The Creative Team

David Cazalet

Creator, Composer and Producer

David is a musician and an entrepreneur. His music is influenced by the music of Andalucia, Spain. He is particularly interested in the music of Aleppo and its ‘Andalus’ genre – unique and specific to Aleppo, testament to the city’s musical roots.

David composed Requiem for Aleppo first as a piece of music – mixing the Christian lyrics of the Requiem Mass and early Arabic poetry, some of it from twelfth century Andalucia, to honour the rich Arab/Christian heritage of Aleppo.

David is currently working on his second album of his own songs.

About the Music

The music is made up of words from the Christian requiem mass mingled with Arabic poetry from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, which talks of love, loss and longing. This seems an appropriate way of tying together reverence and sentiment and echoes in small part the musical and spiritual heritage of Aleppo. The music is interwoven by narrative. This is spoken by people from Aleppo, telling some part of their lives, their memory.

Jason Mabana

Choreographer

Jason Mabana was born in Belgium from a Filipino heritage. Jason first trained in Belgium, as a hip-hop and contemporary dancer. At the age of 17, he moved to London to study Dance at Lewisham College and furthered his training at Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. During his time at Rambert School, Jason choreographed various pieces, that toured with the school and have been performed at multiple venues such as The Linbury Studio Theatre, Lilian Baylis Studio and Platform Theatre at Central St Martins. His choreographic work has also been featured in BBC young dancer, Cloud dance festival and Mr Wonderful, a show directed by Mathew Bourne in tribute to Jonathan Olivier. Jason also has a postgraduate diploma from the London Contemporary Dance School.

As a dancer Jason began his career as an apprentice with Akram Khan Company for the solo Chotto Desh. Jason continued his career with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company performing her work Strange Bloom. He then Joined Wayne McGregor performing a duet in collaboration with artist Haroon Mirza. He also performed with Saju Hari dance. Jason is now dancing for Candoco Dance Company performing works by Trisha Brown, Alexander Whitley and Hetain Patel.

See more of Jason’s choreography

Ben Faccini

Writer in Charge of Testimony

Ben Faccini is a novelist, writer and translator. He was born in England and brought up in France and Italy. He worked for many years in Paris on a UNESCO/UNICEF education programme for disadvantaged children around the world. From 2008 to 2010, he ran the UNESCO-backed campaign My Life is a Story to raise awareness about street children.

He is the author of several books, notably The Water-Breather (Flamingo, 2002) and The Incomplete Husband (Portobello, 2007). He has written extensively on issues in the developing world, particularly on the subject of street children and education. He translated the 2014 Prix Goncourt by Lydie Salvayre into English (Cry, Mother Spain, MacLehose Press, 2016).

Yoav Segal

Scenic Design Concept

Yoav Segal is an award-winning film and theatre-maker. Much of his animation and film work has focused on social activism and the power of story to shape and change the world we live in.

Yoav recently led a global film project for Experian to inspire it to become a world leader in CSR action. His documentary film ‘Irons in the Fire’ featuring the 2015 BBC-sound nominee George the Poet, and narrated by the wonderful Idris Elba, screened on Sky 3D and Sky Arts in 2014 and won a number of awards at international film festivals. His visceral animation film CROW, featuring Ted Hughes reading his masterpiece poems, received high critical praise.

Yoav just won the prestigious Arts Foundation 2015 Award for ‘Video and Digital for Performance’.

See Yoav’s Website

Shanti Freed

Costume Design, Scenic Design and Realisation

Shanti is an interdisciplinary theatrical designer with roots in contemporary dance and performance art. She has a passion for unusual collaborations and cross art form performance.

Trained as a theatre designer, over the last 17 years she has worked as a designer, maker and creative problem solver on numerous national and international projects, in theatre, dance, film, performance/visual arts, and entertainment events, both intimate and large in scale.

Her past designs for dance have included costumes for Claire Cunningham’s acclaimed ‘Give me a reason to Live’ and Cultural Olympiad commission ‘12’ for CandoCo Dance Co, working with Nigel Charnock on ‘Lunatic’ for Diversions -The National Dance Company of Wales and ‘Still’ for CandoCo.

She cultivates and enjoys an ongoing working collaborative relationships with various companies, artists and festivals.

Notably CandoCo Dance Co, Art Angel, Kira Oreilly, and has worked with Manchester International Arts Festival (MIF) since it’s inception, including the infamous ‘Il Tempo del Postino’, wardrobe supervising and touring Robert Wilsons MIF production of The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, and costume design consulting and wardrobe supervising MIF/Paris Opera commission ‘ Tree of Codes’, a collaboration between choreographer Wayne McGregor and international artist Olafur Elliasson.

