Packed houses in China

I took the train down to Ningbo on Thursday, to meet up with Roshni Mooneeram and do a workshop for her students on the Nottingham University campus there. This is becoming a bit of an annual event - the last one was a riot. This year Roshni predicted there would be about 30 students there, of whom some would be too shy to take part. As it turned out, there were 150+, all of whom were desparate to act their socks off. Quite a challenge for a 90 minute workshop.

As with the Shanghai workshop last Sunday, I decided to work from images. It was fascinating to see what was in the psyche of these young Chinese people. The idea of shame was very strong - lots of images of an individual being harangued by the mob: the Cultural Revolution lives on.... There was one extraordinary scene in which a Western male student improvised a liaison with a Chinese prostitute: incredibly daring for a young Chinese performer. This girl, who calls herself "Ivy", turns out to be one of Roshni's most capable students, and gets the job of showing me a bit of Ningbo the next morning. She's very articulate - and wants to be a playwright. She's also very aware that it's virtually impossible to make a living that way. Her parents want her to switch to Business Studies. We wonder arond Ningbo's huge and beautiful lake, looking at old women washing clothes in its waters, and carrying them back into ramshackle old houses. They've probably lived here all their lives - and yet seen so much change.

Roshni had booked a bus to bring a student party up to Shanghai to see the show, so I travelled back with them. It was lovely to get chance to have long chat with Roshni - about the vagaries of working with China, about Dev Virahsawmy's newer plays, and about her developing critical ideas about cosmopolitanism. A much more alive and interesting approch than post-colonialism, which is, as she says, "a bit tired" as a theory now.

The show is entering its final weekend in Shanghai, and is selling out. Not that this means it's full - at least until half an hour into the show, when the last of the audience has finally arrived. I'm learning to accept the constant coming and going, the glow of the mobile phones, the chattering and the general lack of reverence. In fact, last night I became very aware of the fact that they weren't just talking - they were participating very actively in the performance, explaining to one another what was going on, or getting excited about images and ideas. What's more, the audience is going on a real journey with the play. By the second half, there is a palpable calm in the room, and an intensity of concentration and absorption which is all the more telling for being so uncharacteristic.

All of which is very gratifying.

The Great Exhibition

The cover of our Shanghai programme features the logo of 2010 Shanghai World Expo, so I thought I should spend a day at the site. I am sorry to say that I found it repulsive. If ever there were evidence of the current moral, cultural and spiritual bankruptcy of the human race, this is it. The national pavilions take the cliches of their perceived identities and parade them with no sense of their history, geography or context, so that they become nothing but vapid branding for the government's attempt to attract Chinese investment. At times this is laughable - the moment when a video climaxes in the rising skyline of Shanghai to the tune of "Land of Hope and Glory" being one example, and the EU's "typical European day" ending with a restuarant, an opera and a football match is another - but at other times it is so deeply disturbing as to bring you close to tears. In the Australian pavilion, for example, there are some carvings on show in the indigenous style. They are devoid of context, presented as national branding, placed so as to encourage people to strike silly poses beside them and have their photos taken. The true worth of this art as the spiritual expression of a people is insulted. All considerations, it seems, must be dismissed beside the economic imperative.

The only pavilion with any hint of integrity (except possibly the British, which I didn't see, but Tony did and liked) is the UN one. Here at least there is no market force at work, and so there are gentle reminders of the Millennium Goals and our utter failure to meet them. There is no queue to get into this pavilion. On the other hand, the China Pavilion has a queue two hours long. On a Monday.

Given the emptiness of so much current cultural fare, I am finding the profundity of the Chinese audience's response to our work very remarkable. On Sunday, I led a workshop for about 30 people, mainly younger ones, at SDAC. The level of creativity on display was extraordinary. They very quickly grasped the idea of working without text, of improvisation, of starting from objects or images. There was a brilliant scene about basketball and group dynamics, a very funny one about people escaping from prison (interesting given the recent news), a disturbing one about people losing limbs, and at least two car-crashes. All done with a great deal of warmth and laughter. The resilience of human creativity never ceases to amaze me.

Liu Xiaobo

A very interesting moment to be in China.... The second the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, CNN and BBC World went dead in our hotel. There is, of course, no reportage in the local media, although it is still possible to find English news on line. The firewalls are definitely even higher than before, though.

From a purely selfish standpoint, we're hoping that the Chinese government's fury only extends to Norway (which by historical accident awards this particular prize), and not to the main Nobel country, Sweden. If it does, then we can forget the last leg of this project. I suspect we'll be OK. China is too pragmatic to be consumed with irrational fury these days.

Liu Xiaobo probably doesn't even know he's won the prize. Neither do the bulk of his countrymen. But it's a bold and powerful decision - far better than the token nod towards Obama for not being Bush last year, and much better than the travesties of awards to Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat and Menachim Begin. This is a man who has made it his life's work to strive towards human rights in China, and has sacrificed any semblance of a normal way of living to achieve that aim. Reading his speech from the dock, you cannot but be incredibly moved.

The strange thing is that his talk of liberation and human dignity is very similar to the rhetoric of the people who founded the PRC. Or at least some of them. Since I've been here, I've been reading Han Suyin's wonderful biography of Premier Zhou Enlai, and this morning I visited the former home of Soong Chingling. What I've been realising is that these two great figures were survivors from the intellectual end of the communist revolution, and that their vision and idealism was constantly undermined by Mao's insistence on the inherent wisdom of the peasantry. The contemporary Chinese mistrust of debate and engagement is not simply an authoritarian thing - it also goes back to the conflicts of the Cultural Revolution period.

So our work, aiming to provoke the audience into thinking for itself, is a very radical thing here. We are not presenting a piece which offers neat solutions and easy answers. We offer a range of possibilities. This may well bemuse many of the audience - but that fact is itself the proof of its necessity.

Opening in China

There's a scene in the show about a Swedish company having a very difficult technical rehearsal in Shanghai. Art has been blending with life for the last few days..... Much of the problem is language, of course - but it really didn't help matters when our video camera disappeared, when the person operating the supertitles only arrived on the day of the show, and when Lloyd cut his hand open to the bone and needed surgery..... !

Anyway - we got there, and finally reached the climax of two years' work last night, when we played to a packed house of Chinese people. It was, of course, a completely different experience from performing in London. To begin with, the piece seemed less funny and more elusive - the style was clearly something very new for them, and they took time to respond. Qi's scenes with Mia got the laughter going - and this led to a really powerful sense of emotion as the play moved into more specifically Chinese areas of concern. The montage of Sammy's family history was incredibly powerful - and so was the story of Tsrui-hua and the abandoned baby.

We'd had some discussion of the ending before the show. Nick Yu was concerned that it might be controversial - apparently a play was banned a few years ago for its portrayal of traditional rituals surrounding death. The powers that be decided that this was "encouraging superstition", and so not appropriate to the image of a modern, "progressive" society. As so often, China wrong-footed me: I'd have expected concern over references to sexuality, to the single-child policy and the Cultural Revolution - but I'd never imagined that a scene about spiritual tradition could be considered sensitive. But, of course, it is. And the reason I like the scene - its affirmation of the value of these practices for today - is exactly the reason why. In China, the spiritual is political.

We (by which I mean the Chinese actors and myself, consulting with Nick) decided that we should keep the scene as it stands. So we were very aware of the resonances when it began. Jue said her line about "In my country, people believe...", and started to show the rituals - and the laughter grew louder and louder. Laughter not of mockery but of recognition. Even of celebration. Delicious, joyous, celebration.

What a wonderful night.

