. Hidden Histories is the perfect companion - a film about Indigenous travellers to London over the centuries.” 

To find out further information about the Border Crossings ORIGIN Festival, visit their website here.