Out of Tune

A new work of music theatre by Josephine Burton with partners across Europe and a European cast and creative team. Out of Tune is an artistic journey into the heart of Europe, a contemporary retelling of Virgil’s Aeneid through the prism of migrants to Europe today. Virgil’s Aeneid is an epic Roman poem written in around 20BC. It tells the tale of Aeneas who flees from Troy, a burning and war-torn city in the East, and makes his way across the Mediterranean to sanctuary, challenging assimilation and settlement in Italy. For Dash Arts’ production, the Aeneid will be reimagined as a musical poem and promenade performance, telling the stories of contemporary artists in Europe today. Inspired by an encounter with a Kurdish musician Marouf Majidi in Helsinki. Josephine Burton, Artistic Director of Dash explains: “When Marouf arrived in Helsinki 11 years ago, he felt an acute sense of being out of tune with local musicians. Marouf explained to me “For years, I was always the soloist, never part of the ensemble. I couldn’t find my groove with the group.” Eventually he found his voice, but now experiences this same sense of discordance when he travels back to Iran or Turkey. I wondered whether there was a different sound in Finland– a sound that Marouf had to find and then an original sound of home which he had to lose in order to find his voice in Europe.” Some might say that Europe has lost its way, its story, its identity, or that it needs to find a new way to speak of its past and its future. In a continent struggling to find a voice, might the newer arrivals’ search for safe sanctuary in Europe’s 'sound' help us to find it? Our new multi-lingual retelling of the Aeneid will include the music and voices of some of these newer arrivals alongside longer-term communities. The Aeneid is a compelling text to use as the heart and inspiration for this journey. It tells the story of a challenging exodus and traumatic migration, but it also explores the difficulties faced in Italy as Aeneas attempts to build a future and a legacy of Rome. The final production will be developed through residencies and workshops across 2020-2021. Early script and music development will take place in Spring 2020 alongside the development of producing and funding partnerships that will make possible production in 2021-2022, to be presented by Dash Arts as a central part of their cross-arts EUTOPIA Series. Out of Tune will ask challenging questions about contemporary European identity and what defines European identity for artists and migrants born outside Europe. It touches on migration, the future of free movement, cultural understanding and finds a new voice to express some of the answers https://www.dasharts.org.uk/productions-dash