A new show from Foreign Object (writer-performer Inês Santos Belmonte, director Lillith Freeman), When Judas Lost His Boots … and Other Words opens tonight at Voila! Festival.
“In this lively one-woman show, Inês Santos Belmonte reimagines her preteen immigration to the U.K. from Portugal, melting together panlingual verbatim, object theatre, & memoir storytelling into a playful exploration of what it is to belong.
Carried by words that don’t translate into English, the audience is taken on the comedic yet vulnerable journey of learning a new language.
At its heart Where Judas Lost His Boots… And Other Words is for anyone who has ever longed for a time that can no longer be – or more simply, missed their grandmother.”
Where: The Space
When: 9 Nov, 16 Nov
Ticket link: https://www.voilafestival.co.uk/events/where-judas-lost-his-boots-and-other-words-3/
Tell me a bit about your show. Where did the idea come from?
The show mixes linguistic philosophy with child-like storytelling through object
puppets, poetry, and comedy.
It is, at its foundations, a kind of memoir. It grew from conversations about migration, language learning, and how much we missed our grandmothers living in different
countries.
Writer and performer, Inês Santos Belmonte moved to the UK from Portugal at age 11 with her sister and parents searching for work and financial security, and was thrown into the deep end of learning English and finding a way to
belong.
Director Lillith Freeman is interested in heritage storytelling and working from family histories, especially using puppetry and object theatre.
The collaboration fell
into place organically, and thus came to life a lively and heartfelt one-woman show about a child moving to the UK encountering characters made up from the objects she remembers of them.
Within this process, came a fascination with words that
don’t translate directly into English – and the voices of other immigrants enter the
show through a survey we conducted collecting verbatim descriptions of
untranslatable words from non-English speakers.
Why should audiences choose your show? How would you sell it in one sentence?
For the English audience, it’s a joyful and playful show full of object puppets and
investigations into language, on its surface about immigration, but at its heart about the everyday struggle to belong.
For the immigrant audience, the show offers comfort, connection, and visibility, it is an achingly relatable love letter to young immigrants who miss their grandparents.
What does being part of the Voila! Festival mean to you?
Voila! Festival in some ways gave us the permission to make this show – as a team
made up of first and second generation immigrants that wanted to make a show
about language, Voila! Festival has given us not only a platform but the hope that there is an audience for multi-lingual theatre.
As an emerging company focussing on heritage, international storytelling it is a perfect first leap into the world for us.
How did you make a start in the industry?
Foreign Object is a company of emerging artists, making a bold first leap with this
energetic and relevant show.
We formed at the end of the East 15 BA Acting and
Contemporary Theatre, founded by Lillith Freeman to decisively combine their
particular interests in object, puppet, and mask with heritage, folk, and family history.
After going into drama school with a background in community arts, Lillith Freeman’s first big step into the industry after graduating was then working as an assistant
director and facilitator for Unpuzzled Theatre, a community theatre company in
Essex.
This experience solidified future ambitions to build communities with Foreign Object of first and second generation immigrant artists.
Inês Santos Belmonte is a
writer with a passion for poetry and identity driven storytelling, making a splash this autumn with not one, but two productions on stage: ‘A Tale From the Ticker’ and Foreign Object’s ‘Where Judas Lost His Boots…And Other Words’.
We are certainly not ’emerging’ into the industry quietly.
What’s next for the show?
Our hopes for 2026 is to take the show to international fringe and puppetry festivals.
But also, our future plans contain hosting and facilitating workshops, collaborative devising, and events for artists.
For us Foreign Object is not just a platform for promoting productions, but an opportunity for creative collaboration, exploration,
conversation and community building.