Elizabeth White, Director British Council Syria, continues to oversee cultural exchange projects during a time of intense upheaval throughout the country.

In this blog she reflects on one such programme – a partnership with The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (RADA) to help train sound engineers in Damascus.

These days the streets of Damascus are full of flags.

Last week we had the three-mile-long flag, which was unrolled along the main highway to Beirut, then held high in the air by long crowds of people on a pro-government rally; this morning, the streets around the opera were packed by the same crowds, waving a hundred thousand flags. High above the opera house, an enormous helium balloon floated in the wind, trailing yet another red-white-and-black flag, just above the helicopters.

The helicopters were filming the rally for TV, and their noise almost drowned out the crowds chanting. Inside the opera house, there were more helicopters.

Twenty Syrian sound technicians, one determined young woman and nineteen men, each of them passionate about sound, were finishing a week-long training course with the British Council. For their final show, they’d each worked on a sound piece, telling a story with sound – pistol shots, clanking machinery, creaking doors, meows and mouse-squeaks, running footsteps, snoring, laughter, crickets and frogs, raucous singing – and one of their stories had helicopters, and chanting crowds. 

Everyone in the hall did a double-take, and then burst out laughing.

The training was a second take – a cascade of the same training done by RADA’s best sound trainers, part of a long partnership in theatre skills. The two trainers came out to Syria in late March and spent a week working with head technicians and drama school trainers.

Their visit coincided with the first of the big rallies here during the present long-running unrest, and we worried about getting Chris and Zoe, the trainers, across town through the forest of flags and back to their hotel – but that time, like three days ago, the mood of the rally was peaceful.

This time, three months later and a lot of water under the bridge, the trainees worked with the people who’d been trained last time round.

They drank in every word, every new element, every new piece of technology, and said it was the most useful and practical single piece of training they’d had.  For a week, they focused on mixer desks and speaker placement, rigging and amplifiers and microphones – and on recording the squeaks and meows – with intense absorption and intense creative energy.

However unsettled things may now be in Syria, for sound professionals and for others, the show must go on.

Life and learning (and cultural relations) don’t stop just because there are helicopters overhead.

Find out more about the British Council’s work in Syria