Caro Meets Theatre Interview

Kristine Landon-Smith: The Arrival

By | Published on Tuesday 9 April 2013

thearrival

Ground-breaking and influential theatre group Tamasha bring their latest production to Jacksons Lane this week. ‘The Arrival’ is inspired by Shaun Tan’s graphic novel of the same name, and it seems to feature a bit of everything… including choreography, circus, and a poetic script.

We put some questions to director Kristine Landon-Smith, ahead of the show’s London run.

CM: What was it about the book ‘The Arrival’ that made you want to base a show around it?
KLS: When I first saw the book, I could not believe my eyes – it seemed so perfect for theatrical adaptation as the images themselves are so rich and provide such opportunity for theatrical realisation and visual imagery. I thought it would be a wonderful thing to realise a series of poetic moving images on stage inspired by the book.

CM: How did Sita Brahmachari come to be involved with the project?
KLS: Sita worked with me on a very long and complex project for Tamasha (the theatre company I’ve run with Sudha Bhuchar for over two decades), which culminated in a multi-lingual text with young people called Lyrical MC. It seemed like a natural fit to work with Sita on The Arrival, with its multi-layered, multi-lingual potential and  a story about migration and identity (a theme we have have been looking at together for some years).

CM: You and Sita created the show together – how did that collaborative process work?
KLS: It was wonderful, really quite effortless. We looked in detail at Shaun Tan’s imagery together. It is beautiful and very evocative of a particular era and we wanted to capture its spirit but also make modern day migration very visible in our show. So we talked and we researched. In collaboration with Ice and Fire (a theatre company that explores human rights stories) we had access to verbatim texts, interviews with people that had themselves come to this country. And slowly over time the frame of the piece evolved. Through our collaboration with Circus Space, we were able to test our ideas together through workshops, research and development with circus artists and actors in the rehearsal room.

CM: Tan’s novel is wordless; did it feel odd to be adding words to the concept?
KLS: It took some time to understand how words would sit in the piece and in what form. Originally we had a denser text with quite a lot of dialogue. Over time we realised that because of the physical size of the piece the text also needed to have a particular quality to it so Sita wrote a sparse poetic text with a lot of the dialogue becoming audio “thoughts” from characters rather than spoken live on stage. Over time we have pared down and honed the text. This was one of the most exciting and creative areas of our work together.

CM: The show appears to feature lots of different elements – choreography, circus, animation, music – can you tell us about these different facets of the performance, and how they  gel together?
KLS: Again it took time to understand how to put everything together. The idea is that nothing is superfluous – we have tried to find exactly the right movement sequence for each scene. So for example there is a beautifully choreographed ‘work’ scene depicting migrants cockle picking. In our original research and development, this was set is a factory using circus disciplines but as the work evolved we realised it was much more poignant to show the bleak landscape and conditions of the cockle pickers so the circus disciplines were taken out of that scene. The circus works where there is perfect synergy with the emotional drive of a scene. So, putting all the elements together was very creative… it was like sculpting or painting.

CM: Can you tell us more about Tamasha – how did the company come together, and what are its aims?
KLS: Sudha Bhuchar and I formed Tamasha in 1989 to tell stories of the Asian diaspora and succeed in putting British Asian stories in the mainstream (with, for example, the original stage play of East is East). We have evolved into an intra-cultural company which opens a window onto the multitude of narratives that are in any metropolis. Our company gives voice to stories that one does not consistently see.

CM: Will the show go on elsewhere after its performances at Jackson’s Lane?
KLS: We are certainly looking for a future life . We would like to bring the work back for festival touring here and abroad  and are also exploring showing it in site-specific places like port cities or spaces of arrivals and departures which would work so well.

CM: What’s next for Tamasha Theatre?
KLS: It’s a hugely exciting stage the company’s journey at the moment as I am stepping out to take up a position as Lecturer in Acting at National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. Sudha will drive forward with the company’s existing plans –with a great body of work on the cards – and continue with new associates. I am looking forward to seeing the company to  go from strength to strength.

Tamasha’s ‘The Arrival’ is on at Jackson’s Lane until 13 Apr. Tickets and info from the venue website

LINKS: www.jacksonslane.org.uk | www.tamasha.org.uk | twitter.com/tamashatheatre



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