Shanghai homecoming

The firewalls are high in China - so high that this post is being emailed to my friend Kate for posting. I'm used to not being able to read my blog in China - now I can't write it either. Neither can I use Facebook or Twitter. I suspect the regime got twitchy about Twitter after events in Iran. So those who follow Border Crossings, think of this as a clandestine despatch.

We've arrived here on planes from London, Bangalore and Gothenburg over the last couple of days, to be met by the smiling Tracy Lu (our SDAC project manager) and the vista of a city in the grip of Expo 2010. We drove past the Expo park on our way in from the airport - it's space age and packed to bursting. The Expo label is on our publicity, together with that of Starbucks (with a certain irony!). SDAC have been very clever. The poster has layers of photos from the show, rendered into psychedelic colours - so it's much more clearly aimed at a younger audience than our London one was. Lesson for the future.

Earlier in the week, I was thinking we were never going to get here. The shipping company Lloyd had asked to deal with our set freight turned out to be totally incompetent. I name no names..... but having taken the set to Heathrow on Sunday, it was fairly horrific to discover on Tuesday that it was still there, and that there was no prospect of it entering Shanghai for "several weeks". Lloyd and I drove to Heathrow on Wednesday, picked it up, demanded a full refund, and re-wrapped it so we could take it on the plane with us. We pitched up as a group of seven, with our cases, several rolls of mirrored dance floor, two long drapes and various cases of props. Amazingly, China Eastern Airlines were fine about the whole thing - as were Chinese customs. And with a huge sigh of relief we walked out into the Shanghai sunshine.

Great reviews for Re-Orientations

Reviews for Re-Orientations are really exciting - and so is the audience response. I hadn't realised until I saw the show at Soho just how funny it is!

Here are some quotes from the reviews and links:

"Deeply felt, powerfully performed, beautifully staged production" -Londonist

"Impressive, bold in ambition and fluid - like Robert Lepage.... Exquisite moments.... a terrific scene milking the comedy of cultural confusion" - Guardian

"Lives and cultures collide - sometimes violently - in this kaleidoscopic drama... intersecting stories set against a backdrop of hectic, often striking visuals.." - Times

"The visuals are stunning with video integrated into the action and choreography by French dance company a fleur de peau. I also love the way the company interweave different art forms and acting styes.... the company has also scored a real coup in engaging the talents of the great Chinese actress Song Ru Hui" - Theatreworld

"A two hour visual feast... Outstanding performances by Spatica Ramanujam with her exquisite comic timing and superb characterisation, and Qi Bai Xue's striking stage presence" - spoonfed.co.uk

There's only a week left to catch this acclaimed production at Soho Theatre before it tours to Shanghai and Sweden. Click here to book now!

One week in

The show has been playing for a week now - two previews, press night and the first "real" shows. The press night was a wonderful evening - a real pay-off after such a long process of creation. Everything melded very beautifully, and the audience response was ecstatic. Quite a few people on their feet. My friend Stewart, who runs the Barbados Festival, said it was like the best meal he'd ever eaten - there were so many different dishes, so beautifully blended.

The first reviews are out too. There are brilliant ones on Londist and spoonfed, suggesting (as I suspected) that this is work with a strong appeal to younger, web-savvy, cosmopolitan people. There are some great comments in the newspapers too - The Guardian calls it "Impressive, bold in ambition and fluid - like Robert Lepage on a teeny budget" and The Times talks about the way "Lives and cultures collide — sometimes violently — in this kaleidoscopic drama.... intersecting stories set against a backdrop of hectic, often striking visuals."

As sometimes happens, some of the most illuminating comments are actually ones which are intended negatively. The broadsheet critics are clearly coming from a tradition of lit.crit., and are looking for well-made plays with psychological, naturalistic solutions. Which isn't quite what we do! In The Times, Sam Marlowe says that "The characters are manipulated by the multi strand plot, like lifeless puppets." She doesn't mean it as a compliment - but it's exactly right. Indeed, at times we clearly show the characters as puppets - as in this photo of Hui! The point is that people are not always autonomous individuals in control of their own destiny, as western thought would like us to believe. They are very much at the mercy of history, of culture, of structures. In the Asian theatre, actors are always manipulated in some way - by puppetry, by masks, by the form. In drawing off these traditions, we're finding a more radical way of looking at the world.

Press Night tonight

The show has now had two previews, and tonight we let in the journalists, and invite our guests. It's a pretty important moment for the company, and I have to confess I feel more than slightly nervous!

To keep me centred, I've answered a few more questions from the marketing people in Shanghai. Here they are!

1. The play is dramatizes a series of disasters; Tsunami, Storm, abandoned baby. Is there a theme of doom and gloom to the play?

Anything but, actually! Something I've found whenever I've travelled to places where terrible things have happened, is that people are incredibly resilient. Where you expect to see "doom and gloom" you actually get vitality, humour, sexiness, and energy.

When we were first working on the play in Shanghai, we noticed that the western people often expected the Asians to have tragic tales to tell - and the Asian people responded by telling them. But we also noticed that the context was lively, buoyant and colourful. So we wanted to overturn the westerners' idea of a doom-laden East.

This is a play about what happens in the aftermath of tragedy - so of course it acknowledges the tragedies, but it also deals with the comedy and the energy that can follow.

2. How will your new play explore gender relationships as the others did?

The play has a number characters who are involved in relationships with people of the same sex - and the opposite sex. In this play, sexuality is a very fluid thing - people aren't tied down to a specific way of being. I think that we live in a time where lots of the old-fashioned divisions into East and West, male and female, gay and straight and so on don't really make sense. It's much less clear cut than people used to think.

3. It seems that political interest has filtered through to cultural interest in your plays, especially with China and India. Has the global economic shift towards the two countries played a big role in your new play?

Yes! Our theatre is very much a theatre for the globalised world. It's about the way in which people live now that we're all so mingled together, and the differences that this makes to our dealings with one another. The political and social changes in Asia are some of the most important facts in the world today. It's changing everything, and as artists we have to respond to that.

4. How do the cultures intermingle in the new play? united through crisis?

I'm not sure that they are united through crisis. I don't think the world has got to that stage yet - I wish it had. I think what happens in the play is actually what happened in our devising process - that people form very different backgrounds, with a range of different languages, are forced by the situation they are in to find ways of making contact. However temporarily.

5. Does the play have a moral ending, teach us anything about the world today? Will we be 're-orientated' as such?

I don't think it has a moral in a strict sense - but I do think it forces people to reconsider their identity - just as the characters do.

6. What influences does the play follow? historical, traditions, news coverage?

There are so many! The recent histories, of course. Yakshagana, Yueju, Strindberg, news media, rock videos, experimental film....

7. What sort of themes to the play are there, morally/culturally?

It's very much a play about how we can learn to live together. On one level, we've had to do that as a company, working together with no single common language, in order to create the piece. Our little room has been a laboratory for the way the world could work. It's been about exploring ways of communicating, ways of being in your own culture and retaining your identity at the same time as living in a globalised multicultural space. And, as with all devised theatre, the process by which it is made is reflected in its meaning. The play has an extraordinary diversity of characters - all those nationalities, different ages, different sexualities, different political standpoints, rich and poor - and they struggle to survive when they are thrown together. Hence the title. People have to Re_orient themselves, to change, if they are to co-exist.

8. How will Re-orientations mix the contemporary with the old world?

History shapes us and is with us all the time. Perhaps especially in a society which is changing as rapidly as China, you can only really make sense of the present in terms of the past. So the play has a very strong sense of the presence of ghosts - either of close personal relationships or of wider histories. And these ghosts are reflected in the use we make of older cultural forms, like Beijing opera, Yueju and Yakshagana, and even Strindberg's Miss Julie. Our modern theatre only makes sense as something emerging from a broad range of living global traditions.

