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M i s s i o n

At Borderline Theatre Project, we adapt classic stories from traditions across the world to speak to new cultural contexts, from canonical American tales to North African oral histories. By seeking out and spreading the seeds of these stories in a contemporary context, we move beyond existing cultural stereotypes to engage in meaningful conversation. By promoting genuine transnational collaboration, BTP re-imagines the traditional borders that form our nations and shares the new stories of our peoples. 

 

Process 

 

Borderline Theatre Project emerged while founders Tom Casserly and George Bajalia were working together in Tangier, Morocco. George was in Morocco on a Fulbright grant research cultural globalization in North Africa when he started working with on a new Moroccan Arabic play with music based on Romeo & Juliet, the Moroccan legend of Tislit & Isli, and a bit of West Side Story. Thanks to a generous grant from the American Cultural Association, Tom was able to come on as the project's producer. This project became F7ali F7alek (Moroccan Arabic for "Like Me, Like You") and set the stage for BTP commitment to genuine cyclical cultural collaboration. 

 

As a mobile, transnational arts collective, Borderline Theatre Project is commited to working with residents of borderlands to create new pieces of theatre and digital media that build on universal stories to portray the specific conditions of globalization. We strive to make accesible art that addresses the cultural dimensions of post-colonial borders, economic imperialism, and transnational diasporas from Central America to North Africa. Our process is grounded in experience in professional theatre and contemporary conversations of cultural studies and circulation theory. The beginning of the writing process is similar to the initial steps of ethnographic field work; our research agenda changes the moment we stop applying preconceived notions to our site and begin accepting the encounters that come our way. For each project, we are committed to text workshops both in the USA and in our host locale in order to produce a work genuinely representative of all cultures involved. 

 

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