“We managed to stitch it all together,” Smyth says, who was provided with a welcome commissioning opportunity by the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement. He had in mind a large-scale event that would celebrate the resilience of the civilians of Northern Ireland in sustaining the peace. In the knowledge that all manner of conferences, debates and new writing were in the ether, much of it revolving around the Clintons, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, he believed that more words were not needed.
“We eliminate social backgrounds, interpersonal difficulties, conflict, physical or psychological wounds, and invite people to enter a safe bubble,” he says. “We go outside conventional theatre audiences, towards people who might never cross the door of a theatre, who are perhaps afraid of going to the theatre, who think theatre is not for them. Without speaking, we offer them to be part of our creative process.
The involvement of local artists has been a crucial part of the project, as well as the aspiration to leave behind a creative legacy with the potential to expand. The Guildhall Square performance will bring together 20 members of Compagnie XY with nine local acrobats, a parkour artist, a graffiti artist, a spoken-word artist, musicians and a community choir. It will be an intriguing, fun introduction to contemporary circus.
“Compagnie XY is expert at bringing performance into unconventional arts spaces and venues. Everything happens on the streets and in places where people live. They respond to the architecture and geography of the place they’re in. In Derry you have the walls, the Guildhall, the city gates, the River Foyle, the murals ... all of which mark that performance in that city.”