Questions from Shanghai

We're in the last week of our rehearsals. It's a fascinating process, and I only wish there was time to blog it properly. Come along to Soho Theatre next week, and you'll see what I've been on about for two years!

Meantime - here's a little Q&A I did for the Shanghai publicity people:

1. What was your purpose in setting up Border Crossings?

Border Crossings is an attempt to make theatre about what it feels like to be alive in the current moment, when the world is so much more integrated than ever before. We wanted to set up a company which allowed different cultures to speak to each other, directly and equally, and which explored the ways in which theatre could bring about cross-cultural dialogues and exchanges.

2. What would you like to express through the series of Orientations plays?

These plays came about through an interest in traditional Asian performance forms, and particularly the forms where men play women and women play men. It was interesting to see how this might reflect some of the changes going on in gender relationships around the world. The plays have moved on a lot from that start point - but they are still about the many different forms of human love, and about the ways in which sexual relationships and cultural relationships overlap.

3. What does Re-Orientations talk about?

This is a play about the aftermath of catastrophe. All the main characters are dealing with some sort of loss. Julian and Marie are dealing with the loss of their daughter, and Song that of her lover. Tsrui-hua and Velu have also lost children. I suppose it's to do with the sense that we may have lost our future, and that many aspects of our past are difficult to face. It's about asking how we can move forward in the 21st century.

4. What's the speciality of the production Re-Orientations?

I think audiences will be very struck by the way we use lots of different languages on stage - Chinese, English, Swedish, Kannada... This is what the world is like now, of course - just walk down Nanjing Lu and you'll hear many languages spoken - but it's rare for the theatre to take this on, and still tell a story in a way that a whole range of audiences can understand. We also use lots of different theatrical languages - naturalism, film, yeuju, yakshagana, ballet, modern dance, projected textÉ. We wanted to come at the story from as many different angles as we could. I should add that the whole play has been made by the actors: there is no writer as such and no pre-existing script. We didn't know what the story would be before we started to work on stage.

5. Why did you choose Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre as your partner?

SDAC was the only company I knew of in China which had the artistic vision and the capacity to be our partner organisation. I'd got to know the company's work over the course of several visits to Shanghai, and in particular Nick Yu's desire to engage in cultural dialogue, and to work in modern and innovative, experimental ways. When we found the three actors who are involved, we realised just what an exciting journey this would be.

Drastic Decisions

Almost two weeks into rehearsals, and not been blogging it. Sorry! It's been a very, very busy time. And a very creative and exciting one.

We started work with the wonderful Geraldine Alexander as PK, replacing Nancy Crane. She worked hard and worked beautifully. At the end of the first week, both she and I realised that the character didn't have a story - indeed, didn't have a role in the piece. Everything she did would work better if it were done by somebody else. So we cut the character - and luckily Geraldine was happy to leave the project in its best interests.

Gerry - if you're reading this, there will be another time.

We've gone on to hone and tighten the plot-lines, and the show is much more precise and focused as a result. In fact, it's all getting rather exciting. One more week of rehearsals, and then we have audiences from the 7th.

The Lakes

Somewhat recklessly, given the imminence of rehearsals, I had a week off last week, and went to the Lake District with the family. Of course, it wasn't really a week off - although I did manage only to go online twice all week - once to do a general catch-up and once in response to panic text messaging about EU budgets and marketing invoices.

But, for the artistic bit of me, any new environment is full of stimuli. And the Lake District seemed particularly so. There were people acting as Romans on Hadrian's Wall. There was the joy of reading Wordsworth in his own house - much easier to be a pantheist if you live in Grasmere! There was the strange experience of Long Meg and Her Daughters - a stone circle which reminded me how little connection we have with our indigenous culture... There was even a free festival of puppet performance which we stumbled upon in Penrith. And, of course, all the time the play just gnawing at my mind... in a positive way.

Back to all sorts of dramas. The Chinese actors still don't have visas. Not much I can do to help - exit visas are the issue. Some of our funding applications have been rejected - but one very important one has come through. Of which more anon....

Che Kwan's internship

Che Kwan finished with us today after a seven-week placement as a Production Assistant, focussing on our work with China.

Here is what she had to say about the experience:

"I think I had a unique internship that not everyone has the chance to experience. Most of my schoolmates work in business firms or big companies, staying in the office for the whole day and dealing with the paper works.

Border Crossings is a small theatre organization, but here I can see exactly how things work with a limited budget, like using the internet to connect and promote about Re-Orientations, writing application forms for funding, going around China Town and ask for making advertisement (although I failed the task)… In here I can see the possibility of my future career. In Hong Kong, everything is about business and money, that seems to be the only way to success and I am always confused about my future because that’s not the way I want to go. The experience in Border Crossings makes me believe that it is possible to go a different way from the mainstream society.

Although theatre organizations seem to have nothing to do with what I am studying, I am very happy to find that they are actually related— some themes in Re-Orientations, like homosexuality, cultural and language issues, are just like the topics I am studying in university, just with a different form of expression, I am very happy to find that Sociology is everywhere!

I also learnt a lot about the theatre community. Before coming, my only theatre experience is watching dramas in Hong Kong and I always only focus on the story and actors. During the internship, I see there actually need to be many parts to form a theatre production—actors, actors, lighting, stage design… and every part have its own message and is helping to tell a story. I learnt how to understand the message from the producer through all those parts, and to express myself in the ways other than ‘talking’. I remember Julian Bryant who talked about ‘how to rate a theatre production—artistic value, social impact and business potential’ during the graduation exhibition, I think that is really very useful!

Li Che Kwan"

The Frinton experience

For years I've known about Frinton-on-Sea weekly rep - but only last night did I finally get to go. It's being run by a guy called Eddie Max, who I knew at Oxford a mere 25 years ago, and who found me on Facebook, and sent me an invitation. Well, it had to be!

Frinton is famous for being tiny but professional, and for running a summer season on the old system of one play in rehearsal and one in performance, for a week each. It all happens in what looks like a church hall with a tiny stage, one front of house bar, tabs, and Ed himself selling raffle tickets before the show. Before the play starts, the National Anthem is played, and everybody stands up. It's like travelling back half a century or more.

Which said, Ed has got some very talented people to go there and sample the experience. I saw a Neil Simon comedy, directed by Antony Clark, no less. Jonathan Holloway is also on the bill for the summer. So these are professional people, and no mistake! I asked Tony what it was like to direct a play in a week. "You just do it", he said.

I was sorry to get an email from Nancy Crane a little while ago, saying she couldn't be in Re-Orientations. She's been one of the mainstays of this project for years - but long-term contracts at the Old Vic don't get offered very often, and I understand why she took it. The replacement is a wonderful performer called Geraldine Alexander. I'm excited to be working with her.

Aftermath

LIFT continues to be very exciting. Yesterday, I was at the discussion of Theatre from the Arab World in the afternoon, and then in the evening went to see Aftermath in the Old Vic tunnels. This is an American piece, by the same team that created The Exonerated, and again makes use of verbatim testimony. The witnesses whose words are used are all refugees from Iraq, now living in Jordan, and each with a horror story to tell. It's done incredibly well, with lots of humour, warmth, and humanity. The acting is very compelling, without being totally naturalistic - you are always aware that this is an actor relaying somebody else's words, particularly since much play is made of the translator, who was presumably present at all the interviews. The actors speak in English almost all the time - but he is always there and is frequently told to translate.

