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Susan Sarandon June 2nd 2008
I admire Jeremy Weller’s work with the Grassmarket Project. He deals honestly and directly with the world as he finds it - and the world he finds can be deeply disturbing and distressing. He finds his inspiration on the margins of society, amongst the dispossessed and the overlooked - the street prostitutes in Sao Paolo, the gang members in Harlem, the homeless in Edinburgh... It is here, on the extreme edge of our human experience, that he finds the possibility of art - and of redemption. What makes Jeremy’s dramas so startling is not simply the fact that that they are devised and written in collaboration with the people who are living these difficult lives for real, but that these same people get to appear on stage or on film as themselves and to speak their own stories in their own words. This gives the work its authenticity and makes its protagonists truly visible to us, the audience - perhaps for the first time. I think that both they and we end up in much better shape as a result. And that’s why I am getting involved.
The GMP has received extensive media coverage, including +200 newspaper articles and 15 TV News broadcasts. 9 TV documentaries, 11 national and 7 international conferences have also featured the GMP work. It has also been the subject of 7 degree-theses and is currently the subject of a Ph.D. thesis under the title of Grenzverwehungen A Study of Jeremy Weller's Theatrical Work.
I admire Jeremy Weller’s work with the Grassmarket Project. He deals honestly and directly with the world as he finds it - and the world he finds can be deeply disturbing and distressing. He finds his inspiration on the margins of society, amongst the dispossessed and the overlooked - the street prostitutes in Sao Paolo, the gang members in Harlem, the homeless in Edinburgh... It is here, on the extreme edge of our human experience, that he finds the possibility of art - and of redemption. What makes Jeremy’s dramas so startling is not simply the fact that that they are devised and written in collaboration with the people who are living these difficult lives for real, but that these same people get to appear on stage or on film as themselves and to speak their own stories in their own words. This gives the work its authenticity and makes its protagonists truly visible to us, the audience - perhaps for the first time. I think that both they and we end up in much better shape as a result. And that’s why I am getting involved.
The GMP has received extensive media coverage, including +200 newspaper articles and 15 TV News broadcasts. 9 TV documentaries, 11 national and 7 international conferences have also featured the GMP work. It has also been the subject of 7 degree-theses and is currently the subject of a Ph.D. thesis under the title of Grenzverwehungen A Study of Jeremy Weller's Theatrical Work.
It changed my life because it changed the way I think, the way I behave. If theatre can change lives, then it can change society.
Sara Kane on MAD from the book "In Yer Face Theatre"