Ola! Hej! Hello!
We’re Camila and Trine – co-founders and artistic directors of Foreign Affairs. This year we started keeping a journal: reflecting on our practice, on the balance between art-making and producing, and on what it means to lead a company together after 16 years.
Working so closely for so long is our greatest strength – but sometimes we get lost in the we. So we’re trying to carve out space to really sit with our individual perspectives, and see where we each find ourselves in the work.
To guide our reflections we ‘re using three prompts:
- Where are we / what’s happening?
- What is it bringing up?
- What are we carrying forward?
We’re sharing it here in case it’s useful to other theatre-makers. It’s not polished – just honest, immediate responses. A diary, essentially.
Camila & Trine x
Where we are / What’s happening
We barely had time to catch our breath and process this project, and we’ve just had another European country contact us for a partnership! Very exciting! But, as we’re wrapping up our Playwriting from Estonia, in comes a new project – to happen within the next month – errrr, can we have that extra magical month now please?
Still slightly high from the project just finished – it was a whirlwind of people, encounters, and activities – and buzzing with excitement about what’s ahead! This combo is what’s keeping us from crashing. We haven’t had time to breathe since the beginning of the year, but I’m full and celebrating this brilliant encounter!
We’ve just wrapped up our Estonian showcase project – a project that started as an idea almost two years ago and grew in scope and scale from a relatively simple showcase to several days of rehearsals, playwright visits and practice exchange.
It was such a wonderful experience and I am so proud of how we curated and delivered this project – it was wonderful to connect and meet with so many new artists, the playwrights and team from Estonia, of course, but also the actors, many of whom we hadn’t worked with before.
There are so many moments that stand out – the conversations in the pub, the readings and what they brought up, the post-show talks – but perhaps my favourite moment is the last parting image with us standing on each side of Dalston station and the Estonian delegation standing in a line looking like a 90s band. There was something about that moment that felt like we were all old friends who had just shared something really meaningful together. (It probably doesn’t make sense to others, but it does to me.)
What it’s bringing up
Back to Estonia – wow, wow! The scale of this project went beyond our expectations. Big, big teams – both from Estonia and ‘our’ teams in London.
The London team welcoming the Estonian team in the pub. An unexpected encounter with ‘more’ Estonians who weren’t part of the project – London at its best! 😅
Sharing our practice with them, how we work, the ‘London way’, but our way.
The playwrights in the rehearsal room, the work across languages and cultures – the many cultures that are part of our teams – challenge, richeness & growth.
Working with new teams from London that outnumbered the ‘old team’ – expanding our connections, pushing our boundaries, taking risks – simultaneously exciting and terrifying – but ALL worth it! So worth it!
Super intense week! I mean, this was a LOT of people at once! Brilliant partners! Two full houses at JST and the audience’s awe and excitement of discovering the Estonian theatre scene! ‘We’re all jumping on a coach to Estonia!’
Dalston station and the rock band picture!
It feels like the 16 years of staging plays in translation, of meeting people, cultures, and languages, have brought us to this moment and made this project the success that it was.
All projects, in a way, but this project in particular, the encounters and exchanges were of another level!
And my best partner ever! It’s been a tough ride at times, but it’s been amazing, and I can’t think of a better way to have spent these 16 years. Buckle up – the sky’s the limit!
This project really brought up how personal everything feels when we make work. I was genuinely surprised by how emotional I felt during the first showcase and during our intro speech. I guess it’s two years of connecting and planning, me visiting Estonia twice, and then seeing it all come together. Maybe from the outside it’s not a big deal – but for us, for me, it felt huge. And I think that still surprises me after 16 years. That it still lands this hard. That it still matters this much.
Yet the work felt almost effortless – like we’d been practising for this project for years, which of course we have. All the different components came together more or less seamlessly. The biggest challenge was the sheer number of people involved – we had definitely miscalculated the time and capacity it takes to manage and oversee all these moving parts. Luckily we had Rachel and Maja with us, as well as our director team, who did a wonderful job with the plays.
My biggest surprise was that although we were the hosts – inviting the Estonian team to London, into our creative spaces and our practice – the entire week felt like we were somehow spending a moment in the world of Estonian theatre. Obviously the plays are a snapshot of this, but also the open conversations we had about culture, theatre, playwriting, and translation in our respective contexts made it feel like a wonderful journey to unknown places right at the heart of our Hackney home.
What we’re carrying forward
Taking the confidence in our work, the ability to assemble brilliant teams. The joy of working in multicultural rooms.
Working with larger teams – challenges, resources, energy levels.
Having the right support and structures that can hold it all together – that can hold us together.
The richness of the exchange. Welcoming but being welcomed at the same time.
The joy of being the hosts of these creative processes, where people can meet, work and leave carrying a little piece of the world in their pocket.
Also, how to ‘carry this across’ future projects, finding more balance. How can the processes be more time & energy efficient?
How to make these creative experiences/projects expand beyond Europe?
What I’m carrying forward is the question: how do we continue this relationship with the playwrights and team from the Estonian Theatre Agency? In our current mode – FA’s and the industry in general – we often deliver a project and then move on to the next one. We produce one playwright and then we’re off to the next. We deliver one workshop and we’re off to the next. What happens if we stop and breathe and take a moment to think about the people we’ve just worked with, and what a way to deepen the collaboration might look like? For Estonia specifically – could that mean a future edition, a co-production, an ongoing exchange? I don’t know yet, but I don’t want to just move on.
The other thing I’m carrying forward is how clearly our mentorship and ensemble methodology has informed so many aspects of our practice – a page-to-stage process rooted in intercultural practice, facilitating space for difference and connection. So many things we do come back to the mentorship or our ensemble practice, and we’re beginning to join the dots – articulating the practice informed by experience as well as theory. How can we build on this and share it more broadly?