I often don't like verbatim theatre, because it's often undramatic and preachy. This was neither. My other concern about verbatim remains, however. In bringing us close to the psychology, the humanity of these victims, it loses sight of the wider political structures which caused this suffering in the first place. Even a play like Talking to Terrorists, which engaged with the "bad" side, rather than the "victims", reduced terrorism to a psychological aberration.

Venturesome

For a while, we've been wrestling with a cash flow problem. The EU grant, which is the bulk of the funding for Re-Orientations, only pays the last 30% after the entire project is finished and accounted for. This means that we have to spend quite a lot of money before we've got it. The main banks don't seem to understand how charities work, and have been singularly unhelpful. One banker actually said to me: "We can't lend to a charity. I mean - they don't make profits, you know!"

Luckily, we found out about Venturesome, which is a really terrific organisation working in just the way we need. Two of their people, Emilie and Rob, came to our office last week, and talked for two hours about the overall mission of the company, and the arts sector as a whole, as well as the particular project. And yesterday came the agreement to give the loan. A huge relief.

Emilie said that their internal meeting turned into a discussion about arts organisations in general, and ways in which they can develop through social enterprise etc. as the cuts in grant aid start to bite. We do need to start thinking like this.....

Chinese language blog

Thanks to Che Kwan, we now have a Chinese language blog on Re-Orientations. Check it out here.

這是 Re-Orientations 的中文博客, 點撃這裡看看！

Meistersinger

I've been in Cardiff for a few days, teaching on the Rose Bruford Opera course's residential school. Last night was very memorable indeed: the WNO's Meistersinger, directed by Richard Jones, with Bryn Terfel as Hans Sachs.

I remember seeing a Graham Vick production at the ROH, years ago, with John Tomlinson as Sachs, and being very disturbed by the overt German nationalism of the ending. In Germany, it's so discomforting that one recent production actually stopped the opera at this point, and unleashed a debate - both onstage and off - as to whether these things could be said today. Richard Jones has wonderfully reclaimed the piece from the Nazi shadow, by relating Sachs' call for German art to a tradition of liberal humanist thought and artistic leadership which is totally contrary to Nazism. Bach, Handel, Goethe, Joseph Beuys, Marlene Deitrich, Brecht and many more are explicitly cited as the tradition into which Sachs tells the Romantic poet Walther he must become absorbed. We need youth, rebellion and romanticism, yes - but we also need control and rationality. In this incredibly dialectical piece, Walther unleashes the anarchy of Romanticism, which Sachs understands and is attracted to - and then fuses with the tradition. Of course, if you think of that tradition as racist and violent, then the opera is repulsive. But if the tradition is seen as open, humane and rational - then this is a piece for the current moment. It didn't feel so much German as European. Not conservative but radical. And actually, incredibly moving.

Life Streaming

LIFT is back as a Festival, and very exciting it is too. I went yesterday morning to see Life Streaming, knowing that it was a morning performance by the river, and would in some way relate to the tsunami (which interests me because of Re-Orientations).

It's an amazing experience. The "performance" (it is a performance, but not in a conventional way) happens through the internet. The 20 people in the London audience are linked to 20 people in an Asian country (we're only told which at the end, and asked not to spoil the revelation for others). So it's like a one-to-one piece - with moments of communion with the other performers and the rest of the audience. A lot of the time the piece seems to be about yourself - although, having compared notes with Nisha, it's actually a lot more precisely scripted than it at first appears. Through an awareness of our own affluence, our ease, and our own sense of loss, we are gradually led to question the relationship that is developing with the person in Asia - to think about its economic meaning, its politics, its emotional validity (or otherwise).

I emailed all my UK cast and told them to try and see it. It takes you to the heart of the tsunami experience, and places you in a discomforting relationship to it.

Welcome to Thebes

We've been helping the National to publicise this show. They asked us because of our interest in African theatre - although I'm not sure that Welcome to Thebes is African theatre so much as Western theatre about global concerns, including Africa. That, I suppose, makes it intercultural in a way, and even closer to our remit. What makes it distinctly not the sort of work we do is that, for all the African performers on the stage, the African voice is not present in the play. The writer, Moira Buffini, looks at Liberia (and other post-conflict zones) through Western eyes, as perhaps she must - and the framing is Greek mythology. This made it a very interesting piece for me to watch: Brian Woolland and I have been talking about another piece which might meld Greek myth with the realities of the contemporary world.

In the end, I'm not sure Buffini quite pulls it off - but it's a brave effort. The allusive quality of myth is helpful in making the play not specifically about a particular situation, although you can clearly see the figure of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in the new President of Thebes, Euridyce, and casting David Harewood as Theseus, the First Citizen of "democratic" Athens brings Obama to mind (even though the character is more like Bill Clinton). But the names, the presence of figures like Antigone and Tiresias, seem to pull the play into the philosophy of tragic destiny, and to deny the possibility of the change which the central character is attempting to create. Perhaps this is a dramatic tension, or perhaps it is a flaw. I can't really decide. But I know it's interesting.

Big hArt

On Friday afternoon, I was at Australia House for a presentation by Big hArt from Australia. This is a company we've been close to for some time, ever since we started discussing bringing their amazing production of Ngapartji Ngapartji to Origins last year. We didn't manage it - mainly because it would have involved 50+ flights from Australia, which is pushing it - but now that we are looking at the next Festival, they are also developing a one-man version of the piece, which is altogether more manageable. It's this idea which was shown to us on Friday.

Trevor Jamieson, who was part of our First Nations Advisory Panel and helped us to launch the Festival in that same room in 2007, tells his family history in this show. It's an extraordinary story of destruction and survival - and in this version he is juxtaposed with video footage of interviews with Elders (many of whom actually appeared in the original version). This less formal, less showy version of the show is in many ways more immediate for a British audience than the grand spectacle of the original.

Talking to Scott Rankin afterwards, I get the impression that this is how his thinking is currently moving. The new Big hArt project, with which Trevor will again be involved, is a direct engagement with the mining companies who are ripping up the Aboriginal homelands. He's right, of course - if we just make shows that talk to the converted, we get nowhere. The people who we somehow have to reach are the decision makers, the people with power. As Peter Sellars says about opera - talk to the people you think you don't like.

We're looking at working in partnership with the City of London Festival next year - and it's started me thinking about all those City board rooms.

Ngugi wa Mirii

I got a copy of the latest edition of African Theatre, and saw an obituary for Ngugi wa Mirii. I hadn't heard - but he died in a road accident in 2008, aged only 56. The obituary, by his more famous namesake Ngugi wa Thiong'o, is very elegantly written. They worked together in the early years of African community theatre, especially the famous Kamairiithu theatre. The Moi dictatorship drove them both into exile. Ngugi was Thiong'o went to the US, and Ngugi wa Mirii to Zimbabwe - like many African intellectuals and idealists (among them Ama Ata Aidoo), who believed that the newly independent nation could become a model for the continent.

It was in Zimbabwe that I met Ngugi wa Mirii in 1997. He had been there 15 years, and had established ZACT (Zimbabwe Association of Community Theatres): an extraordinary organisation which facilitated Theatre for Development on a grand scale throughout the region. The methodology was similar to Boal in Brazil - he showed me a framed photograph of himself shaking hands with Paolo Freire, mounted proudly on his wall. He also gave me a T-shirt, which I still have. It lists the many types of theatre which ZACT presented on the back, and on the front it says "Theatre for Conscientization and Development". I don't wear it often - just when I want to make a point. It usually works.

