Guest Blog: Sarah Chew On BEYOND BORDERS

In 2010, just after the failed Green Uprising (the political movement that arose after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office), I went to Iran on a theatre residency. The experience changed my life.

I met some incredible artists, I saw some incredible performances, and I saw at first hand what it looked like to keep making sincere, charged, powerful art, even under the threat of censorship and imprisonment.

At that time, Iran was part of a collection of Middle Eastern territories the US Government still titled "the Axis of Evil". The title coloured my assumptions of what I would find there - assumptions which were challenged, on a daily basis, throughout my stay.

I would have loved to work more with the artists I met, but the relationship between our two countries makes getting visas and setting up projects almost impossible.

Beyond Borders is a new mini season at the Omnibus Theatre, supported by Arts Council England. It's presented by a collection of female theatre artists who care about intercultural communication and collaboration, and feel passionately about the need to address the rise in hard borders and cultural and ethnic exclusion - from a political and from a personal perspective. This year, the focus is on Britain and the Middle East.

The season is a series of conversations and provocations, across a British/Middle Eastern axis, around my sadness and anger at this, my desire to counter the fear and Othering that borders can bring, and my commitment to using what I learned in Iran to celebrate community and continuity at home.

Sadly, we don't have to look too far outside the edges of our own nation to see borders that threaten our capacity to engage with people we see as different to ourselves. What does Brexit do to our perceptions of people we see as Other? What does the threat of a hard border in Ireland do to our already heightened fear of terrorism?

What role does tightened immigration here, and our Government's tacit acceptance of Trump's travel bans in the US, play in this? How do we fight to keep our personal, emotional borders open, while all around us, governments build physical and ideological walls?

And what does our Foreign Office's apparent abandonment of British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, currently imprisoned without fair trial in Tehran's notorious Evin Women's Prison, say about our national attitudes to those on the wrong side of a difficult border? What power do we have to say: not in my name?

These questions can be explored verbally, but it's sometimes easier to confront such ideas in non-verbal formats. Sometimes, removing language as the primary means of communication can provide a shortcut through anxiety and terminology and towards more instinctive engagement.

Beyond Borders includes: Lipstick, a play I've written about my experiences in Iran; dance workshop Private Dancers: Belly to Burlesque; drawing class Drawing A Veil; and a children's storytelling event, encouraging three- to seven-year-olds and their families to consider these issues through story, puppetry and play.

So, we invite you to join the conversation, on whatever level appeal to you: audience member, conference participant, dancer, artist, or parent. Let's see what we can do to make our communities, local and global, truly inclusive.

Beyond Borders at the Omnibus Theatre until 25 March

Picture credit: Aaron Jacob Jones, Inky Layla

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