JobAct® Turin 2017

The first Premiere of JobAct® in Italy Turin

After three month of hard work we have had our first Premiere of JobAct® in Italy. On the 25th of May 2017 the 'Teatro Astra' was nearly sold out. The beautiful Theatre, formerly used as a cinema, is offering 297 seats. On our opening night 263 seats were occupied.

The audience were delighted by the young people who played for the first time in there life on a real stage. After one hour of singing, fighting, dying and becoming rebirth the twelve youngsters received well-deserved standing ovation for there interpretation of 'Jason and the Argonauts'.

The ancient story is full of current relevance for young (European) people. Jason, an ancient Greek mythological hero, was the leader of the Argonauts and intending to find the legendary Golden Fleece. The story is a story of adventure and deals with subjects like becoming adult, initiation rite, life and death, gender role, responsibility, trails and so on. The strong and impressive performance convinced the international audience.

Among them were politicians, heads of advisory departments from the Metropolitan City of Turin, representatives of the Piedmont Industry, members of the Public Health Agency Turin, local famous artists and actors.

All of them were as well convinced, that young people need our attention. The actually rate for youth unemployment in Italy is 43,9% and for the European continent 22 % (Data from Eurostat 2015). According to this facts the youngsters and the audience were asking after the performance: Europe quo vadis with your Youth?

The sponsor of the project the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo funded this project on result. We took this challenge. Ten of the twenty participants have had find a job during the project. The JobAct®-Method is more than the empowerment of young people it is a method for changement. It is like the youngsters sing in the Argonauts: “Questa è una storia da raccontare, può andare bene può andare male ma non si da qual è il finale, bisogna andare comunque andare a camminare”. It means: This is a story to tell, it could take a happy or bad ending, the End is unknown, therefore you have to move, to move forward.

We would like to thank our partners in Italy Turin, that is to say Patchanka/Casa del Lavoro/+spazzio4 for the excellent cooperation on this project. We do not rest on our laurels. One in five young people in Europe is unemployed. There is a lot of work to do! If you feel responsible as well – help us! Help the European Youth. Thank you.

Merima Horozovic

Dear JobAct®-Community, how time flies!

Two month are past and we are close to our Premiere. Here are some impressions of our Rehearsal.

We are busy and a we have had a lot of events. On the 2nd of May we have had a presentation of our work at an Social-Fare-Meeting. The JobAct®-Torino-Participants prepared a Trailer of our stage play. Banji, who has a deep, sonorous voice, announced every scene and the actors brought across the play as exciting. The audience were grateful about this three minutes of powerful action.

For us, who are working with the JobAct®-Method, it is important to emphasize, that the connection between young people and art is necessary and useful to help them to become a creator of there life. Based on this believe we have had on the 9th of May an Art- Workshop with the illustrator Lucia Simonis. She is an artist with various talents that is to say she creates costumes for stage play, she illustrates books for children and adults, she paints and she is teaching young people in art. She sets a good example for our participants because she started her creative career as a young unemployed women. She left school without qualification, she continued her choice to become an artist against the wishes of her parents and she worked against a lot of other resistance. With this wonderful women we created T-Shirts of our personal Heroes.

The results of our work will be presented at the Foyer of Teatro Astra on our Premiere at 25th of May. But I'm going to share a “titbit” of this Workshop with you now.

The JobClub is organizing some events as well: they invited Industry, Freelancer, Volunteer and Best-Practise-Examples to talk with the participants about subjects like work, how to get in work, how to get connected, how to get money etc. As I said: all of us are very BUSY and there is a lot of work to do but we are strong, we are beautiful, we are Heroes.

Many greetings of all of us from the charming city Turin
Merima

This Week JobAct® Turin

Beatrice(16): “This week was very interesting for me because we worked on a text which makes me thinking of what I am responsible for. It is a song of Mannarino a young Italian singersongwriter. Above all one passage has touched me deeply. Here the translation: 'You can change your dress if you like. If there is confidence you can change even your shoes. And with new shoes you can change the road you are walking on. By crossing the new road you can change your ideas and with new ideas you can change the world. But the world does not change often. Therefore your real revolution has to be to change yourself.' This is the truth. I am responsible for my life. And if the world is a big stage I am the writer, director and actor on this stage. It is up to me to destroy and create my life. With this text we have been introduced into chorus. It was impressive to recite this text simultaneous. With the whole group. At the same time. WOW! The words become bigger and bigger and more significant. We worked one week on this text and the work on this changed my view. But not only mine. My colleague were touched as well. At the same time - it was a coincidence - I changed my look . I've been at the hairdresser and since I started the work on 6th of March I've lost weight. I think I've started to change my life. And all this started with a Clappboard. JobAct®-Clappboard-No.1!”

Elvira (20): “I enjoyed this week because we worked a lot with music. At the beginning we were listening to film music. To listen is not so easy you know? I'm young and I'm not familiar in listening. Later on we have had to move to the rhythm of the music. This was very nice. At the end we started to create some scenes in groups according to the music. We created short images like Charlie Chaplin in a silent movie and had to present them. It was very funny. We have had to express everything with our body.”

Noemi (18): Theater is really a hard work. We have learned how to create suspense while speaking to the audience. It is helpful to take a break. Everyone of us have had to think about 'Why am I an hero?' We wrote it down and at the end we have to choose one reason. The sentence was: I am a hero because......Afterwords we presented one by one on stage. At the beginning we stand with the back to the audience. When finding the concentration we have to turn with focused eyes to the audience and have to count internal until four. Then we have to move four steps forward standing still counting once again internal until four before speaking to the audience telling them, why I am a hero. And counting once again internal until four before bowing to the audience. With this presentation we brought Alice - one of our theater teacher - crying. Here are some examples of our phrases:

I am a hero because

- any time I fall down I get up.
- I like to do.
- now one is like me.
- I am learning to make peace with myself
- I do not have emotions.
- I am vulnerable.
- I am a fighter.
- I have long hair.
- I am helping other people.
- I like to destroy and to create.