Europe

I've been reading Maria Delgado and Dan Rebellato's new book on European Directors. It's exciting to see a different angle on the role of the director - who is accepted in Europe as being a creative artist and not, as in Britain and America, as simply the interpreter of "the author's intentions". How are you supposed to know the author's intentions anyway? Who was the last person who spoke to Shakespeare? Even if we could ring him up, he might not know. People lie about their intentions - even to themselves. So, if you ask me, it's better to regard them as something we can't know, and get on with the business of being creative on a European model.

The idea of Europe and the idea of directing both encompass debates over democracy. I was in Brussels on Tuesday, for the annual meeting of the Platform for an Intercultural Europe. It was a fascinating event, as much as anything to see the European Commission paying for itself to be criticised, and strongly recognising the importance of the cultural sector in broader policy-making. But it was also very odd to see so few people present from the minority and migrant communities under discussion. An intercultural Europe is not a solely white, educated, Anglophone Europe. I volunteer to look into hosting a Practice Exchange session, where we can explore the ways in which cultural work can open up real dialogues, and to have the dialogues largely initiated by BME practitioners.

It's the same debate that runs through Maria and Dan's book. Declan Donnellan talks about the need for somebody to be in charge, and Romeo Castellucci, more intriguingly, says that his response to our individualist world is to stress the solitariness of the artist. This is in contrast to figures like Mnouchkine, who continue to believe in collective creation, and democratic collaboration within a theatre company, and between companies and communities. The book, perhaps not consciously, seems to regard Mnouchkine as rather old-fashioned in this respect: a hangover from 1968. The modern director, Castellucci's solitary artist, puts across a personal vision to which other individuals respond.

My own work, as a director of intercultural theatre, has to be closer in approach to Mnouchkine - so it's a bit disturbing to feel that Europe, which presents a more liberating model of theatre practice than Britain, may think I'm a bit past my sell-by date. But then, Europe is only to be trusted, and can only succeed, in so far as it becomes democratic itself. The Platform is a step towards democracy - but the Commission itself remains very undemocratic - operating like a "vision-imposing" solitary director. While this remains, it will never be intercultural and dialogic - and theatre which is imposed from above cannot espouse these values either.

Still talking about the Dilemma!

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/Books/5576862-147/story.csp

Nice to feel appreciated!

Alaknanda's wisdom

Long chat with Alaknanda Samarth. As so often, she is incredibly inspiring, even in her deep pessimism about the present moment. "How can you put on stage the fact that everything is falling apart?" she asks me. "Even language". Of course - she's hit the nail on the head. That is the challenge - and a huge one.

I have some ideas, but they really need to be tried out experimentally. Alak tells me to contact the National Theatre Studio. Just as I decide to do so - they contact me. Which is a very exciting development indeed!

Two actors, Jeremy Tiang and Julia Sandiford, invited me to a play called Limehouse Nights. It's about the Chinatown which was in Limehouse in the 19th century, and is performed in the dilapidated old Limehouse Town Hall. A beautiful sense of ghosts hanging over East London.

More festivals

I'd never been to the Hay Festival before, even though I grew up in nearby Hereford, and my parents still live there. I'd expected the Festival to operate across the little town of bookshops, but in fact it's a posh, Anglicised version of the Festivals I've attended in Australia and New Zealand, with all the events in tents (or marquees, for Hay), somewhere in a crowded field. We went to a debate about youth and education, which included an inspiring contribution from Hilary Hodgson, who was our contact for the grant we had from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation towards O Patrin. Then listened to Ian McEwan reading from, and talking about, his new novel Solar. I'd already read the book - very quickly and with much laughter. It's a return to form by McEwan: I loved Atonement, and then felt that both Saturday and On Chesil Beach were disappointing. Solar manages to employ the ironic method McEwan used in Saturday without having the effect of patronising the characters (or the reader). Although his central figure is repulsive, he is also capable, and strangely sympathetic - his life spinning out of control, entirely as a result his own actions. I also much enjoyed the fact that this was a comic novel about climate change. McEwan spoke interestingly about this: he had been very anxious to avoid the preachy, the worthy - and so decided to come at his subject from an oblique angle. I find this very helpful at a time when all the funders are asking for socially relevant subjects and "impacts": there have to be ways of making art which allow for this and yet are still artistic instead of being dull propaganda. McEwan has found one.

In the evening, we listened to a Christy Moore concert. I've loved this singer for years - a great teller of moral and emotional truths. I'd never heard him live before, so this was a real treat.

I find Festivals more and more appealing: they really allow people to clear some space, stop their everyday mania and contemplate other things over a period of time. Far better than a show hastily snatched at the end of the day, after a quick meal and before the last train. I very much want to do another Origins, and have also been chatting to a number of people about joining forces, so that other Festival events can get an Origins input. There's a lot of excitement about the initiative across the globe... this morning I met up with a Native American storyteller who was in London and wanted to chat about it. And I'd also like to get the work we create into more Festival settings: it somehow seems more appropriate for our audiences to be receiving the work in that kind of environment.

Eurydice

I watched Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice at the Young Vic last night. I found it whimsical, charming and magical... though I am not in agreement with many of the critics, it has to be said. Maybe I just enjoyed it because it was the first thing I've seen in six weeks which wasn't directed by me.... but I suspect it's more to do with the playfulness of this American writer's voice, and her daring interweaving of mythic and dream-like material with something close to aspects of American social reality. Magical realism, or something approaching it, is, after all, what I enjoy doing in the theatre. The inter-penetration of different worlds, of complex visible and invisible realities. You don't get much more invisible than the realm of the dead - or closer to our emotional heart.

Ling Skypes me from Beijing. She's working with a company that wants to do Brecht's Good Soul of Szechuan at the National Theatre, and she wants me to advise on the production. It opens the week before Re-Orientations is due to hit Shanghai - which could oddly work quite well if they want me just before the opening and at the start of the (lengthy) rehearsal period. It would be interesting to colour the rehearsals with some immediate experience of China again. And perhaps pick up the odd prop and costume item....

Long chat with Nick Moran about the technical side of the show. We need to find ways of integrating the lighting - which Nick is keen should not be set ahead of the performances, but should have an improvised element like the rest of the show - with the very solid pre-recorded elements of video and sound. Except, of course, that some of the video and sound is live too. Hmm.

The board met on Tuesday. Very pleased that Martin Bloom will be joining us. He's currently in China, having rather more commercial board meetings! We discuss the effects of the election on funding for us. It's clear that the cuts are not going to miss out the arts budget.... in fact, our current record on applications suggests that the economic situation is already biting very hard. Emma rightly says that the only way in the new climate is to build relationships with business and individual donors - which is the American model. But how????

Living in an unsettled time

I've been back in the UK for just over a week, and it has been a very remarkable week. After our election last Thursday, it's got to Tuesday and it looks as if David Cameron might finally be about to limp battered and bruised into Number 10, having conceded vast amounts to a Lib-Dem party that actually didn't get anywhere like the number of votes it should have done on the basis of the campaign.

Everybody is treating this as if it's a bizarre event - but globally, and certainly in Europe, coalitions are the norm. In fact, Europe now has only three remaining majority governments - in France, Malta and (wait for it) Greece. Hardly a recipe for perfection, then. The fact is that coalitions, and their attendant negotiations, are the essence of a consensual democracy. In recent years, they have been waylaid by the centralising of party power in the leaders' offices. Before that, parties were also mini-coalitions, which only evolved in the first place to facilitate the inevitable process of give and take involved in forming a government. I said before the election that a hung Parliament would be the best result because it would re-vitalise our democracy - and nothing I have seen in the last few days undermines that idea. Who knows - we may even get a Tory-led government which brings in a form of PR and raises the tax-free allowance to help the poorest workers.