Marius Arnold-Clarke

Production Manager, Scenic Design and Realisation

Marius trained in dance at the Royal Ballet School in Richmond Park before sustaining an injury in 2000. He went on to study at Durham University, returning to The Royal Ballet School as it’s Theatre Manager between 2005 and 2008. He has held the role of DSM at both the Royal Opera House and Linbury Studio. Attempting to move away from the dance world, he became Production Manager at the global events company Imagination where he was in charge of global installations and events for Jaguar Land Rover, Extreme Sailing Series and Rolls Royce.

Turning freelance in 2014, he has worked consistently with Sadler’s Wells Production and Touring Department, acting as Touring Production Manager for productions such as Havana Rakatan and Sidi Larbi’s Cherkaoui’s Milonga, Company Stage Manager for Vamos Cuba, Hussein Chalayan’s Gravity Fatigue, Sutra and Deputy Stage Manager for Breakin’ Convention International Tours. He continues to work on other productions around the world including German Cornejo’s Immortal Tango and Break The Tango.

Holly Lowe

Head of Development

Holly is a freelance designer and project manager with a passion for humanitarian causes. Graduating from UNSW, College of Fine Art, Australia with a Bachelor of Design, Holly has spent the past 10 years designing for and managing creative projects within Europe.

Holly has combined her design experience, and marketing and fundraising abilities whilst working for humanitarian organisations including Oxjam Brixton and The Kairos Project. She is delighted to now be heading up development for Requiem for Aleppo and it’s plight to raise funds and awareness for the people of Syria.

Grant Edwards - Wild Yak Productions

General Management

Grant has worked extensively as a Producer, Coordinator and Manager, for opera, concerts, dance, film and theatre. Grant is the Associate Producer for Wild Yak, also working to coordinate productions for its subsidiaries, Belka Productions and Developing Artists.

Grant has also worked for 4 years with Nova Music Opera, touring with multiple pieces by top modern classical composers to venues including: St John Smith’s Square , LSO St Luke’s (London), The Colyer – Ferguson Concert Hall (Canterbury), Barbers Institute (Birmingham), and the Dartington International Festival (Devon), Cheltenham Festival (Gloucestershire) and Presteigne Festival (Wales).

Other work includes: La Serenissima’s ‘Ottone in Villa’ (Buxton Opera House), Peter Knapp’s ‘The Opera’ (Rose Theatre – Kingston and tour), London International Sinfonia – ‘Chinese Festival Of The Moon Gala Concert’ (Cadogan Hall), ‘McM’ Album Launch Concert (St James Theatre – London Victoria), ‘Madam Butterfly’ (Cadogan Hall), ‘ Sovremennik London Season’ (Piccadilly Theatre, West End) and coming soon ‘Lucrece’ (SLAM King’s Cross), and Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ (still in development with Belka Productions).

Alex MacKeith

Dramaturge

Alex is a writer and dramaturge based in London. In February 2017 School Play, his playwriting debut, was produced by Antic | Face and Nik Holttum Productions at the Southwark Playhouse and published by Oberon Books.

He recently worked as dramaturge on Julia Cranney’s award-winning drama Empty Beds which ran at the Underbelly, Edinburgh before transferring to the Arcola Theatre, and with C-12 Dance Theatre on their immersive project, Watson, supported by Arts Council England.

He has collaborated with Embolon Theatre Company on performances at Edinburgh’s Summerhall, Battersea Arts Centre and Camden People’s Theatre, and with comedy group Princes of Main on two Edinburgh shows and a webseries.

In 2016 he was awarded Columbia University’s Theatre Scholarship for their playwriting MFA. His first audio play, Off The Grid, will be produced by Call and Response Theatre Company, and his debut screenplay is currently in pre-production.

Andrej Gubanov

Lighting Designer

Andrej is a theatre technician and lighting designer with a diploma in Theatre Production. Since 2011 he is the Technical Manager of Candoco Dance Company. Andrej has toured extensively with the company nationally and internationally, including performances at Sadler’s Wells. He is familiar with the Sadler’s Wells stage, equipment and technical crew.

Wild Yak Productions

Producer/General Managers

Wild Yak is a London based independent production and general management company, headed by producer Oliver King. The company specialises in bringing international work to new audiences, and developing new writing, with its roots in theatrical production. Wild Yak acts as general managers for a range of organisations, including the international arts charity Developing Artists, and it’s subsidiaries include Belka Productions. www.wildyakproductions.com

Isabel Douglas-Hamilton

Digital Marketing - Edinburgh

After a brief stint at Brunswick Arts, Isabel now works freelance, doing digital work for charities and arts organisations. She graduated from UCL with a BA in Russian and French. She currently works to coordinate productions for Wild Yak and its subsidiaries, Belka Productions and the international arts charity, Developing Artists. Last summer she worked with Developing Artists on Queens of Syria, a production which brought over thirteen Syrian Refugee women to the UK from Jordan to perform a verbatim theatre piece they created from their own real-life stories, interwoven with the narrative of Euripides’ The Trojan Women.