Reviewing the Year

Division - Drum Theatre, Plymouth

Well, it's what people do at this time of year, isn't it?  2012 wasn't a year when Border Crossings was at its most visible - but because of what we've been doing behind the scenes, 2013 is going to be our busiest and most exciting year ever!  The highlight of the year was our month in Shanghai, devising our new show Consumed, which goes into rehearsal early in the new year, and will be on tour till the end of March.  It also looks set to go back to China in September - watch this space.  We've also been working very intensely through the year to develop the next Origins Festival, which is planned for the autumn of 2013, with some amazing new venues and an even more ambitious and inspiring programme than we had in 2011.  I was lucky enough to get to Australia, Canada and New Zealand during the course of 2012, so I've been able to see some amazing work and build the contacts we need to make it all happen here.

The other important aspect of our work in 2012 has been in participation and learning.  Lucy Dunkerley joined us in May, and has spent her first months with the company building our work in this area.  Her project Intercult, which accompanies Consumed, is going to be an amazing opportunity for young people across London.  During 2012, we also worked with young refugees in Plymouth (see photo above) to create a performance called Division, which brought them into a direct dialogue with the city's leaders.  We worked with the Africa Centre and Chickenshed to present educational and participatory programmes around African performance, with the talk by our Patron Peter Sellars proving a particular highlight.  We also concluded our Heritage Project with London's Maori community, launching our website in June.  We've also been continuing our work with the Platform for Intercultural Europe, helping to shape policy in Brussels.  

2012 has, of course, been a great year to be living in London, and the 2012 Festival was full of inspiration for people working in international theatre.  The Globe to Globe Festival included some terrific work, and Peter's Desdemona at the Barbican was a highlight.  But the most exciting productions of the summer for me were both in LIFT - the epic Gatz and the deeply provocative and inspiring Ganesh versus the Third Reich.  The latter is my production of the year - theatre which questions so many assumptions around disability and culture, and which manages to be very funny and deeply moving at the same time.  And beautiful to look at too.

This was an Australian play, and I actually saw it as a showcase in Adelaide.  The trip down under was very rich theatrically - but my other highlight would have to be Hone Kouka's Tu in Wellington.  Hone has been working for a long time to find a distinctive Maori dramatic form, and in this play he triumphantly gets there.  The staging in an urban marae, drawing off traditional movement and employing the natural traverse of the space, was simply stunning.

Closer to home, I much enjoyed Cheek by Jowl's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, with a great central performance from Lydia Wilson, and the National Theatre finally bringing Howard Barker into its fold with Scenes from an Execution.

Having spent a lot of the year travelling, I also read a great many books, mainly on the glorious e-reader.  But the most invigorating novel I read this year was the one you couldn’t get on Kindle: Timothy Mo’s Pure pulls off the seemingly impossible feat of approaching Islamic terrorism in a comic mode, without trivialising or belittling its subject.  Mo ventriloquises a wondrous range of narrators: I especially enjoyed the portrayal of an Oxford don and M16 recruiter, who is just a little less omniscient than he believes.

Natasha Soobramanien’s Genie and Paul is a tightly plotted first novel, shuttling between Mauritius and London so that wave after wave of culture-shock breaks across the reader.  Great for those of us who have Mauritian family connections and work with the culture there to see the Mauritian novel in the hands of such an exciting new talent.

China in Ten Words by Yu Hua explodes the myth that the last thirty years of Chinese history represent a fundamental break with the past.  Yu demonstrates how all the key characteristics of today’s China have deep roots in the era of the Famine and the Cultural Revolution.  Which leads us on to the ideas in Consumed...  Happy New Year, everybody.  

Planet IndigenUs

Hugely excited to be back in Toronto for the Planet IndigenUs Festival.  Like Origins, this is a festival of indigenous cultures from across the planet - though there are important differences too.  For one thing, this festival happens in a country which has a First Nations population, and so the connections which are made here are to do with those people welcoming their counterparts from overseas, and demonstrating a solidarity with them.  In London, the position is different - we are inviting people from around the world precisely because they have approaches to art and living which are very different from our own.

On a more mundane, but important note, Planet IndigenUs manages to be free, expect for a few ticketed performances.  One of these was Hone Kouka's play I, George Nepia - which pulls off the remarkable feat of being a gentle show about rugby.  Wonderful to see Hone and his company again after the wonderful Tu in Wellington earlier this year.  Wonderful also to reconnect with Pacific Curls, and with Marie and Rita from The Edward Curtis Project.  And I've only been here three days....

I got chance to share some of these ideas with Marc Merilainen, the Festival's Artistic Director, in a panel discussion about curating yesterday.  The third person on the panel was Dione Joseph, who is currently working with Big hArt in Australia - so it was another time of rich connections.  Marc had some fascinating questions about what makes an indigenous festival distinctive, how it relates to community and to activism, and what the future of such festivals might be.  All things which exercise my mind on a regular basis.

Still to come is a visit to the Harbourfront's partner venue on the Six Nations Reserve, and Kaha:wi Dance Theatre's collaboration with indigenous performers from Japan (yes - they come from the islands!) - called Susuriwka - Willow Bridge.  That's the show in the picture above.  Looks amazing. 

Tu

I first met Hone Kouka and Miria George a few years ago when they were in England for Rosanna Raymond's Pasifika Styles Festival in Cambridge. They came along to the Border Crossings Laboratory and ran a workshop for us. In the workshop, Hone was very keen to explore ways in which Maori culture and ideas could be put to theatrical use. He worked on the movement styles drawn from birds, the haka, waiata and chants. At the time, I could see he was working his way towards something. And now, several years down the line, I've seen what it was.

Tu, his new play at the New Zealand International Festival, is a big step forward for Maori dramaturgy. Hone brings the Maori understanding of time and history into the play - in Maori thought it is the past that is in front of us, because we can see it, and in this play people quite literally look at the past. The cultural forms emerge beautifully out of the characters' need for self-expression, giving physical and poetic voice to their inner journeys. It's very exciting work. What's more, it's performed in an urban marae, which is an inherently theatrical space, and lends the whole a sense of community and ritual combined. The marae is traditionally configured like a traverse stage, and Hone uses that wonderfully to articulate confrontation and journey. It's a great night.

It also has a cast of ten and a big set, so I don't think it's going to be practical for me to bring it to the next Festival. Sigh.

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.