Talking of helping poor workers.... (!) we've had some positive results on some of our recent funding bids. The Swedish Embassy is helping us, as is the Commonwealth Foundation, and Nick Moran has some funding for the research aspect of lighting the show. It's still not as much as we need - so we've had to take the difficult decision to stage only Re-Orientations this autumn, rather than the full Trilogy. Which said - that's the new show and the one we are most proud of - so there's still a very big and exciting project here!

Also sent in another EU bid - this time for a project with Palestine. All fingers crossed, then....

The reviews for the Houston Xerxes are out. They are all really good - but here's a link to my favourite!

Artists' processes

We had the dress rehearsal for the Houston Xerxes last night. Opera being opera, we now have a gap before the opening night, during which the most I can really do is phone the singers with some notes and explore the city. And catch up on admin.

It's been fascinating to work with this cast. Often I've felt that opera singers have a different approach to the creation of a performance from actors. The norm is that they sing the same roles in lots of different productions, so they know the text and the music well, and expect the director to provide something called "the production", which tends to mean lots of things to remember. What's been different with this group has been the open-ness to growth and process. It probably helps that they've not sung the roles before - but I think it's also to do with a particular approach which certain special singers have, which is closer to that of an actor. For somebody like Susan, direction is not just a set of notes - it's a creative dialogue which allows her to develop a performance in which music and acting are integrated and indivisible. She didn't turn up knowing the music - in fact it took her quite some time to learn it while we were rehearsing. And the reason for this is that she can't learn it unless it makes sense to her, unless it's something she can inhabit. The resulting performance is - to my, admittedly biased, mind - one of the most extraordinary things I've seen on an operatic stage.

Still working out some of the admin aspects of Re-Orientations for the autumn. As so often for us, there's going to be a last minute element to the project. I guess it's just the context in which we are operating - but it would be so nice to be free of these concerns in the way I have been on Xerxes. For a director just to direct is a rare privilege these days.

The Rothko Chapel

When I first heard I was coming to Houston, there were two places I felt I really had to visit, alongside all the operatic goings-on. One was the Space Centre (which should happen on Wednesday) - the other was the Rothko Chapel. I'd known about this space for years - ever since I first started researching Rothko as a visual inspiration for The Great God Brown in (I think) 1993. He then became a major source for one of the early Border Crossings shows - the multi-media devised piece I did as a solo show, Departures / Arrivals. In that production, I played Rothko on film (though I look nothing like him!), as well as a version of myself on stage. We used imagery from his work and quotations from his letters in the form of projected text. His incredible use of emptiness to portray so much of the contemporary human condition carries on being a huge influence on me. The stage spaces for the Trilogy, and even for pieces like Bullie's House, Mappa Mundi and Double Tongue, all owe something to this aesthetic - and, more importantly, to its underlying spiritual power.

The Chapel is in an area of Houston which was bought by an incredibly wealthy philanthropic couple called the Menils, who collected art from all over the world, including an amazing selection of Greek vases and a vast array of Magrittes. Their collection is now on free display in an ever-changing exhibition space, which currently features a whole series of very funny, and very disturbing interventions by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (he's the one who did the Pope being struck by a meteorite). The presence of this iconoclast is another tribute to the open-mindedness of the Menils, who were, after all, devout Catholics - they also endowed St. Thomas's University in this same area of Houston, which appears to teach everything within a Thomist framework.

The Rothko Chapel, however, is not Catholic. In fact, it isn't even Christian. It is visited and used by Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus... you name it. It is a space of contemplation, meditation, and spirituality in the widest sense. What you do there may or may not involve a deity. To my mind, Rothko's paintings are about the spiritual meaning of the deity's absence (or apparent absence), in the contemporary world. They seem to work like icons - providing a bridge into another reality - but that reality is empty. His fourteen vast canvases, nine of which form three triptychs, are open shimmering spaces of black, dark reds and deep purples. They are not about "glory" or "redemption" or "consolation". They are about our need to face up to emptiness, and to find a relationship with that vast void which envelopes our existence.

I went twice during the day. The first time there were quite a lot of people there: including one who was trying to take photos and set the attendant scurrying towards him. The second time, after I'd been to the Menil Collection, I was able to sit there on my own with the paintings. It was totally silent, apart from the attendant occasionally turning the page of her newspaper. The silence was like a noise. And the emptiness of the paintings was like a fullness - shimmering and numinous, overpowering with the presence of absence.

Outside, there is a pool, with a broken obelisk by Barnett Newman. It's set in a little garden. The sun was very hot, and the birds were singing.

The size of the space

Apparently the Americans regard the Brown auditorium as "small", because it "only" has 2500 seats. Hum.... I've worked in theatres with many more seats than that, which were much smaller. In ancient Greece, there were theatres which would fit many times into the Brown, yet seated twice that number (admittedly the ancient Greeks were significantly smaller than the Texans and less conscious of personal space). What strikes me as odd about American theatres is the amount of empty space, with the circles not even starting until the rear of the stalls. So the seats at the back of the balcony are miles from the stage. When a space uses the vertical dimension, and when it curves the circles (so called for a reason), then even very large numbers of people can be quite close to the stage. I'm finding the scale of the Brown space a big challenge. Luckily I have a cast who are used to this scale of work.

A bit of bad news on Re-Orientations. In spite of huge enthusiasm from their staff, the Heritage Lottery Fund have turned down our application. It's mainly a blow to the Education programme we'd intended to associate with the work - but it does also have an impact on the main project. Lots of the inevitable re-budgeting and emailing..... We will not be daunted!

On a very different note - I phoned my Dad today, because it was his 82nd birthday. He'd spent it... at work. Dealing with Council business, answering memos and emails. I can't help but be impressed.

Queen of Spades

Will Lacey and I went to the opening of HGO's Queen of Spades last night. Will had seen the production before - it was originally done in Wales by Richard Jones: I'd never even seen the opera. One of those increasingly rare moments when I get to encounter a classic piece that I don't know at all (it's about twenty-five years since that happened with my last Shakespeare!). I know Onegin very well, having worked on and written about the Glyndebourne production - and there were times when this evoked memories of that.... Tchaikovsky clearly had a thing about old nurses putting young girls to bed. But generally this piece is much more nihilistic, fatalistic and altogether strange than the earlier opera.

This makes it an ideal piece for a Richard Jones production - and, as he often does, he's set it in an early 20th century grubby world, with more than a nod to Freud's Vienna and Berg's Wozzeck. There are some stunning theatrical moments - the old Countess dying like Marat in a bath; her ghost returning as a huge skeleton; Herman's nightmare being viewed from above, with the bed vertical on a painted perspective back-cloth. And the tenor, Vladimir Galouzine, is extraordinary. After the first scene, Will whispered "That has got to be the loudest voice in the world". Not only that, but he is also an incredibly intense actor, and, in spite of singing more than everybody else put together, he doesn't sound remotely tired at the end. Wow.

It was also great to see the HGO Chorus doing a different show. They are every bit as good in this as they are in our Xerxes.

Funding for Palestine

We're planning a possible new project in collaboration with Ashtar Theatre in Palestine. If we're to pull this off, we really need to get another EU grant, and the deadline is fast approaching. I'm trying to co-ordinate this at the same time as rehearsing Xerxes. I realised yesterday that there are lots of documents requiring signatures from our partners - and have just spent a couple of hours emailing them all out for printing, signing, and sending on. It's a logistical nightmare with limited time available to pull it off. Technical rehearsals start tonight, but at least that means I get a day off tomorrow and some free mornings over the weekend, when I can work on this. Coffee may become quite important, I think.

