Miss Sarajevo
Miss Sarajevo is a multi media touring show by the Swamp Circus Trust incorporating film, dance, pyrotechnics, theatre and circus, told through true personal stories. The show will be set at the Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant held in Sarajevo in 1993, a time when the city was under fire. Whilst concentrating on the personal, it will also explore the distortion of truth and the power that the media hold over events, controlling what we perceive and how this perception impacts upon our world view, our perceptions of our place within that view and ultimately its influence on how we relate to each other. The show is an intertwining of personal stories, emotional narrative, mediarisation and international relations in a juxtaposition of beauty and hostility, exploring levels of truth and deceit in times of war.
The project will be an innovative collaboration between artists and groups from different media. Through the exploration of the relationship between these art forms we will find new ground.
In the current artistic environment Swamp Circus have identified a need for a high-profile, contemporary circus show to demonstrate what is possible in the United Kingdom and therefore be a significant step to inspire future ground-breaking circus performance in this country.
History
The idea for the Miss Sarajevo project evolved out of the experience of Swamp Circus's Development Officer. Tim Woolliscroft worked in the Former Yugoslavia Republics in the early 1990s with the maverick humanitarian agency The Serious Road Trip (TSRT). TSRT achieved fame and notoriety distributing food and medicine in Sarajevo at times when the United Nations and other Non Governmental Organisations had deemed this too dangerous.
TSRT were also the group who set up the Miss Sarajevo beauty contest in the midst of the bombings in 1993. TSRT member and organiser of the event Bill Carter created the documentary film Miss Sarajevo, released to critical acclaim in 1995. Bono of the band U2 later admitted that he was deeply touched by Bill Carter's story, and on hearing about the importance of pop music in Sarajevo said that he would love to play there. Knowing that playing in a besieged city was impossible, Carter invented another way of connecting rock music with Sarajevans; instead of "bringing U2 to Sarajevo" he would "bring Sarajevo to U2", by means of satellite linkups to concerts, giving the people of Sarajevo a chance to tell their story to the world.
