Salvage

Salvage had its press night at Riverside Studios yesterday. A bit of a misnomer, since the press didn't actually come.... having decided that their (admittedly rather good) coverage of Strange Resting Places was enough for Origins. Still, there was a very good house, with some really exciting guests - not least Alanis Obomsawin, who had just arrived from Canada in the morning. We're really excited that she's going to be involved for the rest of the Festival.

Alanis loved Salvage. It's a very poetic, mystical play - which in itself is strange, given that it's set in a contemporary reservation, and deals with the aftermath of a car crash. Diane Glancy, the writer, gves a powerful sense of contemporary realities in Native life (and pulls no punches about the social problems), but at the same time she allows room for the spirituality of the culture, and the sense of living in a continuum with the past. The main vehicle for this is the character of the father, Wolfert, who is played with amazing sensitivity by the Lakota actor and storyteller Robert Greygrass. I talk to him over drinks afterwards, and he tells me that this character is very familiar to him. A lot of older men don't exactly live by the old ways, but they feel very close to them. The scenes where he talks to his dead wife in the cemetery are really powerful.

So - now I can't wait for Windmill Baby tonight! It previewed yesterday, and I finally got to see David Milroy and welcome him and the team to London. To think it's two years since he and I first talked about doing this - and now they are finally here!

The incredible Festival

We're now half way through the Origins Festival. I can't really believe it was only last Monday that we did the Opening Ceremony - it feels like months, so much has happened. Strange Resting Places was a sell-out hit at Soho Theatre, and Almighty Voice and His Wife got standing ovations at Riverside Studios.

This week, both the shows are at Riverside. Salvage has its Press Night tonight, while Windmill Baby is pre-viewing, before a Press Night tomorrow. I've known Windmill Baby for a long time, in the text and on video, and I've known the writer, David Milroy, since we met in Perth back in June 2007 (crawl back through this blog to find the first impressions!!). It's really exciting finally to have the play in London, knowing how it's been received all over Australia and India - what an incredible, powerful piece of work it is.

Salvage I first read last summer, while I was in Tahoe, and I loved it from the start. I'd known about the writer, Diane Glancy, for some time - but this was a new play, which Native Voices were just about to put into production. So the time was ripe to add in the idea of Origins. When we spoke, Diane was under the impression the production would be in a simple black box with three chairs.... it actually has fences, cars, snow... and an amazing sound design. How things change in the process. It's just as well I put it in the larger Riverside space.

Last night, at the British Library, Diane was incredibly eloquent and poetic in her discussion of her work and of what makes Native Theatre generally. It made me even more excited finally to see her play tonight.

There are still tickets available - book now on 020 8237 1111 or www.riversidestudios.co.uk !!

First Nations writing

On the plane coming home, I finish reading Carpentaria by the Aboriginal Australian writer Alexis Wright. It's an extraordinary book - incredibly dense in its prose, crazy in its plotting, laden in symbolism, and somehow incredibly compelling. What fascinates me about this book is the way it shifts between what a western writer would construct as different realities, without so much as nodding at any notion that they may be different. Periods of time, dream and waking, politics and prophecy, the mythic and the scientific blend into one another with total disarming ease.

While in America, I've been hunting for pieces to show at the Origins Festival. One new play, by a Cherokee writer called Diane Glancy, has a similar way of blurring what to a western mind would seem to be distinctions or layers of reality. It's called Salvage, and it's being developed with an LA-based organisation called Native Voices at the Autry. In much of my own work, including this recent Dream, and the Orientations plays, I've tried to use theatre as a way of shifting between the everyday world and something more spiritual, more dream-like, more poetic and resonant. But what this writing from First Nations people shows me is a facility in this which makes the very idea of the distinction absurd.

Back to work this morning. New copies of Toufann have been printed, and our new office intern, Ro Lane, reports for duty. We do a VAT return, and post a large cheque. Billy Hiscoke turns up with some DVDs, and Penny is on her way in to discuss the Trilogy. Back to reality, then....