The opera is getting more exciting by the day. Sonia and Will are very interesting on the process. Apparently, it's quite rare for an opera director to examine the text with the singers. Most "direction" is actually choreography. So, I gather I'm making some ripples here - though in a good way!

Texan times

I'm trying to keep up with my Border Crossings work at the same time as directing Xerxes here in Houston. Not easy - since the rehearsals are intense, run for six days a week with a variable day off, and often include evenings. And I have a three-session day tomorrow. Still - somehow this week I managed to get an application in to Cultures Action France towards the costs of Denise and Micha's work on the Trilogy, and to begin another EU application for a project we're hoping to do in collaboration with the Palestinian company Ashtar. A lot of their work is in the tradition of Boal - very interesting as a politically open and egalitarian approach to devising. The forms for the application are, of course, very complicated! I have until May to submit, so I ought to make it. The best time for working on this seems to be in the morning when we have an afternoon and evening rehearsal - that way I remain awake!

Xerxes is proving very exciting. It's partly because the cast is so great, and partly because the rehearsal method that has emerged from my collaboration with Will Lacey is really allowing us to integrate music, text and drama in a much fuller way than is usual in opera. The virtuosity of singers like Susan Graham isn't just showy for the sake of it (though it's certainly very impressive!) - we are also making ornamentation which is about the character's intention and emotional state. Very inspiring.

Xerxes in Houston

This has nothing at all to do with Border Crossings: it's completely a freelance job. I'm in Houston, Texas, directing Xerxes for the opera company here. It's the old Hytner production, which I've revived several times in London - but here it doesn't have the status of something from the company's stable, so we are able to be much more free and inventive. I also have the most amazing cast of opera singers I've ever been lucky enough to work with. Susan Graham is Xerxes, and David Daniels is Arsamenes. Probably the greatest mezzo and certainly the greatest counter-tenor in the world. Then there's Laura Claycomb, Heidi Stober and Sonia Prina - every single one of them world-class voices. And nice people with it. Mind-blowing.

I'm enjoying the working relationship with Will Lacey, the conductor. He's very open to a proper creative dialogue, so we can make the music work dramatically, and make the drama work musically. It's a rare privilege to be allowed in to discussions about ornamentations, and to work so closely on the musical, as well as textual, considerations in the Recits. And, in Handel, Recit is the key to everything.

Houston itself is also mind-blowing, but in a very different way. There's little that's picturesque or culturally elegant about the city - it exists because there's oil in Texas, and money all around it. Every day I walk past the old Enron building. Halliburton is here (although the official headquarters moved to Kuwait just as Obama came into office...). The airport is called George Bush International. You get the picture? I do feel quite foreign here!

Witi Ihimaera

I'm writing this in Houston, Texas. I arrived here yesterday, grabbing just a week at home between New Zealand and the States! A very busy week it was too - with a board meeting by conference call, briefings for the publicity designers (Eureka!), and the inevitable work on funding applications. So it's only now I've got a moment to cast my mind back to the flight from New Zealand back to London (with an overnight stopover in Korea, would you believe?), and the Maori texts I was reading.

One of these was The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. I knew about this novel because of the film - but I had no idea just how brilliant it would be as a piece of writing. The blend of contemporary "reality" (in the conventional, Western sense) with the mythic and spiritual realities of Maori culture is astonishing. It's more than a claim to post-colonial specificity - it's about a whole different way of looking at the world and being in the world, which allows human beings to relate directly to the environment and to an historical and spiritual continuum of being. Really inspiring. So I was very excited that James from Taki Rua had given me a script by Witi Ihimaera to read. It's called Woman far Walking, and it was commissioned by the company, and performed by them some years ago. They are thinking about reviving it, and wondered whether I'd be interested for Origins. Sadly, the greta novelist doesn't always make the great playwright - and this piece seemed to me to lack drama and conflict. It's about a very old Maori woman - the age of the Treaty of Waitangi - which is a quirky idea in itself, but has the effect in this play of turning her into a symbol of the Maori people, with the entire history since the treaty being re-told in the play. It becomes didactic, lecturing.

We saw Cheek by Jowl's Macbeth on Friday night. Nisha and I have a special relationship to the play - we met while working on it together. This production had lots of similarities to the one we did in Mauritius: a very fast pace, with no gaps between scenes, the presence of observers to witness even private moments, the text of the witches echoed by a surrounding ensemble, Duncan played as a blind man.... Of course, there are lots of differences too - but it was exciting to see the play being delivered with the raw energy we identified as its key!

Time to think about the Houston Xerxes now!

Taki Rua

I've been doing some exploratory workshopping with Taki Rua. Very nice to be back in a rehearsal room, working with actors. One of them is Maaka, who I already know from Strange Resting Places. There's also Aaron, who stage managed that show and is now acting in Twain, a terrific Maori woman called Ngapaki, and two other guys, Alan and James.

In the very limited time available to us, we can only really scratch the surface a bit. We manage to create a few intriguing little scenarios, and we also get to talk about Maori theatre and its place in relation to Maori people, New Zealand and the world. It's intriguing that so much Maori theatre is historical - it's to do with the ghosts, I suppose. But Maori film tends to be very contemporary. We talk about the possibility of bringing the ghosts directly into the contemporary world - but we don't really manage to do it practically. It would take some weeks to manage that!

I go to a show called 360, which involves sitting on a swivel chair while the action moves around on a circular stage. Then on to the Festival Club, where I get to meet Lissa, the Festival director, as well as the Chair of her board - a former Minister - and some key decision makers from Perth and Auckland. Very pleasing to hear that they all know about Border Crossings, and are interested in our work. Lots of DVDs to send out when I get home!

Spent the morning at the NZ Film Archive, watching a film called Patu! It's about the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand, the protests against it, and the extreme violence through which they were put down. The film-maker is Maori, but specifically Maori resistance is only a small part of the film - though an important one. It's very interesting to see the links that were made between them and the anti-apartheid struggle. Of course, it was Australia's approach to the Aboriginal people that gave the South Africans the model for apartheid.

Back to Wellington

Some real treats at Womad on Saturday: a bit surprisingly, mostly from Islamic cultures, which for some reason I didn’t expect in New Zealand! Mariem Hassan, the Saharawi singer, whose music brings the plight of her colonised people to a wider audience. Amal Murkus, from Palestine – less need to tell the world what’s going on, but she makes the most wonderful emotional connection. Gochag Askarov from Azerbaijan – a high and powerful meditational voice, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I’ve no experience at all of this area – and some of the conversations with my fellow international guests fill me with fear about the costs – but I do really want to bring music into the next Origins.

I flew back down to Wellington yesterday morning, but not before snatching a glimpse at New Plymouth’s contemporary art gallery: the Govett-Brewster. They’re showing some work by a Chinese artist called Zhang Peili, who works with video. Catapulted back into the world of the Trilogy. One piece, Actor’s Lines, is particularly resonant for me. It’s made by re-cutting a Maoist film from the early 60s. The original shows a party leader explaining to a younger man how patriotic love is superior to romantic love. Zhang’s version repeats shots and slows the scene, so that you start to see a gay sub-text. Remarkable.

Two performances in the Festival in Wellington. The first is called The Arrival, and is based on the picture book by Shaun Tan. Lots of puppetry and big visuals. The second piece is Taki Rua’s new creation, Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland. Maaka Pohatu, the gentle giant from Strange Resting Places, is in it, as is Aaron Cortesi, who came to London as their Stage Manager. The other Maori actor is Ngapaki Emery, who I saw in Vula at the Barbican. The play is based on Twain’s visit to Whanganui in 1895, and his remarks about a statue which commemorated Maori who had fought against their compatriots on the side of the colonisers. Twain condemned the statue, and sided with the rebellious Maori. The difficulty is that the play wants to explore the issue of being written about, inscribed, by the foreigner – but since Twain was sympathetic, it’s tricky to use him as a way in. The piece looks beautiful, and there are moments of magic: it’s at an early stage of development, and has a bit of a way to go! But then, that’s what these new approaches to making theatre are all about. We need to be able to experiment and to grow – and sometimes that happens in front of an audience.

