The Ways of the Heroes is an international project of 7 partner organizations gather around the idea of artistic examination of social apathy and absence of agency and offering ways to deal with them, while focusing on the most concerning issue that needs our immediate action – the environment.
Do we need to see the color of the air that we breathe in order to act?
How do we move on from the feeling of hopelessness?
The project offers various impulses to create agency and responsibility in times of crisis. We are gathering the facts about climate crisis, but the questions are:
What do we DO with these facts?
How do we ACT as individuals and communities?
How do we react politically, socially and emotionally to the crisis?
How do we make the first step on the way?
There are already many individuals acting for the good cause in our communities, but they are not visible enough. The project will emphasize and share their stories to inspire communities to trace their own Ways of the Heroes. Inspired by Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People which questions the impact of individuals on the community and vice versa, the project is focusing on bringing stories of these hidden heroes to international audiences. Theatre, videos, public space performances, exhibitions, illustrated books for children and online campaigns are the means that will be used to share these stories. By recognizing all the hidden heroes that build our communities, The Ways of the Heroes hopes to provoke a sense of belonging, ever so important for an individual’s identity.
By establishing a creative ecosystem in which each activity influences another, and differences between artistic disciplines are blurred, the project will include diversified means of expression. Translating the themes from one media to another will bring layers and multiple new angles on how we perceive our planet today.
The moving force of the project are examples of good environmental practices – interviews with citizens-agents of all 6 partner countries. These real-life stories will be reinterpreted through a public space performance, a production of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, an illustrated book for children, an ARTISTIC COMMUNITY BUILDING WORKSHOP and an exhibition. The sustainability and the impact on the environment of these activities will be followed by an environmental expert with the aim of provoking self-reflection and inspiring a wider understanding of the individual-environment relationship among the participants of the Ways of the Heroes.
The project The Ways of the Heroes gathers 7 partner organizations from 6 countries. The lead partner in the project is MNT (Macedonian National Theatre) from Skopje, North Macedonia and partners include La Dramaturgie (Italy), Eho animato (Serbia), Loop (Greece), Studio Teatar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Gavroche books (North Macedonia) and Studio for the research of the art of acting (Slovenia).