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.