All of us were heroes although we may be do not know. We have to discover our motivation and our targets.

In the last weeks in Turin a band of heroes is born! The participants are growing, are fighting, are dying, destroying and creating. It is a journey and our Crew is sailing. Sometimes we have stormy weather, another time a calm period and sometimes it is raining but the sun and the Gods are always with us. It is a journey to ourselves to an unknown place. Heroes are vulnerable and therefore afraid to make mistakes. We are not only fighting against an external enemy we are fighting against our internal enemy as well. This is a big challenge. To be or to become a hero is a challenge. But young people need challenges. They are hungry to discover themselves and willing to improve there limits. Therefore it is not unexpected that we started to work with them on The Argonauts. The Argonauts were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War, around 1300 BC, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, Argo, named after its builder, Argus. "Argonauts" literally means "Argo sailors". On the 25th of May we will perform the results of our fights on the Argo at the Teatro Astra.

Enjoy us.
Merima

Third Week JobAct® Turin

“Buongiorno a tutti. Oggi è il 21. Marzo 2017. Mancano il 61 giorni dal nostro spetaccolo” cried Banji one of us at the morning of 21th of March, the morning of the third week since our Project has started.

It means: Good morning, today is the 21th of March and there are 61 days left until our stage play. In this way he is recording us every day that there is no time to lose. This is very helpful to start in a concentrate work.

By the way the third week started with ten new participants. Currently we are a group of 36 theater crazy youngsters who are willing to grow and to enjoy the crisis. The new were kindly integrated by the the group which starts on 6 of march. We have made a Speed Dating to get known with each other. We took this very serious and all of us were curious on each other.

We worked furthermore on the topic heroes. When is a hero a hero? What is need to become or to be a hero? Do we need heroes and If we need them why we need them? These are some of the questions we have had to go through. The synthesis on the question 'what is need to be a heroe' were trust, a inner conflict, hope to a better Future, a strong character and ambition. “This interpretation shows how serious and philosophical the youngsters get to heart. Trust, a inner conflict, hope, a strong character and ambition were also needed to become adult and empowered. I am impressed by this answers and for me all of you are yet heroes”, said Merima our Theater teacher to us.

The theater workers introduced also the classical heroes journey and talked with us about famous heroic story's in film, literature, theater and history. We discussed the similarities and differences between an antic heroic story and a modern one. We worked in small groups together finding answers to all these questions. At the end we learned that the story of James Bond and Batman have the same ingredients as the antic Greek Saga of Jason and the Argonauts. This was very surprising and unexpected for us.

The third week started also with JobClub. We were coached by three experienced and patient Educators named Diego Coriasco, Fernando Spalletta and Carlo Ribotto. They teach us in three classes three days a week. We were introduced in the world of work, we get familiar with networking which is an essential principal to get in work, we learn how the world of work is functioning at all.

Diego, Fernando and Carlo are doing that in a very empathetic way and were open to our impulses on this theme. We talked for example about 'what means work for you' and we were asked 'what do you need to get in work'. These questions concerned us in that way, that we started a passionate debate on money and the sense and meaning of money.

We have also been at theater and enjoyed a production of the theater company 'doppeltraum' which created a collage on Karl Valentin. This was funny because our theater teacher Merima is from Germany and now we believe to understand the German humor.

The 28th of March we will visit the theater 'Teatro Astra' in which our stage play will be shown. We are exited and very happy to see the place where we may be become famous.

See you soon. Many greeting from Italy.
Noemi, Elvira, Beatrice and Merima

JobAct® Turin 2017

JobAct® Turin has started with 27 young unemployed people at the 06th of March 2017. We are expecting another 13 participants. At the end we will have 40 on this project.

The boys and girls are between 16 – 29 years old and all of them are strongly motivated and willing to achieve a goal, in this case to perform a stage play at the end of may. Therefore it is not a surprise that we after the first week are able to present a bouquet of results. We have built several Responsibility-Teams in which the Youngsters take responsibility for this project:

We have a Countdown-Calendar. Every morning before we start to work Banji and Emmanuel are announcing the actual date and the days left until our performance. And they are doing that like Minnesinger which is very stimulating for all of us!

Best is remembering us to turn off our mobile-phones before starting the work and he is very serious on this stuff. Alessandro on the other hand takes care of our attendance list which also important and Issam has the responsibility that all of us are punctual after having break.

Furthermore we have a documentation-team. Beatrice, Elvira and Noemi are making videos, photos and are writing articles on our project. Once a week they are going to publish the results of our work. Beatrice is as well the personal assistant of Merima one of the theaterworkers in this project. The other theaterworker are Elena Campanella and Alice De Bacco.

Among the theatrical work the participants have to join a Jobclub and were trained by a committed and professional Team of Jobcoaches. This Project seeks to empower the participants by using a mix of methods from the disciplines pedagogy, social and theater work.

We have also been at an exhibition and we've talked with the artist a painter named Ernesto di Franco who also uses art as education. We've discussed with him why even heroes get sometime in crisis.

By the way: we are enjoining our crisis like our art director Beata Nagy recommended to do. Questioned what they think about when they hear the word “Theater” the participants answered among other beautiful answers: Freedom, Fear, Community, Education and Joy. At the first moment I've been touched by these young wonderful people waiting for somebody giving them a chance to become a bird with strong wings.

Enjoy your crisis as well and see you soon with other impressions of our work.

Merima
theaterworker in social field

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