Womad

Yesterday and today are my days at New Zealand's Womad, in a big park in Taranaki. Lots of Glastonbury-like standing around in vast open-air crowds, with big bands on big stages, and more esoteric fare in smaller spaces. Lots of the management-type people here still seem to be under the impression that Origins is a rock festival on similar lines - and that I'm here as a "buyer". I've been trying to explain that it's more specific, vaguer, and that, while there will be definite outcomes from this trip, we won't know exactly what they are for some time. I do very much want to increase the music element in the next festival - but we need to sort out venues and scale before we can be clear what we book. One thing I'm sure about is that the rock music, which may be in Maori but sounds like rock anywhere in the world, is not for us. On the other hand, there are some really interesting bands who are bringing the traditions of First Nations into a more contemporary medium, and dialoguing with the globalised world. One such, who I heard last night, is Pacific Curls - one Maori, one Scot, one Rotuman - who achieve a level of "fusion" I've not encountered before, and still retain clear integrity. They also sing about things that matter.

OK - off to the party I go....

Sounds Aotearoa

I saw Miria George's new play, He Reo Aroha, in Wellington on Tuesday night, with Hone directing. It's a big change after her intensely political And what remains?. This play is a love story and a comedy, with lots of Maori song. It's very charming, particularly for the large Maori audience at Te Papa, who got all the jokes about their community, and joined in the well-known songs. Great to be in the theatre and have a sense of celebration.

During the day, CNZ had given us a showcase of some work in development, both theatre and dance. I always find it tricky to work out what a show is like from an extract performed out of context, but at least I got the chance to see Atamira Dance Company, and to have lunch with Moss and Dolina, who run it. Dolina is pregnant - and tells me about Richard Nunns playing traditional instruments onto the bump. Music is very much related to healing and nurturing in Maori culture.

Wednesday morning saw me get on the plane to Taranaki, in the West. Incredible views of the volcano as we came in to New Plymouth, where Sounds Aotearoa is happening for two days, followed by Womad. Sounds is a combination of more showcasing - this time for music - with a conference about how to develop the NZ music industry. My interest in it is the indigenous work, of course. Richard Nunns played again last night, this time with a singer called Whirimako Black. The dialogue between her voice, singing traditional songs, and his solo instruments, was wonderful. It's also great to be here because there are so many other Festival directors and the like around. It's especially great to see Rhoda Roberts, who until very recently ran The Dreaming. I'm able to give her a copy of the Origins programme, with the article I wrote about her, the festival, and her film. She says it made her cry. I tell her that she'd done the same for me.

I was asked to speak on a panel about touring music to the UK and Europe. Of course, I know nothing about this, so instead I speak about Origins, about the need to hear First Nations cultures in London, and about what music can do in the global space. It seems to go down very well, if only as a break from all the "get your marketing plan right" sessions. As the conference closes, we are taken to a powhiri, where we, and all the artists who've come for Womad, are welcomed onto the marae. It's even more moving than in Wellington, particularly because so many of the international artists reply to the Maori speeches with their own words and songs. Especially, I love what one young black American performer says. His people lost their past in the time of slavery, and could not use their language or sing their songs. Meeting the Maori, and being welcomed to the marae, he felt for the first time in his life that he had a real connection to an ancestry. That he was in a sense, at home.

Powhiri

I had Sunday brunch with James from Taki Rua. The first of many old friendships to be rekindled here (and new ones to be made). James got married last week - so I feel a bit guilty at bringing him out on a Sunday morning, until I listen in on the rush of phone calls he gets. Taki Rua have a new show opening at the Festival, which I'm seeing on the 14th. It's called Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland. James is very open about it being at a comparatively early stage of its development- and that's certainly something I know about! Work which is created collectively - and that can include work with a writer - inevitably takes longer than work which is "finished", at least in terms of script, before rehearsals begin. We started Orientations in 2003, and I still wouldn't call it anywhere near "finished". But who wants a show to be finished anyway? That just means it's dead - and in theatre, the liveness is the point! I'm happy to say that Carla from Creative New Zealand is in total agreement. A rare thing from a funder...!

Today, with CNZ's other international guests, I was welcomed onto the marae at Victoria University. This welcoming ceremony, or powhiri, was familiar to me from the Opening Ceremony at Origins - but no less moving for that. Indeed, to be welcomed into a magnificent Maori house on the land itself with some knowledge of the protocols made it doubly moving.

After the ceremony, we were given lunch (a crucial part of the welcome), and then a series of talks about the meaning of Maori art in relation to its cultural context. Good to see the "buyers" being given a bit of context. If we just export the work without a sense of where its roots are, then it's just exotica. My old chums Hone Kouka and Miria George are there, and Hone talks about Maori theatre. I also get to meet Moss Patterson from Atamira, whose work I'll finally see in the flesh tomorrow, and the legendary Richard Nunns, who has almost single-handedly rediscovered the traditions of Maori music. Te Papa has some of his instruments on display, as well as an incredible sound installation to accompany its exhibition of green-stone carving. Today Richard performed a piece for traditional Maori instruments and string quartet. The NZ Quartet played music which was influenced by the sound of whales - while Richard played a series of instruments carved from whale-bone. In the marae, this was an incredible experience.

Festival Days

Wellington is tiny for a capital city - you can walk everywhere. And you bump into people you know - like in Hereford or something. I was passing the Te Papa museum, and saw Helen, who used to be the NZ Cultural Attache in London. We reminisced about our House of Commons lunch, and she told me that my comparative lack of jet lag was a sign that I was meant to stay here... I suspect it's got more to do with Melatonin, which you can't buy over the counter in England or New Zealand (not sure why), but which is freely available when changing planes in South Korea!

Creative New Zealand have booked me in to see lots of home-grown work. The most extraordinary so far is a play called Apollo 13: Mission Control, in which the audience sit at the ranks of 70s computer desks remembered from the lunar era, and participate in a cleverly constructed comic recreation of the crisis. It's all engineered so that the audience are actually just vehicles to relay information - but it's managed in such a way that it all feels very spontaneous. At one point, the phone on my desk went.

Me: Hello.
Voice: This is President Nixon. Can I speak with Gene Kranz, please?
Gene Kranz actor: Who is it?
Me: It's the President.
Gene: I'm not here....
Me: Sorry - he's just popped out....
Voice: I'm the President of the United States, and I demand to speak with him!
Me: It's President Nixon on the phone!
(Gene writes "Hang up" on the blackboard. I hang up. Laughter all around)

You get the idea.

I also saw a solo show with music called Ship Songs, with an actor called Ian Hughes telling the story of how his parents met (amongst other things). It sounds sentimental, but it wasn't. This afternoon I was at a concert by the NZ Trio. Alongside some extraordinary premieres of Piano Trios with video enhancement (close-ups of golf balls being rolled across the piano strings), they played Beethoven's Trio "The Ghost", which we use in Re-Orientations. Except they only played the first movement - which isn't very ghostly at all. We use the second.

It's actually been an eventful couple of days on the Trilogy project too, even though I'm out here. Funding confirmed from the Commonwealth Foundation and from the Swedish Consulate in China. Very festive....